FM Towns preservation has radically leaped forward since last post. About 900 CD-ROMs are in the Redump DB. Redump is a preservation group. I have been purchasing FM Towns software since February of 2021. Here is my hiscore list.
http://redump.org/discs/sort/system/dum ... .the.vile/Notice how for some FMT entries we are entering system requirements if it exceeds 386 CPU and 2MB RAM requirements. We want everything captured we can. We are even entering floppy disk information in the database. As readers here know Towns sometimes stored the EXP game file on FD and CDDA is on the CD-ROM. We hope the DB can serve as a reference for those with games. We also work closely with our friends at MAME and use the Tsugaru FM Towns emulator regularly for testing dumps. We welcome a new open source FM Towns emulator and we give Captainys feedback as required. A few months ago he implemented 486 instruction set and now software such as Alltynex works!
I've also dumped approximately 181 floppy discs with Greaseweazle flux reader. Approximately 21 disks are damaged and approximately 1 CD-ROM has had disc-rot or horrendous scratching (it's pending resurface but I think it's disc-rot). I will be upgrading to Pauline hopefully in a month or two. Most Team Towns members have flux readers or are switching to them as of now. They're 100% required for protected disks. Yes. FM Towns has a handful of protected floppy.
Which brings me to another subject. I have personally reached out to Joseph Redon whom has been an outstanding mentor. His mission is different than Redump and I acknowledge both missions can coexist together. He has given me and Team Towns very good advice regarding the floppy disks specifically. I have offered to help Joseph on any FMT related preservation work for GPS and I sincerely look forward to working with him. Fireball has also been an immense help whom is also registered on this forum and has always helped me with my CD-ROM based questions. I'm greatful for this assistance.
Ultimately we have viewed Towns a bit differently than a game console. It's a computer. It isn't a PlayStation. We preserve all software including educational software. The educational software cannot be ignored. Unlike other Japanese Retro Computers Towns was made to be a multimedia machine. To say the least we have seen some very interesting software reveal itself so far.
I would like to thank everyone so far that has contributed to FM Towns preservation in the last few years. We are finally making the way forward with scans as I've sent some games to be scanned by GamingAlexandria. Other team members have also sent their games to be scanned by our friends at GamingAlexandria. Particularly Japanese PC stand a significantly higher chance of extinction in terms of preservation when it comes to scans and dumps.
Ultimately the way forward to preserve everything by the following Western preservation standards:
-CD-ROM dumping with Redump project and annotating information about the floppy disk and system requirements
-Flux dumps of floppy disks with Kyroflux, Greaseweazle or Pauline
-Scans of boxes, books, CD-ROM, FD, magazines, ad flyer
I would think consoles eventually will bleed into scanning being needed. We don't hear about that much but I speculate in coming years it will be needed.
I've sent software to Hubz a few times personally along with Oh! FM Towns and Login magazines.The scans are a bit on the slower front as priority is to at least secure software. Once it's secured and dumped then we can get it scanned. Which brings me to posting here.
If you have any undumped software for FM Towns and are interested in preserving them please contact me or fireball. We have flux readers and plexors. If there is hesitation mailing something due to the rarity such as Fatal Fury Special, we can likely send you a plexor or even a flux reader. We are here to help anyone interested in preservation.
Which leads me to the theme of this post. We are still missing around 80ish retail game titles on CD-ROM but a few hundred other discs (maybe around 200). Some of these will be very expensive. It is very nerve wracking on my part to buy a Junk auction for software to roll the dice on the condition of a floppy disk. Recently I was burned on a $1150 purchase but we were able to make a hacked, working image of FD. In my experience on Yahoo Japan and Joseph would agree, it is mostly overseas users purchasing FMT software and I've had to beat a LOT of buyers in the last 15 months. I've spent about $33K USD since I've gotten on board and I can provide receipts to prove that insane sounding claim if required. The Team Towns funds are pretty high but I do grow concerned with some games that haven't been spotted before such as D-Return (being hoarded by one person I can confirm) and Loop Eraser.
If you have any educational software or are interested in preserving these games with Team Towns please contact me. If you aren't interested that's fine. It's an elephant in the room that should be addressed. I'll just keep beating competitors on Yahoo as my pockets are deep and you're welcome to test that.
I've made a lot of hardware for FM Towns to include replacement power supply for tower models, Car Marty PCB for S-video and EXT FDD and Gotek PCBs. I'm working on EXT FDD for towers and early desktops as of now.
I give these to the community for free and they're open source. Im just asking for some help with additional software not documented and not dumped. We just don't want this stuff to go extinct. Thank you.
-cyo
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