The Project

The best way to contact us is by registering at our forum and posting there.

If for any reason you are unable or do not want to do so, you might contact us by mail to contact <at> tosecdev.org. Additionally you may use twitter or facebook.

 

Warning: The contact form that was previously available was removed to avoid spam and because some mail providers have started publishing a DMARC reject policy (at least Yahoo).

The project is split into three distinct 'branches':

TOSEC:
TOSEC, or sometimes for clarity referred to as 'TOSEC (main)', is the original main branch of the project. It catalogs all the non-optical disc based systems and remains the bulk of the TOSEC database.

TOSEC-ISO:
TOSEC-ISO is a separate ancillary branch and includes optical disc based systems. This branch contains both optical disc based images (such as DVD, CD and GD based images) as well as the firmware for these disc based systems.

TOSEC-PIX:
TOSEC-PIX is the second separate ancillary branch and includes computing and gaming resources such as scans of software and hardware manuals, magazine scans, computing catalogs, and videos.

The initiative was founded on 18 January 2000, with the first official TOSEC website going live 18 August 2000, by a Dutch retrocomputing enthusiast using the pseudonym "Grendel".

Whilst the original founder of TOSEC has since ceased to have any involvement in the initiative, a dedicated team of volunteers continue to expand and contribute to the project.

The Old School Emulation Center (TOSEC) is a retrocomputing initiative dedicated to the cataloging and preservation of software, firmware and resources for arcade machines, microcomputers, minicomputers and video game consoles. The main goal of the project is to catalog and audit various kinds of software and firmware images for these systems.

As of release 2014-10-31, TOSEC catalogs over 280 unique computing platforms and continues to grow. As of this time the project had identified and cataloged 781,347 different software images/sets, consisting of over 4.97TB of software, firmware and resources.

 

 

The goal of the TOSEC 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.

TOSEC catalogs software and firmware such as:

* Applications
* BIOS
* Compilations
* Coverdisks
* Demos
* Device Drivers
* Educational software
* Games
* Magazines
* Multimedia
* Operating Systems
* Promotional and sampler software

As well as other computing and games related resources such as:

* Box Art
* Catalogs
* Comics
* Documentaries
* Educational manuals and books
* Guides
* Hardware manuals
* Magazines
* Promotional videos
* Software manuals
* TV Series

Using this data, TOSEC can provide quality assurance and auditing tools for cataloging and validating software images (such as ROM chip images, CD images, floppy disk images etc.) and computing resources (such as manuals, magazines, videos etc.).

The TOSEC database contains detailed information on images of hundreds of thousands of ROMs, EEPROMs, optical discs, magnetic disks, magnetic tapes, document scans, videos and other sundry media and individual files.