[game_preservation] Preservation of analogue game media

[Kieron Wilkinson]

Since I have been away for a while, I was trying to get a feel for how  
things have changed, and I thought this was a good place to start. I  
guess there doesn't seem to be many people here involved with that  
side of things, perhaps it is still very much an ad-hoc process.

As I said before, there does seem to be a number of common technical  
problems in preserving game media. Here are the ones I can think of:

1) Devices required to read the disks
2) The different and custom disk formats in use (I don't mean the  
physical disk format here, but how the software data is structured on  
the disk)
3) The presence of any disk-based copy protection (the whole purpose  
of which is to hide itself)
4) Degradation of original disks, leading to corrupted reads
5) Authenticity (ensuring disks are original and unmodified)

I'd like to cover these points as two distinct problems...

a) Reading the disks in the first place (points 1, 2 and 3).
b) Knowing that what you have read is preservable (points 4 and 5, but  
also involves 2 and 3).

I don't want to go into too much detail in one post, so I will leave  
it at this for now, and follow up this two issues separately later.

If anyone has any comments on any of this, please feel free to chime  
in with your thoughts.
Kieron

Thanks for citing the SPS website Devin. :)


On 7 Feb 2009, at 21:59, Devin Monnens wrote:


> Oh, so then I suppose the whole 'look at what your own company is  

> doing already, isn't it cool!' bit was completely unnecessary :)

>

>

> I personally think standardising the methodology, metadata and  

> storage of the software is certainly important if there was  

> worldwide collaboration.

>

> Well yeah, this is something we totally need to do after the white  

> paper is published. This is something I bring up from time to time.  

> If we can't standardize everything, then what's the point in having  

> collaborative archives?

>

>

> On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org 

> > wrote:

> Kerion is actually someone who was a past SIG leader in fact (who  

> brought this up then, but couldn't work on it due to a bad case of  

> RSI :( ), and is a member of the Software Preservation Society (and  

> there is another one of them on here who's not made himself known  

> I've been told). :)

>

> Andrew

>

> Devin Monnens wrote:

>>

>> Kieron,

>>

>> The first place to start is the Software Preservation Society (www.softpres.org 

>> ). They are interested in authenticity of the disks they back up  

>> and so have developed hardware to detect whether the disk has been  

>> written to or not. There is a lot of good information on the site,  

>> and one of the project's members is part of the SIG mailing list.

>>

>> -Devin

>>

>> On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 3:25 AM, Kieron Wilkinson  

>> <lists at softpres.org> wrote:

>>

>> Hello all,

>>

>> I'd quite like to ask a question of those working in libraries and  

>> archives who are actively preserving games provided on floppy  

>> disks. Is anyone here doing this? I guess this is going to become  

>> relevent to the KEEP project (excellent news Andreas!), as it gets  

>> going.

>>

>> I'm really just wanting to get some feedback on how this is  

>> currently being done. Mainly I'm wondering what kind of hardware  

>> and software you are using to do it? It would be interesting to  

>> find out if there are any commonly-used approaches.

>>

>> I don't want to pre-empt the discussion too much, but there does  

>> seem to be a number of common technical problems in preserving game  

>> media. Ultimately I'd like to start a discussion on whether there  

>> could ever be an accepted standard solution that could cover  

>> everything so nobody needed to worry about it again... (well, I'm  

>> sure it would certainly save pain for everyone)

>>

>> Kieron Wilkinson

>>

>> P.S. I do apologise for not being around for quite a while. I had  

>> some health issues shortly after taking over from Simon, and only  

>> sparingly touched a computer for quite some time (I'm fine now).

>>

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>>

>>

>>

>> -- 

>> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>>

>> "Until next time..."

>> Captain Commando

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>>

>

> _______________________________________________

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>

>

>

>

> -- 

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

> "Until next time..."

> Captain Commando

> _______________________________________________

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> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation


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