| Tomu Breidah |
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No Problems, Only Solutions
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Loc: Neither here, nor there.
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SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
#363580 - 02/16/17 09:59 AM
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#363582 - 02/16/17 06:46 PM
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Haze]
#363583 - 02/16/17 06:51 PM
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Hopefully they had insurance through USPS.
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: joey35car]
#363584 - 02/16/17 06:51 PM
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> Hopefully they had insurance through UPS.
Not to the value that would be required to replace them. Like many games, they show up once in a blue moon, more expensive every time.
If anything this is probably only going to inflate the prices further (because it's likely the owner will want to replace them, meaning people can price gouge)
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Haze]
#363587 - 02/16/17 07:27 PM
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the insurance was only valid for the way to the USA, but not any further, so it is a really sad and bad story. i dont think that somebody was "knowing" about the package.
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: uman]
#363589 - 02/16/17 08:48 PM
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Packages going international go through customs and they often open up the boxes. Looks like someone saw them and decided it was worth risking their job to steal them.
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363591 - 02/16/17 10:02 PM
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> Packages going international go through customs and they often open up the boxes.
> Looks like someone saw them and decided it was worth risking their job to steal them.
the thread really seems to have awoken the dregs of the internet tho..
you would have thought people might at least have a little more understanding of why things are done the way they are done but half the comments are acting like he deserves it.
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Haze]
#363592 - 02/16/17 10:05 PM
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Reddit? I don't/won't read that site. What is the situation with these carts anyway? Is there no way to do it correctly/accurately with a cart adapter dumper thing and then split the data manually into the rom chunks?
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Haze]
#363594 - 02/16/17 10:22 PM
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> see
> https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/5uckkd/100_snes_pal_game_shipment_update_package_was/
>
> where Byuu himself is posting.
>
> and yes, very much looks like they were stolen, somebody knew what they were doing.
>
> and in entirely coincidental timing, the most recent Family Guy episode has a slam on
> the USPS
I once had a similar experience with USPS though my package was 'lost' as a result of gross incompetence rather than theft.
I had won a Buggy Boy boardset in its sturdy RF cage on eBay US and had paid for it to be shipped to England. What I received was a portion of the shipping box with the shipping label and a slip apologizing for shipping damage and loss of the item. I called around and eventually tracked down the USPS processing centre where the game had been 'lost'. It took several calls to get somebody to track down the game, repackage it and send it on. I was told it was in a bad state and when I eventually received it, it looked as if somebody had run over the parcel with a forklift; the RF cage was badly warped and one of the PCBs and several ICs were cracked. Bastards.
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Phil Bennett]
#363595 - 02/16/17 10:30 PM
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USPS throws boxes literally. I've seen them do it with my own eyes. That's why when I sell a PCB I pack it good enough to where they can throw the box and the board will still be fine. The ebay people stuffing boards into the little priority mail boxes have no business being in the hobby but I've never had an issue getting my money back when stuff happens.
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Re: SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363596 - 02/16/17 11:28 PM
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All delivery services throw/damage packages. UPS is the biggest. They're not called the Universal Package Smashers for nothing. They waste $$$millions$$$ on damages and claims. It's a miracle they stay in business.
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byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363610 - 02/17/17 05:16 AM
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> Reddit? I don't/won't read that site. What is the situation with these carts anyway?
> Is there no way to do it correctly/accurately with a cart adapter dumper thing and
> then split the data manually into the rom chunks?
Link to byuu's blog post on the matter
Whatever quarrel I have with the man himself, I have a huge amount of respect these days for the lengths that he's going to in order to preserve SNES, and I think he did a great job in this case of laying the facts out as he knows them, explaining the rationale at the time for the decisions that were made, and why certain things were not an option.
The salient points are:
- Insurance: Most shipping companies have a limit to insurance value. FedEx, for example is $2499.99, and USPS could be even lower. As for why it was not broken up into smaller packages, hindsight is 20/20.
- Sending Dumping Hardware: What byuu does is above and beyond, and I would say goes to Jason Scott levels of caring about preserving games. This includes some admittedly fragile hardware, and requires lots of scanning time as well.
- Sending Byuu: He reckons it would take him 2-3 months of presumably full-time work to do a job of 100 cartridges. Yeah, I tend to believe him. Paying for a flight and paying for his living expenses for 2-3 months could easily total to over the $10000 value of the package itself. And he's a fucking skilled guy, so his time would be valuable in excess of $750-$1000 a day based on my base contracting rate which is basically half that.
Personally I think he would find Europe a welcoming, beautiful, and charming place, as I first traveled to Sweden alone. But the expense of living there plus everything else just doesn't make sense for him to dump the games in situ.
Ultimately, the smartest thing to do in hindsight would have been to split the packages up by value less than the maximum insurance value, but that also might also have the downside of high shipping rates as well. Hindsight is 20/20, and who would have thought that this sort of package would get stolen? Of all things, who the hell steals PAL video game cartridges in the USA? What, is there some black market for PAL games in the USA that I don't know about? Unless the USPS and possibly local police step up their game, some unfortunate pawn shop owner is going to wind up with a box of $10000 worth of PAL SNES games. What a shitty situation, and what a pointless thing to steal. It's heartbreaking.
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: MooglyGuy]
#363616 - 02/17/17 12:32 PM
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I guess what I'm really asking is, is it possible to get a bit perfect and roms split correctly from a cart dumper.
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363617 - 02/17/17 01:46 PM
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> I guess what I'm really asking is, is it possible to get a bit perfect and roms split
> correctly from a cart dumper.
Bit-perfect? Sure, why wouldn't they be?
As for split files or merged - in the context of individual files for individual chips or one large blob, not in the traditional MAME ROM torrent terminology sense - it doesn't matter.
I don't know if byuu does split ROMs or not. I seem to recall that that was a large point of contention between him and the team in the past.
I think the argument of split versus merged in the context of what byuu is doing is silly anyway. He takes high-DPI lossless scans of everything, including the PCB. He also creates a full map of the cartridge's entire address range. Again I don't know if he uses split or merged chip data, but from the info that he archives, a sufficiently dedicated person would be able to split out the chip data accurately.
He knows what he's doing.
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: MooglyGuy]
#363618 - 02/17/17 01:59 PM
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> > I guess what I'm really asking is, is it possible to get a bit perfect and roms
> split
> > correctly from a cart dumper.
>
> Bit-perfect? Sure, why wouldn't they be?
I ask because why else would everything need to be redumped, unless they are so old they are from when kiddie people added intro things to roms to show their warez group info when people load up a game, and we don't know for sure if they hacked other parts or something.
> As for split files or merged - in the context of individual files for individual
> chips or one large blob, not in the traditional MAME ROM torrent terminology sense -
> it doesn't matter.
>
> I don't know if byuu does split ROMs or not. I seem to recall that that was a large
> point of contention between him and the team in the past.
>
> I think the argument of split versus merged in the context of what byuu is doing is
> silly anyway. He takes high-DPI lossless scans of everything, including the PCB.
OK that is something anyone can do though.
>He
> also creates a full map of the cartridge's entire address range.
That isn't something I know anything about, but could it be done if someone else sent him a scan?
>Again I don't know
> if he uses split or merged chip data, but from the info that he archives, a
> sufficiently dedicated person would be able to split out the chip data accurately.
A joe shmoe off the street trying to replace a rom chip isn't automatically going to know how to split that up just from owning a cart and programmer. It isn't rocket science and they could figure it out with research but it's exponentially easier if the roms are split up like mame has them for arcade games.
> He knows what he's doing.
I don't doubt that, I just still don't understand exactly why someone else can't dump the carts with a cart dumper and unscrew the carts and scan the pcbs, unless he has to probe them with equipment to get the address maps, which again I know nothing about. Just trying to understand.
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One other thing too
[Re: MooglyGuy]
#363619 - 02/17/17 02:16 PM
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I checked those dates and sorry(?) to say but I've had a package from Germany get stuck in customs for that long before too and it still showed up so this is probably a lot of crying for nothing.
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| Foxhack |
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Furry guy
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Reged: 01/30/04
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Re: One other thing too
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363621 - 02/17/17 03:05 PM
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> I checked those dates and sorry(?) to say but I've had a package from Germany get
> stuck in customs for that long before too and it still showed up so this is probably
> a lot of crying for nothing.
Um, considering USPS sent him nothing but -a cleanly ripped off shipping label-, how is it going to turn up now? It's gone. Now it's on them to figure out where it got stolen.
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Re: One other thing too
[Re: Foxhack]
#363622 - 02/17/17 03:09 PM
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I saw Phil B. say he was sent a label in an unrelated shipment several years ago. I haven't seen anything about that happening with byuu.
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| B2K24 |
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MAME @ 15 kHz Sony Trinitron CRT user
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Reged: 10/25/10
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Posts: 2663
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Re: One other thing too
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363623 - 02/17/17 05:17 PM
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363624 - 02/17/17 05:22 PM
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> unless he has
> to probe them with equipment to get the address maps, which again I know nothing
> about. Just trying to understand.
As I understand it, and he even explains this in the blog post to which I linked if you would read it fully, is that the address maps require probing with custom hardware that he's designed and has implemented. But it's on the fragile side(?). There's some plans to hone the design into a V2 that anyone could use, but that doesn't solve the situation now.
This is all as I understand it from the blog post that I linked to.
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: MooglyGuy]
#363625 - 02/17/17 05:24 PM
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> I don't know if byuu does split ROMs or not. I seem to recall that that was a large point of contention between him and the team in the past.
I do both. I separate archival from playing.
For archival, I think it's better to have a flat file with a SHA256 sum of the entire thing. Easier to backup, easier to verify.
For playing, I believe in split files. Easier and cleaner to load into the emulator.
MAME and I disagree on how the splitting is done. MAME splits by IC. I split by purpose. Literally everyone else splits by immutability (one ROM file/archive, one SRAM file.)
MAME's method will group the program and data ROM of a coprocessor's firmware because they were in the same chip. This allows a person to program a new chip to replace a bad one. They also label the file to match the writing on the chip so it's easy to find for repairs. MAME likes to put all these files into ZIP archives. This is especially great for arcades that rarely have mutable data to worry about. MAME's method is better for preserving hardware variants.
My method groups things by purpose. I will merge two separate 8mbit ROM chips into a single 16mbit ROM file. But I will split a coprocessor into program and data ROMs, because they are used separately inside the emulator. I also label files by their purpose (eg character.rom for NES CHR-ROM, save.ram for save data, etc), which makes it easier for people looking at the files to understand their purpose. I put the files into folders, which is nicer for the consoles I deal with that often have mutable data (SRAM, flash, etc.) My method doesn't preserve variants as well, but the result will be 100% identical under emulation always.
These days, I'm not really interested in trying to proclaim one method is better than the other. The world is a big place, there's room for both. Each have their pros and cons. You can convert between the two by parsing both of our databases with a specialized tool.
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: Smitdogg]
#363626 - 02/17/17 05:35 PM
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> could it be done if someone else sent him a scan?
*Sort of.*
So far, I've only found one instance where the same PCB ID led to two different mappings, and even then, I can tell by reading whether it's a MAD-1 or MAD-R memory mapper on the PCB itself.
But all the same, I never like to make assumptions. There's always an exception to every rule. Especially on Nintendo systems.
I'd rather verify just to make sure someone didn't get cute with a batch of PCBs.
Now if I don't have the PCB in my database yet, then that would be a big problem. I would absolutely have to have said cart to figure out its mapping.
By the way, here are the board mappings I have found so far:
https://preservation.byuu.org/Boards
There will be many more in the Japanese set, guaranteed.
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: byuu]
#363627 - 02/17/17 05:40 PM
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You might be able to get ebay to show you the deleted auction if you call them or at the very least get them to tell you what you need to get it (police report or whatever). I hope the thief gets raped in the ass literally in jail.
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| Foxhack |
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Furry guy
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Reged: 01/30/04
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They've been found!
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#363801 - 02/23/17 09:14 PM
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Re: They've been found!
[Re: Foxhack]
#363803 - 02/23/17 10:53 PM
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That is awesome and a good ending to the story.
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| Tomu Breidah |
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No Problems, Only Solutions
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Reged: 08/14/04
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Posts: 6816
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Loc: Neither here, nor there.
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Great! [nt]
[Re: Foxhack]
#363809 - 02/24/17 01:55 AM
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Re: byuu's blog post is the best source of info
[Re: byuu]
#363838 - 02/24/17 02:36 PM
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Does it have something related to the fact that some games are currently not working with the MAME SNES driver? Rushing Beat is one of them, it freezes in a black screen and nothing happens. It happened before but it was fixed, and now it's broken again since MAME 0.174 
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SNES preservation project "dead" after $10k of games lost in the post
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