PS2 Online Gaming

Thank you wawowe! I'm about to get a copy on eBay, (through buy-it-now.)

My Aussie copy of H:OA arrived yesterday. I've been having trouble with playing it online. I tried to use an ELF of Swapmagic 3.8, but when I inserted the Hardware: Online Arena disc, a message saying that the disc is invalid was displayed at the bottom of the screen. I haven't been able to get the DNAS ID finding disc to boot, either. ( http://sksapps.com/index.php?page=online.html )

you have to boot up your ps2 with a game disc in it that has a larger toc than the game you intend to swap it with, and if you're swapping to a cd game you have to start with a cd game. same with dvd. then load the swap elf and when the disc stops spinning swap it and start game.
also may want to try cogswap or zoneloader if you can't get swapmagic working.
as far dnas I downloaded the disc id checker and extracted the stuff from the iso. just tested it on my ps2 and it. let me know if you need the elf and/or irx

I was able to get the DNAS ID. (Thanks for the link.) Unfortunately, I got a DNAS error -603 when I ran the patched disc. I'm not sure what's wrong.

is your patched disc a dvd or cd? i ask because you cannot ESR patch a cd, you have to convert the contents to a dvd iso. if you're hardmodded, then you obviously don't need esr, but i'm not sure why you would try playing from a patched iso initially to get online, since you have the original disc, unless you're just testing the dnas code.

if it gives you that error with the original disc then i wonder if it's a sony server. i'm not looking into it atm but from what i've noticed in the past it seems like sony game servers, like socom 2, r&c 3, etc are region locked.
if that's the case, then the system id would have to be changed...

Swap magic won't work with HOA online on the original disc it happened when I tried too. The only way I could test was to make a backup and patch it.

The server is still operational! Unfortunately, it's set up to lock out PS2 consoles with a non-PAL console ID. http://sksapps.com/index.php?page=online.html Look in the ID Stuff/Errors section, at the top of the page. Be careful, because I've heard that you can brick your PS2 if you make a mistake when setting the console ID.