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As many fans of our TOSEC project have pointed out, the UK's biggest selling PC monthly magazine 'PC Pro' name checked us in their June 2014 issue, in their 'IN DEPTH' article: "Run retro games on phone, tablet and PC". Whilst this was very exciting, they did sadly get a few facts muddled up.

I'm happy to report that they have printed a substantial correction in their letters page in this month's edition (September 2014) under the heading 'Credit where credit's due'. So if you are a resident of the UK, or one of the many other countries around the world they republish the mag, then go down to your local news agent or convenience store and check us out... page 10.

So.... guess who's mentioned on the front page of Slashdot this morning:

Slashdot

 

We're very excited to be supporting The Internet Archive with all their good work.

Please remember though that here at TOSEC the goal of the project is to maintain a database of all software and firmware images for all arcade machines, microcomputers, minicomputers and video game consoles. In addition to this, the project also catalogs other computing and gaming resources such as software and hardware manuals, magazine scans, computing catalogs, comics and videos.

We DO NOT host or provide any software images on this website.

To all new visitors, welcome! Please feel free to browse our website, check out our wikipedia page, and join in with discussions on the forum.


Links:

http://www.tosecdev.org/index.php/forum/index.php?topic=500.0
http://www.tosecdev.org/index.php/forum/index.php?topic=494.0

http://archive.org/details/tosec
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSEC

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/15/0222245/the-internet-archive-is-now-the-largest-collection-of-historical-software-online
http://paritynews.com/web-news/item/974-the-internet-archive-is-now-the-largest-collection-of-historical-software

I am proud to announce that today is the TOSEC project's 12th birthday!

For over a decade we have been dedicated to the cataloging and preservation of software, firmware and resources for microcomputers, minicomputers and video game consoles.

As of release 2011-12-29, TOSEC catalogs over 200 unique computing platforms and continues to grow. As of this time the project has identified and cataloged 433,460 different software images/sets, consisting of over 3.16TB of software, firmware and resources.

We've come along way in 12 years, but that's nothing compared to what we have planned for the next 12. Now let the cake cutting begin!

It has recently come to our attention here in the main TOSEC branch that our current TNC may be too old fashioned and not in keeping with the current computing climate. Whilst we have received consistently high praise for our detailed, logical and constantly evolving naming scheme, it does still have one fatal flaw: it remains 'text' based. In this new always accessible, highly visual, dumbed down 2.0 consumer user space, I'm afraid this just doesn't cut it anymore.

In order to rectify this, TOSEC are proposing an important change during 2012. Instead of retaining software details, dump info flags and so on for each set/file, these will now ALL be stripped out. Only software name will remain. In its place, for each software set (currently running at 436,479 as of last release) we will create a full length AVI video capturing every aspect of the software or game, a full walk thru if you will. From title screen (containing traditional Year and Publisher etc.) to the Game Over screen. Each AVI will accompany each ROM/image, in every set. DATs to be updated shortly.

Using Xvid and MP3 encoding, we anticipate each AVI will occupy around 150MB to 900MB per file. I'm sure everyone can agree that's a perfectly acceptable compromise.

On behalf of the TOSEC project, I look forward to this exciting new initiative and invite you all to share any comments you may have in our forum (either written, or 'visually' if stringing a sentence together is too taxing):

http://www.tosecdev.org/index.php/forum/index.php?topic=396.0

The official TOSEC Wikipedia page has now been updated for release v2011-12-29.

I have also made a few minor corrections, as well as adding Romulous to the list of DAT tools.

FYI - If there are any French speakers around, or indeed the original author himself (Crashdisk), it would appear Wikipedia (fr) has removed our TOSEC page. If anyone can help to get this reinstated (and protected from future deletions!) then it would be most appreciated...

 

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