Slightly OT: IBM PC game preservation!

[andreas]

Well, IRC chats sometimes create interesting topics to reflect upon.

As I've just heard belatedly, CAPS people estimated Atari ST preservation to be more important than IBM PC preservation!
This could be an irreversible error!

That is because lots of those well-protected, auto-booting CGA classic games (Big Top, Styx, Digger, Decathlon ...) shipped on 5.25'' floppy disks are already over 20 years old! If Atari ST preservation gets higher priority over IBM preservation, it might be already TOO LATE when CAPS (or a side project) decides to preserve those games. (Even TODAY, many rarities might already have vanished from this earth and thus are irreversibly lost because people had considered them worthless and "made a clean sweep" in their garages etc.!)

Lots of people in the whole world had at least one of those: IBM PC / AT / XT / PCjr / Tandy ..., and I'm sure many of those would appreciate it a lot if they could see some of their beloved memories refreshed

NOTE: The main focus should definitely be on CGA games, i. e. those protected 5.25'' auto-booters; *not* so much on EGA and VGA games, as The Underdogs is a brilliant site which now covers the gross of these games, hence putting the focus on the latter type of games would be completely superfluous.

However, to get a memorable value of all this, the project members would require a cooperation between the project and MESS. This multi-system emulator is already able to emulate the old IBM PCs in high accuracy! (Tested it myself with cracked copies )Thus, it would require to get the library necessary to play the protected originals INTO MESS.

All still dreams of the future, but maybe it will happen eventually, provided that someone except me is interested in this.
(NOTE: I cannot provide any originals, merely knowledge about the games. )

[jmmijo]

I remember many of those older CGA autobooters/autoloaders. No files at all, basically like the Amiga NDOS type discs and of course copy-protected to the max, well as far as the technology at that time was that is

I also remember using the Central Point Copy II PC Option Board to duplicate these discs as well. I wish I had kept that software and board now

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by andreas

As I've just heard belatedly, CAPS people estimated Atari ST preservation to be more important than IBM PC preservation!
This could be an irreversible error!

Well, Atari ST preservation is in fact more important because it will help to preserve more Amiga games. You know why, I guess ?

[jmmijo]

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

Well, Atari ST preservation is in fact more important because it will help to preserve more Amiga games. You know why, I guess ?

I don't so enlighten me please

[derSammler]

A lot of Amiga games have Atari ST formatted tracks. They can't be preserved until these tracks are supported.

[jmmijo]

Ah, I hadn't realized there was that much of a cross-over between the two disc formats in game releases, thanks

So I take it this was mainly on titles that had both an ST and Amiga release then, like say many/most of the Psygnosis titles for instance ?!?

[Unknown_K]

I do have a working Central Point deluxe option board here, if anybody does start preserving CGA games let me know!

[fiath]

Yeah, sorry Andreas, but Atari ST support will almost certainly come first because of exactly the reason WindowsKiller mentioned. But thanks for letting us know about these ones, we will keep them in mind...

[Photon]

OT: I remember Alexei Pajitnov (the creator of Tetris) made two other games for the PC that I played on my 9-point-something MHz 8088 Laptop PC with some kind of orange screen with CGA emulation ("gray scale by dithering hires pixels"). Wouldn't mind if those games were preserved. Nor the Defender and Robotron 2112 (?) CGA games.

Neither of those games auto-booted so they could probably already have been preserved.

[andreas]

Originally Posted by Windowskiller

You know why, I guess ?

By coincidence it seems, yes. When I first read your post, I just uttered a sort of "aaah, yes!", with only these two words spinning in my mind: dual format.
Admittedly, I forgot about this matter. This is a beast to preserve and obviously appears to have the highest priority for now.

@all: Thanks for all of those reactions!
Never expected so much feedback with this. Nice!

[viernez67]

Well, i think that CAPS team has a good technology to preserve disks and i like th idea of preserve all those games. BUT as Andreas said, i think that there're some other piorities. I'm talking here from a GAME PRESERVATION view not from an Amiga games lover view.

I think that there're some older systems(like 8bits computers: ZX, C64, Amstrad, MSX,.... , PCs games) where Time is critical. Also some of those systems has very few and weird disks.

As far as i know, there's no other team that are doing what you do or have some similar technology. There's no PC preservation society, or X68000 one.

I know that you have very little time and you're a busy team but i think that taking priority over other systems that can be critical(from a game preservation view) should be better.

I think that we should keep on our minds the word "preservation" rather than the words "Only amiga preservation(and other systems with usefull tech. like AtariSt) and other systems are less important".

Thanks.

[fiath]

No idea when we will get round to it though...

[derSammler]

I think that there're some older systems(like 8bits computers: ZX, C64, Amstrad, MSX,.... , PCs games) where Time is critical.

It's not so time-critical. The good thing is that older games are using media with lower density. Lower density means longer lifetime. An old 5,25" low density disk can survive up to 20 years with ease whereas a 3,5" high density disk hardly survives 10 years.

[viernez67]

Yes, you're right WindowsKiller. BUT by "Time is critical" i mean that People are trashing their old games(Free space is necesary these days). Also, some disk games are near to 20 years old and i don't think that your rule can be applied to all low density disk.

Also i think that the problem mainly is INFORMATION, because some few people know what CAPS is doing(and other projects) and WHY real things must be preserved.

I think that there're a lot of people that have original Amiga games in their garage and they don't send them to CAPS team, because they don't know the existence of Caps and what they're doing or they're so happy with PC, Playstation, Xbox games and aren't interested in their old games anymore...

[andreas]

Originally Posted by viernez67

I think that there're some older systems(like 8bits computers: ZX, C64, Amstrad, MSX,.... , PCs games) where Time is critical. Also some of those systems has very few and weird disks.

As far as i know, there's no other team that are doing what you do or have some similar technology. There's no PC preservation society, or X68000 one.

Probably, but there now is a C64 one at least!
Due to the efforts of Peter Rittwage, we now have C64PP!

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

It's not so time-critical. The good thing is that older games are using media with lower density. Lower density means longer lifetime. An old 5,25" low density disk can survive up to 20 years with ease whereas a 3,5" high density disk hardly survives 10 years.

Yes, that is beyond question.
BUT ... what use is the "half-life period" of a disk if it's the *USER* who threw away the disk when he did his "clean-sweep" just some days ago in his garage or cellar?
Viernez got me perfectly right!
*That* is why we are in a sort of hurry. If we wait too long, the people who still have some of those raritites in original state might already have thrown away their stuff and it might never see the light of day again!

[IFW]

Just checked c64pp, could be pretty good.
The only thing that will hold them back that is the limitation of using a 1541 directly as well as basing ideas on the working of the 1541 instead of the capabilities of duplication hardware and how 1541 affect those. Ie seeing the bigger picture and going for that.
They should go for pc drives as used in duplicator machines as well as a direct fdc controller, like the one in the Amiga or CW.
Many of the mysteries and impossible to measure/image etc as commented on their pages would quickly reveal to be very trivial and perfectly and 100% measurable things once they can look at that data how is it read by any drive that is not a 1541...
This would also prevent stuff to be modified for emulator use, or can't be emulated, can't be imaged etc. as it is now.
The 1541 is just not any good for this and modifying its hardware costs more with no gain than moving the dumping to any other viable platform.

btw, you might as well start looking for 5.25 drives while you can

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by andreas

BUT ... what use is the "half-life period" of a disk if it's the *USER* who threw away the disk when he did his "clean-sweep" just some days ago in his garage or cellar?

I know what you mean, but this can happen to any game, no matter how old it is or for which system. Just ask IFW how hard it is to find Atari ST games.

You are right with old games in general, but that problem is not limited to ancient CGA games.

Besides, I'm not even sure if it is possible to dump 5.25" PC disks with the current dumping tool. Maybe IFW or fiath can answer this...

[fiath]

No, currently it is not, but that might only be down to the fact that 5.25 drives don't support the disk ready line. I think IFW mentioned once that it would probably work otherwise.

[Mr Creosote]

I can't contribute to the technical side of this discussion, but regarding the initial point, not only PC booters are a critical group, but also OS-friendly MS-DOS games. Why? Because there isn't a single project in the 'PC world' which actually preserves games in their original state like CAPS does. HOTUD? Everything pre-installed, cracked and (in the case of larger games) ripped / stripped down. The newer something is, the less urgent it is, of course, but it should be kept in mind.

[IFW]

I guess it is not really mentioned, but we actually don't really go for atari st, we are going to support hw mfm controller readable data. In the case of the st that is a wd1772, but its clone devices are numerous (nec765a, intel controllers still in use, tandy, some japanese systems etc) and supporting one means supporting all from the analysation perspective.
Imaging is perfectly possible and indeed st images submitted so far proved very useful.
From the emulation perspective supporting any such image will be very easy, since we don't expect people being able to create a cycle exact fdc emulator, it is a daunting task and requires uncommon knowledge, once emulating the real hw is an issue instead of emulating the commands of the fdc.
5.25 mfm imaging would be possible technically as the interface is mostly industry standard and compatible, but those drives do have a missing signal as Fiath said, and dumping software should be modified to allow dumping from such a drive.
5.25 gcr imaging (read: c64) is possible only if the drive speed is slightly altered, due to the window size of the amiga fdc. (flux changes outside the data window slightly modify the data read) apart from that it can be perfectly done.

As for why st first then?
Like it or not its history is linked more or less with amiga gaming, even to the point that many amiga games are using st formats as either their data or protection tracks, often both.
Also st images are far outweight anything else submitted. Read: a handful of pc images, and 2 x68000 (or something similar) images...
That does not mean supporting st is restricted to st; as you should know by getting this far pretty much any system using clone fdc chips can be analysed with a program that is able to analyse st images properly.
It just happens to be easier to refer it as ST instead of saying "generic hw mfm controller family", and it conicidentally reflects the fact that mostly just st images are available. Obviously this makes them quite a bit higher priority than non-existant dumps from other systems.
This will also have the nice side effect of making a few dozen amiga games available for release, plus I am fairly sure people are looking forward to dual (amiga/st) and tri-format (amiga/st/pc) disks released, like a huge number of coverdisks and a few games.
Dumping may also be supported from a pc eventually, if mk4 turns out to be ok as I hope it will.
There are many things going on, and all of them are very time consuming so we set priorities on how logically these things are linked to each other.
Also please note although this is a hobby, we do it pretty much as an unpaid full time job.
In other words: things will happen when they are ready, not anytime sooner. Whinging will cause delays though