Patch Confusion?

[rotorman67]

I’m new to the PS2 scene. I recently tried to play some backup copies on my PS2. Some of the games worked fine and some didn’t. (I’ve got a flip-top case PS2 v4 and the swap magic cd.) When I checked the file locations of the bins, the ones that worked had a system.cnf file at LBA 12231 and those that didn’t work had the system.cnf file at a different location. Is this why some of the games worked, while others didn’t? Does the system.cnf file always have to be at LBA 12231? I read that some games need to be patched, while others don’t. How come? Why are there some patches for specific games and also some universal patches for any game? Which patches do I need to use and why? Any help would be appreciated.