Mid-Boot Hook (Taken from psx-spx)
One common trick to hook the Kernel after BIOS initialization, but before CDROM loading is to use the Pre-Boot handler to set a COP0 opcode fetch hardware breakpoint at 80030000h (after returning from the Pre-Boot handler, the Kernel will initialize important things like A0h/B0h/C0h tables, and will then break again when starting the GUI code at 80030000h) (this trick is used by Action Replay v2.0 and up).