Biggest update in the history of the project.

2004-02-20

125 more games have been preserved taking the total to 1474.

The next WIP is up, which details all the work added to the technology since the last one. There are some exciting developments detailed here which means many more games can be authentically preserved that originally could not.

Our new knowledge base is now live. This replaces the old and out of date FAQ, and also gives us further scope to explain exactly what we are doing. It is quite large, and contains information actively collated over the last six months. There are three main areas:

  • Articles (technical, social, or just plain fun)
  • The FAQ
  • The Glossary

The glossary is particularly useful to further explain the terms we use (and linked from where we use them), and generally contains a fair amount of supplementary information for people interested in magnetic recording in the context of what we do.

Everything in the knowledge base can be found by keyword, title or full text search. The only language available at the moment is English, but the system is designed to incorporate other languages too. Feel free to submit translations of the knowledge base entries.

One point we really want to drive home in this update is the need for integrity and authenticity guarantees in software preservation! There is no point in trying to preserve software unless you can say for sure that it is undamaged and unaltered. This includes detecting errors made at duplication. To further highlight the (critical) need for these guarantees, and to explain how we make them, you might like to read the following items from the knowledge base.

  • The Importance of Data Integrity In Software Preservation
  • Why do you need to describe disk formats?
  • RAW files, IPF files, what is the difference?

Some people seem to have had trouble developing with the IPF library - adding support to applications and utilities. In view of this, we have written a comprehensive reference on its use, and the API. This is a significant piece of work and you can get it from the download page.

This is all a huge amount of information, and we certainly don’t expect anybody to read it all at once. Most aspects of what we do, our stance on various subjects, and explanations of various issues raised by what we do are detailed within the knowledge base. Feel feel free to refer to it if you have a query, or email us if you still do not have it answered. We will try our best to add other things to the knowledge base as we go.

Last, but by no means least, thank you to all those people who have, and are, contributing their time and games to the cause. You continually make finding the games much easier. We have a long road left ahead, so we still ask, if you have any games not on our games list, please contact us! The full scope of the project can be found on the wanted page.