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EDIT: With paypal fee's taken into account the total left to fund is: £1,125.38 it's costing roughly 5% each transaction.
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Well that didn't last long.. After seeing what we released recently we were given first dibs on the largest haul of SEGA Saturn discs ever listed for sale, least with the chance to get all released in one go.

While I personally don't want to deal with more dev stuff or group buys, this one is easy to manage due to no reshipping. Myself and OG's staff, and a select group of users decided this was too important to turn down.

To date under 80 SEGA Saturn prototypes have been dumped and released. (We released 13 earlier this month.) If this goes to plan we will increase this to over 150 released SEGA Saturn prototypes.

This lot contains 78 discs, one is an xbox disc, one or two maybe PS1? all we know is there's some high profile games. Some of these may have released in the past, but haven't been dumped to redump.org standards meaning all will require redumping. (Which depends if they're good, due to age.)

All will be dumped with Plextor CD drives meaning higher chances of saving any bad sectors on the disc. Most drives blank out data or insert random data in place when bad sectors are found.

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The discs are sold as is due to age. I guess being too busy to close the museum side to OG yet was a bonus now, which'll mean by UK law all discs will remain in a UK based museum or charity going forward, meaning they won't be lost to time. Due to how we're setup the law means if OG ever died, any items under ownership would be transfered to another UK museum/charity with similar interests. We're unable to sell, or give away anything donated minus data.

Just a few of the titles in this lot, Tomb Raider, Gex, Golden Axe Duel, Guardian Heroes, Duke Nukem, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, Panzer Dragoon Orta (XBOX), MK Trilogy, Quake, SEGA Rally, Werewolf, Theme Park, Virtua Cop 2, Mystaria: The Realms of Lore.

Some of these are extremely early, Virtua Fighter 2 is marked as 30% completed, While many are 60%, 65%, 70%, 75% complete.

While our last buy took time, these are already UK side and ready to be driven over once Covid restrictions are lifted here. If this doesn't happen they'll be delivered next day via courier with insurance.

On our last lot, the average disc price was £43.69 to £109.22 per disc (converted from USD at todays rates), this lot has a set cost of £4500. This works out at £57.69 per disc. Atleast two in the lot are unreleased games, possibly others as we have no means to check region until dumped. (These appear to be NTSC.)

We've already had 2 donations upfront, meaning this is already 7% funded. Meaning it's now less than the total.

We have Plextor's ready to dump for the SEGA Saturn, And a Kreon drive ready for the xbox disc.

You can see some of our past group buys/releases below,
https://builddb.obscuregamers.com/Data_Design_Interactive_Lot (Still being worked on via Discord)
https://builddb.obscuregamers.com/Steven_Pattullo_Commodore_Lot (To be released later on)


All donations are via Paypal, Which is via Ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/obscuregamers or via our inbuilt donation system.

FAQ

What is the total?
It's £4500.

Can I buy anything for myself?
The discs will be donated to a museum if our company side closes. UK law prevents us selling due to the nature of our setup. This group buy is for data only, to be released once all is dumped/scanned.

Can I be credited in the release if I donate?
Yes you can, We will need your forum name or Discord ID for this please.

What if you don't reach the target?
Donations will be refunded to the paypal account they came from if no deal can be made with the seller.
 
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Return to: Preservation News
Regarding the cd drive, why do you specifically need only and only the 4012? Last time I checked there were a dozen or so Plextor models, half of which were SATA and some which were external (most of the 7xx line barring a few rebrands, including all the sata and usb/fireware models). Or did redump devolve to the point where only specific IDE drives can be used for dumping "accurately" now?

With that said I can get a W4012TA relatively cheap and assist in dumping if necessary (I'm in the EU, which could make a not insignificant difference with customs now). Segafreak and drx can vouch for me and I did stuff for darkwater, tosec and trurip, although most of that was almost a decade ago and I don't remember what nick I used back then.
For best CD dumps (not counting DVD_ the 4012 series is the best in the world. No other drives can read bad/damaged/old discs as well as these. We have a PX-W5224A which is classed as the second best mind you. If we get stuck I'll discuss this with the staff thank you.
Fair enough, but it could get tedious to do for dozens of dumps. Anyhow @WD, I'm offering my services if you ever need to automate tedious repetitive tasks, especially if it involves cd images.
Thank you, I spoke to EHW of HiddenPalace and it seems they have a custom tool to do this. I did offer them the chance to compare dumps too once funded.
I have a collection of drives, several plextors. All obtained for their various strengths. Feel free to hit me up if needed.
It appears from the chat we had earlier that we both have the PX-W5224A which is classed as second best according to redump.
Is there any chance of this collection having source code included in it?
That I'm afriad I can't say yes or no to this, We'd need to dump all discs first and compare. Sometimes source/earlier builds are used as padding/dummy data within images. We have a few that do listed here, https://builddb.obscuregamers.com/Dummy_Files just notied three dirty dwarves is missing from list. Will add that in.
 
Small update, we have reached £3,424.65 (total includes paypal fee's that have been charged to us) of the £4200 needed to be raised.

The discs on spindles have been resleeved for better protection.

This isn't all the discs mind you, just those that were on the spindles. ;)

Thank you ever so much to all those that have helped us!

Here's some poorly cropped images of the discs from the spindles.

@Merlin has donated a Plextor PX-4012TA to us kindly too! Thank you Merlin! Means alot.

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What really interests me is the disc labeled E0 - D0. It might be a proto of enemy zero.
I believe it is.
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We reached £3,857.38 earlier, this is the total once paypal takes fee's. only £342.62 left out of the total of £4200 (We had a £300 off record donation at the start meaning it wasn't actually £4500 :p). The Ko-Fi total doesn't include what paypal takes annoyingly.

Merlin should be shipping the new Plextor later this week, if dumps go well I should be able to dump 2 discs a time, this depends if any discs are bad or not or more tricky.

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PS, I converted the USD totals to GBP why USD is 0.

I've slowly been adding info to: https://builddb.obscuregamers.com/OG_Saturn_Buy_2021
 
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Are we there yet?

Nope, but we're at 96% as per the Ko-Fi page.

Just £196.46 left to raise 👀, this is whats left from the total with paypal fee's taken. While it was displayed as £4500 there was a private £300 donation which was tallied into the Ko-Fi total at launch meaning it was really £4200.

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I've managed to fix the on site totals to reflect Ko-Fi's too. So that's why the totals changed.
 
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Well it's too late for me to plug stuff on stream, but if anyone spots some code for me to play with once the discs are dumped, I'd appreciate if someone could poke me somehow with which image to look in to.
 
Congrats, everyone!
Which museum are the discs going to?
At this time, the intention is to bring back OG's museum side once taxes are sorted. The idea is to split the forums away from museum side, I focus on the offline aspects/fundraising and the discs get saved/put on display. Hoping with covid restriction lifting I can get people to volunteer towards the offline side. More will be brought up soon on this once plans are in better motion. OG's museum/company side is still active which is how we could do this. Seeing as nobody will let me leave, I'll embrace the offline sides.

Well it's too late for me to plug stuff on stream, but if anyone spots some code for me to play with once the discs are dumped, I'd appreciate if someone could poke me somehow with which image to look in to.
It's highly possible source etc may reside on these discs. A few Saturn discs in the past have had full source code laying around.

Good times!
Hopfully more to come too 🤐
 
At this time, the intention is to bring back OG's museum side once taxes are sorted. The idea is to split the forums away from museum side, I focus on the offline aspects/fundraising and the discs get saved/put on display. Hoping with covid restriction lifting I can get people to volunteer towards the offline side. More will be brought up soon on this once plans are in better motion. OG's museum/company side is still active which is how we could do this. Seeing as nobody will let me leave, I'll embrace the offline sides.


It's highly possible source etc may reside on these discs. A few Saturn discs in the past have had full source code laying around.


Hopfully more to come too 🤐
Oh? So you are considering opening a physical prototype museum? Will that be financially supported by organizations?
If more info like this will be released later that's ok.
 
Oh? So you are considering opening a physical prototype museum? Will that be financially supported by organizations?
If more info like this will be released later that's ok.
We're technically already one, my leaving and months of down time meant I was sorting other issues and forgot to cancel it. We're an LTD (CIC would have been better but we couldn't do at the time, and safer.) the LTD allows us to do museum related stuff, archiving, library based activities. It just never fully launched. I need to pay taxes to keep in good status only major issue. (And an accountant 😂)

Right now, The plan is to keep OG.com as is, but launch a secondary site which'll cover that. Funding would be based on donations/grants which as a CIC would be better. The original plan was to be a LTD for a year then transfer to a CIC and proceed from there but Covid really got in the way and me "trying" to leave.

The basic plan was to start by getting a small office, some UK based volunteers to help manage what we own/buy/archive, then the forums would handle any data if safe / legal to release and won't cause harm, The rest would be stored until safe.

We have servers ready for that, we have an old HP server with 2x 6 core XEON CPU's, 40GB of ram, as it had bad ram slots but works flawless otherwise. It got beaten in shipping which is why the bad slots. It could be a simple fix but it purrs away, we also have a backblaze 45 bay NAS on standby that just needs a new motherboard/ram to be ready for drives. The existing one is an old I3 first gen based supermicro that only takes 32GB ram. For FREENAS or whatever we use, it'll need least 64GB to be started.

As for a physical museum, this would be the end goal. But due to limited funding it was being done in stages. If we could do this, we'd have stuff on display approved by developers etc. Promote the importance of preservation, the risks of not preserving and so on. There would be areas to research/play approved content if this went ahead also.

@Merlin's donated plextor has arrived. (thank you again btw) so it's now just paying seller and awaiting discs to arrive.
 
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I don't understand jack about that server technicality, but you have a server that will run an online archive where people can browse and read about the prototypes OG has preserved?

I was kinda curious if it was possible to stably fund a physical museum, knowing the nature of prototypes and the scene as a whole atm.
Then you'd probably need more pieces like the SMB3 NES sample cart, Nintendo Playstation, other key games, and dev equipment that would be near impossible to acquire.
And knowing that people also release things on Internet Archive and Hidden Palace directly, would it be possible to weave their releases into the online museum as well? Or else it'll be three dogs fighting over the same bone, kinda.
 
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I don't understand jack about that server technicality, but you have a server that will run an online archive where people can browse and read about the prototypes OG has preserved?

I was kinda curious if it was possible to stably fund a physical museum, knowing the nature of prototypes and the scene as a whole atm.
Then you'd probably need more pieces like the SMB3 NES sample cart, Nintendo Playstation, other key games, and dev equipment that would be near impossible to acquire.
And knowing that people also release things on Internet Archive and Hidden Palace directly, would it be possible to weave their releases into the online museum as well? Or else it'll be three dogs fighting over the same bone, kinda.
Oh this would be for internal usage, offering hosted would be tricky unless a developer gives it's blessing to that. Similar to volition/saints row psp.

It is very possible, although if anything we'd have to cover gaming in general, not just developer. We do have some rare'ish bits already such as the "FakeSpace" that needs dumping whenever a means pops up. Right now it's in a 30KG pelican case. This is the only one known to exist for instance and came from a former developer who sadly passed away. While it's missing the VR goggles it should have enough information to make clones pretty easy.

Releases would still be handled by OG's forum side if it goes to plan. Ideally we'd focus on what we own/have over whats public. Although we can always show bits if a means to get approval was found.

You do bring up one of my concerns, and that there is too many groups as is. People keep creating them thinking they know best, which we for sure cannot know everything or get right. What it does is leads to higher prices, fighting over same stuff, raising prices, making history harder to secure for everybody, in most cases it's lost.. Copyright law limits much what we do as is, but we try to share everything we can that won't cause harm to people.

In 2012, You could pick a proto disc up on ebay for $5, now it's $100 or more. Sellers have gotten greedy thinking they have "holy grails" which while rare a review/preview build is often mass produced to magazines/press. Sometimes its rare for sure. But it just adds to the never ending issues for museums.

Sonic 1 that released last year, it sold in a faulty lot on eBay for under £30GBP. The person sold it for like $13,000 in the end? Forgot total offhand.

The other risk is "collectors" that buy and then sit on stuff for 20 years and then realise their stuff is dead etc. Stuff should be dumped asap, and if you don't have the means to dump then you shouldn't really buy.

There's also a growing market of fakes. This guy named dev-mod on ebay has been exposed selling/making fakes tons of times now. His latest masterpiece being an N64 kit with a DVD-RW drive, Wifi, HDMI and Firewire. This is why we cannot release the means to create "PC" "Wii" drives as they can write/burn discs and seeing as under 50 Wii builds have leaked it's more than likely someone will burn a fake. With thanks to Gerbilsoft Wii RVT-H kits could be dumped, not even 8 months after this was released roms of released stuff were stuck on kits and sold as original.

All this just adds to growing worries of a real museum. We'd also need staff that know what they're doing etc.

I do feel it's possible and I do feel there is a market for a dedicated museum which covers more dev. Just funding holds this back. OG's spent over £15,000 since 2020 on stuff to share/preserve. Even now there's another deal lined up for stuff to release.
 
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If this thread is getting out of hand just move it. I also have other, unrelated questions to ask. :)

Ok. So the server is not for the website but for hosting all the builds being released? Do some of the donators require this?

Wow. Never heard of FakeSpace. Interesting! That will definitely be a historical piece if VR finally takes off.

With OG, IA, and HP, and probably others, operating in the same field, it scatters the effort and it's very confusing.
Are OG, IA, and HP working together somehow, or are the builds OG acquire not being released on HP etc?

Personally, I feel like the public's perception of OG is still being AG's little brother and the dev/proto knowledge center, while HP is becoming the new HUB for prototypes, and IA being a more expansive, established, and respected platform, but not very organized nor user-friendly.
Each platform has its pros and cons so people don't turn to one place for each of their needs or inquires... And it's hurting the whole process just as much as collectors.

This would be ideal for the eventual digital, especially physical museum - but who would that be? To not offend anyone I bet that would result in all three platforms offering more or less the same, which in turn could offend one platform who felt it was the first one out...

I started collecting around 2008 and neither cart nor disc protos were $5. DreamTR, MrMark etc., used to charge thousands. Disc-based prototypes were cheaper, but even BuyAtari charged a premium for lots that he sold.
Good deals are still out there, as you just experienced with the Saturn discs. I would've paid more than OG's average for a few of those discs f.ex.
The main reason why the prices are up is the rich people, influencers, etc., pushing what was a hobby over to becoming a market for investing during the turbulent times in the western world. But prototypes will never reach the prices of retail games because they're not based on nostalgia.
Regarding the Sonic proto - I don't judge him. He won one of life's lotteries and got it for cheap. I would have sold it for every penny it's worth myself.
This is basically how I can keep collecting these days. Buy to sell, to buy.

This is absolutely a problem and is one of the reasons I keep a couple cards close to my chest. I've been burned many times and I can only imagine how many counterfeits are out there... With today's tech, if you have an eye for protos, you can make believable fakes very easily.
Especially scary knowing all the blank dev format being sold, be it PS1 master discs, GB dev carts (which I know have been used excessively to create counterfeit Pokemon distribution carts) and so on...
 
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