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dmichel
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Joined: 04 Apr 2002
Posts: 1166
Location: France
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 Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 2:12 am Post subject: The forums are back! |
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Hi all!
The forums are finaly back! 
Sorry that it took so long, but I didn't have a lot of luck on this one. I had a not too old backup (two months old) but unfortunately when I tried to use it to restore the forums I noticed that 3/4 of the posts where missing, everything was in the backup, all the topics, etc... except the posts.  I tried to get a backup from my hosting provider too but this did not work, they do make daily backups but only of the whole database server, so they could not restore only one database. So all I had was a very old backup, about one year old...
I'm sincerely sorry to have lost that many posts, I should have been more careful and made more backups (and checked them!), sorry... One good thing though is that I learned the lesson, it won't bite me again! Before I was doing manual backups once in a while but this time I have set up a double backup system of the forums, one daily and one weekly, the daily backup is automatic, the weekly one is still manual but it's a lot more easy to manage then before, now I'm ready! I moved the forums to MagicEngine private web server too - they were on a slow shared server before, loading should be a lot faster.
Not everything was lost though, only the posts, I was able to restore all the accounts and all the private messages. You won't need to change your passwords too, those were not stored in the database so no one could steal them. And I also added a few new forums!
I have all the topics of the lost posts too, but I don't know if I should restore them and mark them as lost, what do you think?
Talk to you soon. 
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David Michel |
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Keranu
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Joined: 05 Aug 2002
Posts: 669
Location: Neo Geo Land
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 6:57 am Post subject: |
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Sweet.
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Tomaitheous
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Joined: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 306
Location: Tucson
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 7:12 am Post subject: |
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Ditto!
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sideshow
Regular
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 137
Location: Southern California
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 9:35 am Post subject: |
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Were Backkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!  |
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Keranu
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Joined: 05 Aug 2002
Posts: 669
Location: Neo Geo Land
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 9:42 am Post subject: |
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| sideshow wrote: | | Were Backkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
A Dinosaur Story!
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NightWolve
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 304
Location: Chicago, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Yikes, my last post here only goes back to Aug 02, 2004. I was looking for the TocFixer thread to ask for it to be stickied again, but dang. Well, I don't feel like doing all that work again to writeup the instructions. I was actually looking for it because I wrote better instructions here than I did on my old forums, and I wanted to find the ones here and copy them to a description field for TocFixer that I just made for my new portal-based website. Oh well.
That's a shame, David. Sorry to hear that. At least you got something, but wow, a lot of useful information is now lost. Restoring just empty topics would be pretty useless. It's gone it's gone. RIP.
In other news, I have one last surprise I'm cooking up for the pce/tg16 community and I'm glad the forum finally came back for this. I was hoping it'd be around by the time I went public. I'll give some hints: It's another utility/tool, and like TocFixer, it's based on Squaresoft's PC-Engine/TG-16 TOC signature data, but it will be command-line, not GUI. I'm trying to finish up the ReadMe and some last minute changes, but it'll likely go public today, or maybe tomorrow (unless I find something that's worthy of delaying it more). How useful it will be depends... Anyone care to guess what it is??  It's a bit late to the scene, and I really wanted to have this _before_ I made my Ys IV patch available, but better late than never I say.
So the two clues are that a) it's something that uses the TOC database and b) would've been better if something like this was available at the same time the Ys IV patch went public... Eh, I'll give you one more clue: It will be of great use to you if you have a Sony PSP...
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Translation Projects: Xak 3, Ys 4, Ys 1&2 Complete
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Jabberwok
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Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 532
Location: Quebec, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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David : Glad to be back! lost posts? bah, what's done is done... No biggie really
NightWolve : Working on a "TOC-2-PSP-thingy" eh? Seriously though, is it some kind of tool to use cd images on a PSP?
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If you translate Pole Position in French with babelfish you get 'Position de Polonais'... I think it's hilarious... from a French point of view. |
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dmichel
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Joined: 04 Apr 2002
Posts: 1166
Location: France
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 8:18 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, nice to be back. 
TOC database, useful for patching, PSP? 
Is it related to emulation or is it useful if you have a PCE?
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David Michel |
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sideshow
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Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 137
Location: Southern California
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| PCEngine CD's running on a PSP!!!!! That would be heaven. I'm so glad I bought a PSP this week. I mainly got it because of Ys Ark of Napishtim but having oldschool PCE games would be bliss. |
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NightWolve
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 304
Location: Chicago, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:44 am Post subject: |
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| dmichel wrote: | TOC database, useful for patching, PSP?
Is it related to emulation or is it useful if you have a PCE? |
Hehe, I'm surprised you didn't know, David. Do you remember about one year ago, right after I released the Ys IV patch, I sent you an email asking about how difficult was it to read a CD-Rom sector and how I wanted some sample source code for such a task? I had begun research on an idea I was toying with at the time, but ASPI programming looked very intimidating. But yeah, this was related to that... Around late last month, I started working on it again after having given up for so long, and managed to complete it after all in about 3 weeks. Lots of research with technical docs was involved such as from the t10 group that handles the MMC standard that most modern optical devices are compliant with. Not very fun at all...
Alright, so what is it...? Well, it's called "TurboRip." With TurboRip, you take your original PC-Engine/TG-16 CD-Rom, insert it into your best CD-RW/DVD-RW Reader device, and rip/dump/extract it to a perfect ISO/WAV/CUE image. I know of no professional software that ever did this right. All of them, as soon as they reach the PREGAP after the first audio track, on the transition to the second data track, they fail in error. CDRWIN, everything. You could only ever dump a solid image, as one giant file. Well, not anymore.
Now why was this important to Ys IV? For one thing, it will guarantee the correct size of EVERY track file, enforcing the 2 & 3 second pregap rules for transitioning tracks and not failing. Second, it's not really relevant anymore since it may never happen, but there are audio tracks with Japanese on them that an Ys fan named Justus was going to produce dubs for. So, the idea was that you would download the separate translated/dubbed wave files and just replace them in your ISO/WAV/CUE file set. In other words, to perform a patching of the dubs, a solid BIN/CUE, NRG, etc. image would not be acceptable. You would need the image in file-per-track mode (ISO/WAV/CUE). Unfortunately, Justus may never finish the dubs after all, but nonetheless, I wanted to finish this tool to address the issue of there being no professional software that correctly handles the PREGAPs when dealing with mixed-mode PC-Engine/TG-16 discs.
Another benefit that I should add is that by guaranteeing the corect size for track 2, the data track, you will always meet the text patcher's criteria for having a correctly sized mode1/2048 data track. Not all drives are equal and they don't always end at the same sectors when dealing with PREGAPs, as I learned with a test I conducted with a friend. This is why sometimes, BIN/CUE or other track files are slightly bigger or smaller depending on who extracted them.
Well, what I'm trying to say is that this will guarantee consistent ripping/extracting results with the tricky transitioning tracks. Lemme explain with a test I conducted:
I have an original Dracula X CD-Rom. With my YAMAHA drive, the data track, track 2, goes from sector 3890 to 14036 using CDRWIN's "Select Sectors" feature in the Extract Disc Dialog. However, if I try to read up to 14037, I hit the pregap area, and the drive cannot read it, so CDRWIN errors out... Now, you would think this is true for everyone, but it's not. My friend tried the same test, and CDRWIN was able to read track 2 from 3890 to 14038. CDRWIN is unable to read at sector 14039 for HIM! So what happens is, on two different systems, you get two differently sized images, thus inconsistent results. TurboRip, on the other hand, will enforce the correct sector length when it comes to PREGAPs, and fill the end of the track with nulls. So every track will be the correct size, bottomline.
Finally, why will this be useful for Sony's PSP? A few weeks ago, someone approached me for help in getting Dracula X to work on his PSP, with the PCEP emulator that's available for it (once you apply a hack to the system, that is). Long story short, I helped him out and as such, I decided to extend the functionality of my program to directly produce an image, properly named for use with the PCEP emulator. So, if you run TurboRip with the "/psp" parameter using your original disc, it will produce for you an ISO/MP3/TOC image file set in a folder. You copy that to your USB memory stick, then attach the stick back to your PSP and if you do it all right, you'll be able to play it fully with sound on a portable system!
Anyway, I was a bit longwinded here, and I have to write up a bunch of stuff for this still. You get the idea. It's basically the perfect "original PCE/TG-16 CD-Rom to ISO/WAV/CUE image file set" utility. You'll be able to backup all your originals, prepare them for use with emulators for Sony's PSP or Microsoft's X-BOX (I have that option, too), and/or be able to perfectly patch Xak III or Ys IV with no sweat. Oh, and with the TOC database, it will detect your original disc and properly name it using Squaresoft's naming standards when it writes all the track files to disk.
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Translation Projects: Xak 3, Ys 4, Ys 1&2 Complete
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Tomaitheous
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Joined: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 306
Location: Tucson
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:19 am Post subject: |
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That's awesome! It would definitely help out with distro of graphics hacks too!
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dmichel
Admin
Joined: 04 Apr 2002
Posts: 1166
Location: France
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:14 am Post subject: |
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Yes, I remember about the ASPI stuff now, this sounds cool, this is true that making good PCE dumps was not an easy task. Nice project!
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David Michel |
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sideshow
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Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 137
Location: Southern California
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| Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:48 am Post subject: |
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Playing Ys Book I and II (TG16) on my PSP. That thought makes my mangina tingle.  |
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Squaresoft74
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 366
Location: France
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| Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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Glad to see the board back up !
Looks like a nice incoming tool NightWolve.
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OmegaDL50
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Joined: 13 Jun 2003
Posts: 22
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - USA
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| It's nice to see the forums are up and about again, thanks for fixing them. |
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