[game_preservation] Dreamcast Archival

[Andrew Perti]

Not sure if this went through last time because I changed my email 
address around.

Interesting read, Mike.  I too have contemplated the archival of 
proprietary optical based media.

 From my research, and specifically for the Dreamcast, there is such a 
method already available using a Broadband Adapter and a Dreamcast 
hombrew application called httpd-ack.  Apparently there are plenty of 
tutorials online.  Might I also remind everybody that data migration, 
even for preservation, altruistic or benevolent purposes, certainly 
borders on the darker end of the gray area.  Non-profit and educational 
institutions DO get some leeway for fair-use and archival purposes but 
it's not enough to legally justify copying such material as far as I can 
tell.  Don't take me for a legalese expert.  I recommend consulting with 
a lawyer before taking any actions.

Going further.  Even with a .cue sheet and RAW data/audio .BIN dumps of 
each track, there is still sub-channel data missing and quite a few 
other extraneous and un-captured bits as well.  True preservation, in my 
mind, encompasses the entire disc, bit for bit.  I've had an idea on the 
back burner(crude cd-r joke?) for some time now conceptualizing how to 
go about creating a file system/disc format agnostic method to copy data 
off of any optical medium given the right hardware.  From my 
understanding, all that one has to do is gain low level hardware access 
to an optical drive, start at offset -1000 (give or take) and start 
reading the disc's peaks and valleys.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but 
wouldn't it be relatively simple to code such a tool for a specific 
drive if you were familiar with the specific drive's I/O protocols?  
Alternatively, you could always just scan a disc's data side in at 
4000dpi and have a virtual laser read the peaks and valleys, right?  
KIDDING!  Kinda.  Double layer discs would be a bit difficult to scan 
anyway.

For the data portion, 7zip currently has some of the best compression 
algorithms and it's open source.  I would be so bold as to recommend it 
over any other format for archiving.  For audio, FLAC is also open 
source and it does provide great compression as well.  Cheers to that.

So we've migrated, now what?  Optical drive emulation for data 
retrieval/referencing/usage of course!  It wouldn't be difficult to code 
a simple plug-in based tool for the new format agnostic disc image.  
Each file system type would need it's own plug-in to be readable though.

I'm interested to hear what others have to say on the subject!

*To reiterate; we have to be mindful of current copyright legislation 
and other applicable laws, both domestic and worldwide.*

Andrew Perti
Founder | Seattle Interactive Media Museum
andrew.perti at thesimm.org  |www.thesimm.org

On 5/23/2011 10:54 PM, Mike Melanson wrote:

> I've been thinking of efficient ways to move Dreamcast data off of

> proprietary optical media and into more permanent storage. Members of this

> list might be interested:

>

> http://multimedia.cx/eggs/dreamcast-archival/

>

> --

>      -Mike Melanson

>

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