[game_preservation] AJP and Guru Decapping Project

István Fábián if at caps-project.org
Wed Feb 17 17:29:54 EST 2010


As an update I can confirm now that the beta 2 release of KryoFlux supports Apple 400K/800K disks - supporting practically all major formats.

----- Original Message -----
From: István Fábián
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 8:55 PM
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] AJP and Guru Decapping Project


Hi Devin,

It really depends... ADF files are simple sector dumps and are not exactly good for preservation - the same is true for pretty much any sector dump for any platform.
What you need is the flux reversal level information from the disk for archival purposes - and some more convenient format like IPF for actual usage, like emulators etc.

There is one exception to this rule: the archival of your own material, scene, demo, work etc disks - sector dumps like ADF are perfect for those, as there is no expected loss of context or data.
You are very unlikely to find anything among user generated disks that would require the level of archival we do, however we appreciate the interest in that and we've included support for practically any format you can imagine.
In fact, we encourage people to use KryoFlux to transfer disks like those on pretty much any platform right now for any purpose.

For archival of commercial software the only safe way is to archive the disk at the flux level; analyse its content, verify integrity and authenticity.
I've invested about 9 years worth of research into creating technology capable of doing all those.

KryoFlux supports the archival of flux level data already (called "stream files" in the manual), although a more convenient format is going to be released called DRAFT at a later stage - but stream files can be converted to DRAFT once it's available.

As for your disks being modified; if you ever boot into Workbench on an Amiga and the disk is not write-protected, the OS changes the disk updating the .info files...

Anything you can read can be supported if there is serious interest.
Right now almost all popular platforms can be read as a sector dump; and of course all platforms can be read and archived at the flux transition level to stream files.

As far as I am aware the only major format not supported as a sector dump at the moment is Apple 400K/800K disks, but the upcoming beta 2 release will very likely include that one too...

As for Famicom disks; if there was interest we'd need obviously drives capable of reading the disks, and some (very low-level) technical information to add support for simple sector dumps.
If the data on those disks is recorded using a generic FM/MFM controllers (or any other supported platform, GCR variations etc), you can use KryoFlux out of the box right now.
For flux level dumps (archival) drives would need to be interfaced, and that's all.
Of course you wouldn't want to have Schrödinger's disks archived... so eventually it would make sense to analyse the archived disk content itself.

Kind regards,
István
----- Original Message -----
From: Devin Monnens
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 1:50 AM
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] AJP and Guru Decapping Project


Hello Istvan - great to see you posting this to the list!


This is pretty cool! So if I have already dumped my Amiga disks using the old serial cable method (which took something like 10 minutes per disk), will this give archival backups that SPS likes to have? I just have .adf versions of everything.


Now if you are interested, I can send some copies of the Amiga Software of the Month Club .adf files - I think these are distributable if you just want to take a look at the content. There are some very interesting independent games on some of these disks along with some .mods from the demo scene. ASMC was a US group of Amiga enthusiasts - I only inherited these from a professor at Cleveland State University (did not get the Amiga though b/c it was kind of expensive for an undergrad). I hope simply playing them did not alter the data...


Lastly, does this hardware work with Famicom disks? I suspect because they are magnetic disk media that they might require a system such as this (I'm not sure what that says about current community backups). Also on the Gray Hat side is this interesting program for viewing/modifying .fds files: http://www.romhacking.net/utils/662/


-Devin


On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 5:00 PM, István Fábián <if at caps-project.org> wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjfT-F0GUl4
----- Original Message -----
From: István Fábián
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] AJP and Guru Decapping Project


...and here is the first public beta:
http://www.softpres.org/news:2010-02-15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjfT-F0GUl4
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=50936
http://twitter.com/softpres

Cheers,
István
----- Original Message -----
From: Jan Baart
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] AJP and Guru Decapping Project


Quite interesting, hadn't seen that yet, thanks!

While we're at it though, here's another recent low-level preservation approach by the guys from the Software Preservation Society.

http://www.softpres.org/doku.php?id=glossary:kryoflux

On 24.11.2009 23:46, Devin Monnens wrote:
The American Journal of Play's Fall issue is now out, which features the IGDA White Paper on Game Preservation! I was so glad to get a copy in the mail!


In addition, I don't think this is listed on the IGDA Projects, but the MAME guys are working on low-level backups of arcade boards. They are using high-res digital images to manually backup an arcade rom (costs about $200 per chip). This is done to bypass security software that prevents traditional data backups. This is really neat as they have detailed documentation for why the techniques were chosen. In addition, it is some concrete documentation on how much it costs to accurately back up an arcade game.


http://guru.mameworld.info/decap/index.html

--
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.


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--
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.



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