I'm pretty sure ECE means a European market version, U.S. market models are labeled US, such as
this one listed on eBay. Note this one has an ESN rather than an IMEI number on the label which tells you it is a CDMA unit, not GSM. So it would be useless in most of the non-U.S. world.
I have seen three basic TCU variants, Europe (or rest of world) GSM, U.S. CDMA, and U.S. GSM. I see no reason why the latter should not work in other GSM areas as well.
The hex dump you get is the NETTODAT.TRC file which is a hex representation of the FSW_PSW.TRC file. I am not sure if they say exactly the same thing or if the NETTODAT file contains more options.
You need NCS Expert whichever way you want to code. NCSdummy does not code, it just reads and translates the information. Essentially you edit the NETTODAT or FSW_PSW trace file, save it as .MAN and feed it to NCS Expert which performs the actual coding. It is pretty well explained
here.
Believe it or not I found a TCU for sale at a local salvage yard, coming out of a 2007 E66. It was only ~150 euros so I placed an order immediately. Pretty cheap compared to the ones listed on the German eBay. I should get it in a couple of days. Part number 84109149615.
Hopefully the wiring is the same so I won't have to rebuild the connectors. Maybe I can convince Ace to share how he coded his new TCU for his VIN.
If that does not work, I will give up.