Bad & Corrupt Files...what to do..what to do...

[Vaxalon]

I've been mulling over this some, me, being me, would inititally have prefered to remove them, but, on second thoughts decided , at least for my set, they serve two purposes.

A: They remove the broken files from peoples sets

B: In terms of TZX, it will help to resolve an issue over certain changes that were made to SOME, so they would only work on one, redundant, emulator.

That being said, how would you guys feel about those files being moved to ZZZ-UNK...etc etc? retaining the name where possible, obviously.

Cant help thinking , moving them to the trash..area, would stop them messing up the set in general, where at least they can still server the two functions I have listed above.

Not to mention the fact that a broken file is..essentially...unknowable

[TKaos]

That being said, how would you guys feel about those files being moved to ZZZ-UNK...etc etc? retaining the name where possible, obviously.

ZZZ-UNK was only used for files that could not be identified, it would be better if we don't use that anymore.
Bad files just stay in the DAT, they are marked as bad for a reason, which is for example your point "A".

[Cassiel]

To be honest we're moving more towards having ZERO ZZZ-UNK images.... it's a shit hold over from the GoodTool convention from YEARS ago.... I for one will not be mourning its lose when all those images are eventually properly named...

[Vaxalon]

the trouble with that, is if something is corrupted...unloadable...your naming is based totally on the file name...and trust. ie...you cant really ID a totally corrupt image.

[PandMonium]

A totally corrupted images should probably not be there in the first place. If a set can not be investigated by checking the files inside or even launched to get errors and so on lately, how the hell it got added anyway? :s
Who dumped it was dumb to at least try it and see it was completely broken and not usable in any manner at all?

In few cases they are actually in the wrong place, i've found that with duplicated files, for example:

Take the hash 5948f77c686729356cbb32347220b811 (md5)

It is file "Jet Set Willy - Willy In Space (1997)(Halsoft).tap" in "Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Games - [TAP]"
at the same time you can also find it with the name "ZZZ-UNK-JSWSpace.tap" in "Tangerine Oric-1 & Oric Atmos - Various - [TAP]"

Trying to load the file in a Oric emulator might not work at all, as if it was totally corrupted. That may happen in other sets too, but i'm not excluding the possibility of a set being complete garbage added before for some unknown reason... adding a ton of ZZZ-UNK files without checking them creates such problems.

[Vaxalon]

well im not one to add anything without checking it.

atm the bads...are mostly ones that only partially load, usually a loading screen at least
the corrupt ones...crash the emulators...but DO load into the tapir program...with the error that the file has been truncated. But presumbly...if it loads into taper then its fairly certain it WAS a working spectrum file, at one point.