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PostPosted: August 27th, 2017, 12:35 am 
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Joined: August 1st, 2009, 9:03 am
Posts: 25
I am the creator or original large improvement to the TOSEC set of X68000 roms over 10 years ago. Later, some other person doing work for TOSEC took my set, removed the hard disk images and converted all disk images to files of the dim format, which, rather than being an improvement, was a degrading of my work. (As for why this was permitted by the leaders of TOSEC, I do not know.) I red some comments here suggesting that the conversion to dim format is a problem as to why some games do not work. I don't know how true this is but I'm posting here my original submission to TOSEC in which I greatly improved the existing set to near what it is today. Please note that there are variously wrongly named files here as well as some games that do not work correctly particularly in the case where some autoexec files are not working correctly. When I did my work for TOSEC, I did not convert any files from their original format to dim, and, if I did any conversions at all, it was simply to get the game to run on the emulators of the time. Additionally, since that time, I released an update to my TOSEC set but I do not know if this update in which I expanded the set with the addition of many roms, shared with me by a person at this forum and some additional roms that appeared on this form as well, ever got approved officially by the people at TOSEC. Some persons there seem to have originally rejected my expansion of the set due to some minor problem with renaming one or two files which they could have easily corrected themselves, and, since I became extremely busy with other matters, I never went back to correct. Does anyone know what ever became of this TOSEC set? Should I also post this later revised set here as well?

Furthermore, a lot of new games for X68000 have been posted or linked to this forum, which is great. However, I had troubles running many of them in emulators and noticed that I could get the games to work easily by simply copying the files from these disk images to blank disk images. Furthermore, I also did some other modifications to some files to correct other problems. I'm not sure which of these, exactly that I modified in contrast to those that I did not modify, but I've collected these new files together into one archive which I've also renamed in the TOSEC standard as well. I hope that these files are useful to you here.

Finally, the Neo Kobe file set is nearly complete for PC98 and most other Japanese computers are also done as well being organized into this scheme. X68000 is one of the main exceptions and I wonder if this is because of my work with organizing the files into the TOSEC scheme. I just want to state that I'm all in approval for converting my work into the Neo Kobe format but care should be taken to preserve alternate versions of files where this is warranted. Also, doujin game should not be removed as I'm not seeing doujin files yet, from what it seems, in the Neo Kobe PC98 set and, while this may be due to the fact that the set is not yet complete, I'm concerned that those working on this set may wish to not include doujin games, something that I find highly objectionable if so. If anyone would like to work on converting this TOSEC into the Neo Kobe and would like my assistance, please feel free to ask of it here. I, however, do not wish to do this work by myself alone anytime in the near future.

Please feel free to download the files from here.

https://mega.nz/#F!I8QH0KZK!_mr2-XFSN3ZPogNMoEONbQ


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PostPosted: August 29th, 2017, 9:23 am 
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Joined: May 15th, 2010, 1:35 am
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Thank you very much for posting your original X68000 set, and thank you for doing all of that work in the first place. You're right that the dim format is not ideal, especially because the commonly-used VFIC tool has a potentially nasty bug related to dim files.

Quote from Ashura:
Quote:
The VFIC plugin for DIM images has a bug. It detects 2HS images as 2HC and sets the wrong media flag in the header. Even worse if you convert such an image to another format the size is reduced to 1.2MB (2HC format).

To correct such an image open it in a hex editor and change the first byte from 02h to 01h.

Since all X68000 images in TOSEC have been converted to DIM format a few other games are also affected.
Check the 1.4MB images. If the media flag (first byte) is 03h (2HDE format) or 09h (2HQ format) then the image is OK. If it is 02h change it to 01h.


As for hard disk images, those are still forbidden by TOSEC rules AFAIK. I can understand their reasons for the rule, but installing Japanese games on old quirky flavors of DOS is a huge pain, and in practical terms it means that most users won't ever bother with those games, which is a shame.

If you still have that expansion of the set you submitted to TOSEC, could you upload it if you haven't already?

Neo Kobe will be doing an X68000 set early next year, after the PC98 is finished. As usual I have been trying to source everything from new verified dumps or original Japanese fileshares, but I also analyze other common sets like TOSEC to make the collection as complete as possible. (Usually it's just dupes and overwrites of the original Japanese shares, but sometimes there are surprises...)

Thank you for giving us approval for incorporating your files. It's a great resource.

We take care to include all alternate disks, separated into different sets based on criteria like version/crack/dumping method. The only things that are eliminated are hash-identical duplicates, and obviously corrupt or botched disks.

For the X68000 in particular, we'll be converting all regular 1.2MB 2HD disks to raw, headerless, sequential sector format. This is generally known as XDF format in X68000 circles, but it's identical to the HDM format used for PC98 and FM Towns. This format is best for preservation and eliminates most hash-duplicates. For non-standard disks which cannot be imaged as an XDF file, d88 or dim will be used as appropriate. I'm still researching the details of Gun's dim format, but I'll probably end up using d88 in most cases, as it is well-understood and well-supported by the major emulators and other utilities. In any case, we have taken great pains with the Neo Kobe sets to make sure that the conversions do not break anything.

Doujin software will of course be included! I am very proud of the fact that the Neo Kobe PC-8801 set includes over 1000 individual doujin disks, representing about 15% of the entire set. I'm currently working on the PC-9801 doujin collection right this minute, so no worries there. One interesting thing to note is that several doujin disks are actually multiplatform, like Marionet's Takeout series, so I'm making sure that these disks are included in each of the sets for the relevant systems.

Thanks again for pre-dim TOSEC set. This is massive. I can't wait to dig into the X68.


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PostPosted: August 29th, 2017, 11:23 pm 
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Joined: November 27th, 2007, 2:19 pm
Posts: 478
Quote:
Some persons there seem to have originally rejected my expansion of the set due to some minor problem with renaming one or two files which they could have easily corrected themselves, and, since I became extremely busy with other matters, I never went back to correct. Does anyone know what ever became of this TOSEC set? Should I also post this later revised set here as well?


I'm not sure about the timeline, I know you made an update to TOSEC in 2010 and shared that here according to files I kept from back then. I had the wrong impression back then that this was already sanctioned by TOSEC. I don't remember anything about the conversions in particular, but I've kept your set because it seemed the best regardless of any official TOSEC updates.
The last official X68 games update was 2014, I can't tell if any 2010 files are even in there. I've done a couple of searches for known 2010 additions like Master of Monsters II and The Savage Empire, and all of those are missing.
If you made additional updates after 2010, and sent those to TOSEC, they probably are in limbo as well.


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PostPosted: August 30th, 2017, 3:58 pm 
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Joined: November 12th, 2010, 3:00 pm
Posts: 33
Thank you both mek1 for your work on the TOSEC set and kobushi on the Neo Jobe sets! Awesome stuff.

I'm curious what the missing X68000 commercial games (non-doujin) are, the ones as far as I can tell:
Bomberman: Panic Bomber [ASCII]
Daikoukai Jidai II [Koei]
Double Eagle: Tricky Hole [Artdink]
Emerald Densetsu [System House Oh!]
First Queen [KSK]
Might and Magic: Book One - Secret of the Inner Sanctum [Starcraft]
Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World [Starcraft]
Princess Maker [NEW Corporation]
Rogue Alliance [Starcraft]
Sangokushi II [Koei]
Shanghai: Banri no Choujou [Electronic Arts Victor]
Shikinjou [Scap Trust]
Silent Möbius: Case: Titanic [Gainax]
Xak II: Rising of the Redmoon [Brother Industries/Takeru]


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PostPosted: September 4th, 2017, 2:39 pm 
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Joined: November 27th, 2007, 2:19 pm
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Infernos wrote:
Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World [Starcraft]
Rogue Alliance [Starcraft]
Silent Möbius: Case: Titanic [Gainax]
Xak II: Rising of the Redmoon [Brother Industries/Takeru]


These have been posted in the forum, I have those.

The situation with the Shanghai game is a bit curious - as far as I can tell, it's missing also for the FM Towns and the PC-98.


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