One thing i missed in that was the fact that you are supposed to power up from standby not just hit reset. If you just put the game in and hit reset the game wont boot. read the boot procedures and it will say that. The clips are crap but the magic 3 was blue.........they changed it to red when they went to 3.1
try putting the backup in, then holding the reset to put the ps2 on standby, then single tap the reset to power back on. The magic 3 will go to the browser once in a while and not boot but if you go back to standby and reboot it'll work eventually
hope that solves the problem!