Save the sources, for the cause.

[MacDeath]

While lurking the Amstrad CPC464 community page o facebook, I stumbled on the few photos Rich Stevenson posted.

He did quite a lot of commercial games in the whole CPC commercial era and really has a huge treasure of code goodness and pieces of history long thought lost.


The thread :
http://www.facebook.com/groups/5357712057/permalink/10152499765592058/






Needless to say, we don't want to harass THE MAN or be taking too much of his time.
If those are to be dumped and backed-up on modern medias, we will have to follow his conditions, I just hope (don't we all) that he will give his kind permission.
So let's not hurry it too much and not be disturbing and annoying punks.

I guess we would all like those being properly dumped and saved and shared as the piece of Amstrad CPC and Computer gaming history they are, but it is not really to us to decide.
I'm pretty sure we may manage to find someone from the same geographic area with proper machines and skill and will to help, but the task seems quite huge indeed.


So here is a thread with aim to help organize the saving of those Sources, with also aim to make it the less painful and time consuming to the kind man who saved this treasure. 

There are not only his own productions but others as well, which is incredible.
I guess there may not be only Amstrad CPC games only and there may be like 1000 disks... just wow.



This would be as cool as when Jordan Mechner released the original source code from Prince of Persia or when they dug out the Atari2600 E.T cartridges from the dumpster... but for our European home computing history.



Anyway, Thank you in advance.

Also were there already some AmstradCPC commercial games Source codes realeased before ?


Few questions then :

=Springclean : failed hard to find anything about this one at CPCpower, CPCrulez or CPCgames reviews...
Was it ever dumped ?

=what is best way to dump massively ? would some peripherals help a lot ?
I guess that to have an X-MEM and a Minibooster would come handy ?

= no interface to connect a 3" disk drive on a modern PC via an USB port ?

[robcfg]

I'd say KryoFlux + FDI-1, that's the most portable setup.

[Simon Hardy]

I have a dedicated (older) PC with a 3" drive attached (From and Einstein as it used a standard connector and is not belt driven)... I usually use SAMDisk to image CPC and +3 disks as I have had no luck getting my Kyroflux to work reliably with any of my 3" drives.


Rich is in Sheffield, UK so would suggest somebody local to help image these??

[robcfg]

Hi Simon!


Glad you dropped by to help with this matter!


I have also an old AMD K6-2 400 machine at home to use with SamDisk, but that's less portable in case you meet Rich for dumping the disks. If that is no problem, then both are valid setups.


I hope you like how things are going at The Dragon Archive 


Best regards,
Rob

[MacDeath]

Rich is in Sheffield, UK so would suggest somebody local to help image these??

thats the whole point.

Can't use a machine in greece or spain for the task.

Would need a simple machine/solution, available locally.

to be honest a CPC/PCW/Speccy+3 with a proper application, extra RAM and interface with PC and nice practical interface on it to manage the database... would be perfect.



At µAlchimie3  (2014), a retro convention I attended with overflow and Hermol, an ancient CPCist brought a big box full of many discs (like some hundreds).

Hermol tried to Dump some of those with a  6128 and it took ages, with discology.

Really are there software+hardware solution using classic 3" machines connected to modern PC/Mac ?

Software wise, for the CPC/PCW/Other : should take account of extra RAM, fast disc access and so on.
Then have PC thing via cable or bluetooth (do exist).


I guess the TotOs range offer what needed.

X-Mem + MiniBooster can be enough and easily shipped to england... but is there a software solution for massive dump with this combo, running both on CPC and modern PC ?


This thread is not just "lets put pressure on Rich"  :Dl, but also "lets find a proper way to help any dude with a massive pilestock of old 3" disks that would perhaps need to be properly dumped and saved", whatever the machine (Speccy, CPC, PCW, perhaps even ORIC...)


also as Rich stated on Facebook, those disks may have "copyrighted" contents and some very more personal contents not supposed to be released...
So he rightfully doesn't want to give all to someone else, he prefers to do it first hand so he may select.

so best practice will be to help him get the right tools then let him do his stuff, then check for authorizations from right owners.
And so his "personal 8bit porn stock" stays in his keep I guess...  (sorry, kidding)

yeah, we old snotling-weekend-hackers, some of us certainly even personally hacked his games, have to understand that he may still be hold by contracts from the old time.

Anyway, better to have those stuffs saved someware than rotting on magnetic ephemeral support.

[Gryzor]

As I said in that thread I'm willing to ship anything to him aside from a monitor to use...

[robcfg]

In case there's no one near with the right setup to help, he could send the disks to someone who can actually dumped them.


I know it's a risk, but otherwise they'll be lost anyway.


I can offer myself to do it if he'll be willing to send the disks. I've dumped Dragon disks from england and rare chips from sweden, and there was no problem sending them to and from spain.

[arnoldemu]

I live in Sheffield. I have an old PC and I could probably link up an old teac 3inch to it. I don't have kryoflux.

[MacDeath]

In case there's no one near with the right setup to help, he could send the disks to someone who can actually dumped them.

Misteur Stevenson told us there are a lot of "personal content" mixed with many other stuff, and he really would prefer having no "stranger" get his hands on those before him.

And I guess Mister Stevenson is not willing to see his stuff getting lost in time. just that he may have a job, a life and family so not a lot of time to do it "right next next week"... He already had his share of awfull short "deadlines to release". 

so best way would really be to find someone living near him being able to lent some equipment or we (the community) could arrange some little equipment/peripherals to help the matter.
But ok, if some of you are willing to send him whole machines from the other side of europe, this is actually quite generous indeed.

I guess Rich sure knows how to use an old computer with 3" disks... I mean, he quite produced a lot of game in his time and was working in game industry while most of us were snotlings ... 

[robcfg]

I live in Sheffield. I have an old PC and I could probably link up an old teac 3inch to it. I don't have kryoflux.

Samdisk will work very well too.