Author Topic: How do I contribute new entries to the database?  (Read 2099 times)

Offline load81

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How do I contribute new entries to the database?
« on: August 27, 2020, 03:51:58 AM »
I keep finding high quality stuff posted to the Internet but not yet included in TOSEC. See some of my posts for examples. I'd like to start small and contribute a few new entries at a time. I do have an idea to partly rework some of the C64 8-bit datasets, but it would be a major undertaking and I don't have the time for that just now.

Is the database in some sort of accessible version control such as GitHub? It would make life a lot easier for new contributors if this were the case.



Offline Duncan Twain

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Re: How do I contribute new entries to the database?
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2020, 01:56:25 PM »
Hi Load81,

Nice to hear that you like to contribute. Currently I'm working on the whole C64 set and intend to move quite a lot of files and make a lot of fixes. This makes it hard (at this stage) to split the work and/or assign you a section.
If you like you could take ownership of the other Commodore collections (other than C64 and Amiga)?

Cheers,
Duncantwain

Offline load81

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Re: How do I contribute new entries to the database?
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2020, 10:37:00 PM »
I could be convinced. :)

The VIC-20 interests me. On a more modern front the Mega 65 and the Commdander X16 interest me, too. Also, I have an interest early kit-build systems that I think are in need of some serious attention. I have some code on sound-sheet that I need to archive as Kansas City Standard audio format. I expect those will be WAV an/or FLAC.

Oh, about the C64 work you're doing...

I have this side-project where I'm disassembling an old 8k game cartridge and working back to functional source code. Some of the variants seem to be improper cartridge headers others, I think, are bugfixed releases. Eventually, I should be able to infer which copy is the true original; it should have the most bugs. It will probably take months before I know which is which. Do this that prompts a question, do cartridges with incorrect (but functional) headers get removed from TOSEC?

It strikes me that cartridge files have a big header that can be programmatically removed which will give us a raw binary file. The same thing can be done with PRG files, as they have a two byte load address as a header. This might allow for rapid identification of duplicates based upon the hashes of raw files. But then, how do I know which program is original? Is it a matter of chain of custody? "This shrink wrapped box is attested to be original? Or, is it more complicated than that?