TOSEC ISO has for several years now been steered gradually back towards the same goals as the MAIN branch, ie as a primarily cataloguing project. This is in accordance to the wishes of current active TOSEC members.
This means that TOSEC ISO is allowed to dat dumps found in the wild and does not limit itself to producing dumps from original media in a specific way like in the early years. Hence it has already included dumps that originated from Redump or Trurip groups and also other "interesting" dumps that can just be found "out there" (like for example the 3DO Russian translations) even when they don't represent actual pressed discs. In the future I personally plan to also include other important things like for example Dreamcast .cdi (these remain the only disc image files that can be burned on disc to play on the actual console, unlike the .gdi which require either emulator or a special extra device for use with the console).
I don't know why you say TOSEC ISO is dead, when there was significant activity in many different dats in the last couple of years. Quite frankly I am quite bored of hearing people say this when there's evidence to the contrary. Maybe TOSEC ISO has become more niche that it used to be in 2007, but as evidenced by existence of recent dat updates, it's still around.
Old guide is still valid and produces rather good dumps for most of the classic systems if anyone wishes to dump this way, but we acknowledge that it's old software and newer dumping methods exist. ATM we are not looking into developing any new dumping method. We are not planning into competing with Redump or anyone else in dumping original media and our dats serve a different purpose as outlined above (and in line with the main TOSEC branch).
PS: since you mention Neo-Geo: Redump dumps are problematic and not much better than old TOSEC ISO dumps, as they don't preserve the CDZ protection either. This means that they won't work properly on CDZ consoles, a fact that Redump either brushes under the carpet or has not even tested properly. The only person I know that has done serious Neo-Geo testing and has included tested fully working dumps in their dats is Ripper006 with Trurip. Same with the PC games you mention, what's the point in Redump claiming "perfect" dumps when protection schemes can't be dumped and resulting dumps do not work properly? Or how about other stuff like Jaguar CD that can't even be dumped at all with their method? In the world of dumps and dats, there's not a single absolute truth. The fact that Redump has become big and widely accepted doesn't mean that anything and everything they are doing is correct and better than other people's work.
