Ressurecting the online generation of consoles is harder

Consoles prior to the PS2 and Xbox (and handhelds before the Nintendo DS) were pretty static. There was no online functionality, so there was no need to be able to identify an individual console or user. With the ability to take machines online, it became more important to be able to identify an individual console (and later, the individual user through online accounts) and this was typically done through a device serial number and network MAC address.

This creates headaches for those who wish to emulate these platforms. While the official online services have been terminated for everything older than Xbox 360 and PS3 (including the Wii of the same generation,) there has been a growing movement to rebuild online capabilities for these older machines.

We'll leave legality out of this discussion except for a footnote at the end and cover the practical problems that come up with all of this:

For the PS2, the BIOS dump that you use contains the system identification information. As such, you need a full proper dump of the PS2 BIOS without any modifications, for online functionality to work.

For the Nintendo DS, it's a similar situation-- the firmware dump contains system identification information. Using a modified dump with the MAC address stripped won't work.

The Xbox has a serial number, MAC address, and an online key that are all stored in EEPROM. All of these are used in authenticating with Xbox Live.

Sharing a personal BIOS/EEPROM dump of any of these three systems with anyone else could result in multiple people getting banned-- in fact, I'd argue that it severely increases the likelihood of a ban to nearly 100% because you wouldn't legitimately be able to go online multiple times at the same time from multiple locations on the physical hardware. Add in the increased chances one of the users cheats and gets the ID banned as well.

This is why most existing dumps of BIOSes for PS2 and NDS have either already been pre-banned or have online identification information stripped to prevent online usage.

Legally, it can be argued none of this should be shared, modified or not, but the goal of preservation means that there is always a careful dance around the borders of legality in general.

So what does this mean for someone who doesn't have access to an actual PS2, NDS, or Xbox? Legality aside, I believe that services like Insignia (the replacement for OG Xbox Live) would still do their best to limit access to actual legitimate keys in order to add actual teeth to anti-cheat enforcement. Users are a lot less likely to actively cheat if there's not a lot of replacement hardware out there to get a new key from.

From a longer-term standpoint, though, this results in a slowly dwindling capability for people to take these old platforms online. Each ban reduces the pool of usable keys, each dead piece of old hardware that didn't get dumped decreases the pool of usable keys, and there's no mechanism for replenishment of ANY of these keys over time.

What's the correct answer here? I'm not entirely sure; while I believe the current situation is untenable in the long term, I'm not sure of a solution that could work here while still having sufficient anti-cheat enforcement.

As for me and my own collection:

• I have a personal dump of one of my two PS2 units which I use with emulation.
• My Xbox is connected to Insignia, and I keep a backup of the EEPROM data. I'm currently working out how to try to sync data between Xemu and the actual hardware so I can be online from either and possibly even sync save games. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
• I've had a Wii NAND dump for a very very long time; I most recently dumped it again right before doing a data migration to Wii U, so I could restore my Wii's NAND and still have access to my purchased Wii stuff on VWii on Wii U and the original Wii.
• I don't currently have a dump of my NDS. When I can find it and my flash cart, I should actually get around to getting a proper dump so that Kaeru WFC becomes possible on emulation.
• As for Wii U, I have a full dump of that. Pretendo is possible if I'm willing to take the steps to get it set up; I've been waiting for that project to mature a bit more first.
• 3DS is a whole can of worms. Like my DS, it's currently MIA somewhere around here. When I eventually do find it, Pretendo setup will be on my list of things to do. And to get a new dump of the identity for use with emulation.
  

Edit to add: I've spent more time on this and learned a few things about the state of Nintendo DS emulation in particular. See the next blog post for more details.