Hello,
I don't know whether you'll still recall my first posting into this
mailing list. It was kind of a self-introduction to the MSX list. I
mentioned there that I used to play with my MSX1 Philips VG-8020,
and that now (then) that I had discovered about MSX emulation was
becoming an MSX-junkie. :) BTW, my first and only cartridge was
"Loderunner" !!!! I still love that game. I made that posting by
mid-november.
Well, during these weeks I have posted some messages and found that
people here do help each other when in doubt, also i've been able to
dowload real nice pieces of software from different MSX sites.
But this wasn't being fair. I was thinking: The MSX community has done
precious things expecting not to make any profit out of it (well, some
do want to), just to keep MSX up 'n' kickin'. So I asked myself what
could I do in exchange for the community and here is my answer:
I've been working pretty hard on making an MSX software (by now, games)
database. But I wanted it cooler, so I contacted a guy, Martijn, in The
Netherlands whom we all should be thankful to for his kind and not-profit
interest and devotion, and talked to him about making the database
Internet-available, so that other MSX-freaks could just benefit from
having a valuable reference source whenever they wanted to look for
some piece of software. Martijn kindly offered himself and his script
on behalf of the MSX community, and with some modifications on the script,
now, the database can be reached and queried online.
We also should be thankful both to Egor G. Voznessenski and Sean Young
who have kindly offered themselves to provide me with HD space where I
can store the database and the cgi. If it weren't for you two, this would
be pretty much of a dream by now.
The database is called MSX ROMS INTERNET DATABASE.
Every record in it has the following fields:
ROM: name of the rom
SYSTEM: msx1, 2, 2+ or turbo-r
TYPE: cartridge, tape, disk (accounts for the source it was ported from)
TITLE: any doubt?
SIZE: "
COMPANY: "
YEAR: "
And any of that fields can be queried. What's more, there's an ANY
search criteria option which will look for your search string in ANY field,
not just one single field.
The database is now in version 2.0 (prior versions were beta) and is
currently storing 1,100 records!! which should be a pretty good starting
point, isn't it?
Data has been compiled from different sources, be it web or ftp sites,
however much data comes from mayor sites like komkon, funet, Sean Young's
Konami site and a few other site I may have forgotten. Hey! Don't get mad
at my just because I didn't cite your site! :)
As you can imagine, NOT every record has all of its fields filled in, since
I haven't been able to collect all of that data. Sorry, I am not GOD. :)
And here comes what probably should be a good point of debate in the
list: I have found, and you all certainly too, that the same game has
different filenames so it happens that when you're downloading one, you're
not positive on whether you haven't got that game already on your HD.
So to make a little bit of order out ot this caos I have named the ROMS
according to a logical principle by means of which no single can game can
have two filenames, and two similar games do have different filenames.
To put it clear: I have registered 5 different Golf games. It happens that
when I was collecting the data, nearly all of this golf games had the very
same filename, golf.rom, which caused confusion since I didn't know whether
these games were all the same, or they belonged to different companies,
as a result, all I had was TOTAL CONFUSION.
That is why I decided to give each game a definitive independent filename
so that I and the MSX community by default, would have no more confusion.
Look at this example, it speaks for itself.
C-GOLF.ROM CARTRIDGE CASIO WORLDOPEN BORAM 86
GOLF.ROM MSX1 CARTRIDGE GOLF 16 KONAMI 0
KGOLF.LZH MSX1 TAPE Konami's Golf 0
MINIGOLF.ROM CARTRIDGE MINIGOLF 0 NAMCOT 85
QGOLF.LZH MSX1 TAPE Queen's Golf 0
The same happened with billiard games and several many other:
BILLIARD.LZH MSX1 TAPE Computer Billiards
0
BILLIARD.ROM MSX1 CARTRIDGE BILLIARDS 8 KONAMI
0
CBILLIAR.ROM CARTRIDGE COMPUTER BILLIARDS 8 KONAMI,
SONY 83
For the sake easyness I've followed the "guidelines" that the mayor
MSX soft sites have stablished for their filenames in the index.txt files,
therefore, many filenames have not been changed at all, only those who
needed it.
So this database has also been set up for the sake of clarity amongst
the MSX community.
I've already emailed the guys in charge at funet, komkon, and Sean telling
them about this database, and asking them to mail me whenever they add a
piece of software to their sites so that the database doesn't get old
and outdated (something we all would hate).
By the time of this writing, the database only stores games. In future
versions, new databases for demos, programming, utils, etc. could be
added. I need feedback from you users to know what your thoughts are
about this point either personally or in a thread in the mailing list.
However a few questions remain to be asked now and which imply your
collaboration in some degree.
1.- I've been working hard to collect the data and sort it
(hell! do _I_ know!) :) but as you can have guessed, not every record
has the data for all of its fields, so I ask you that whenever you
make a search and find that there's some data missing and you know which
that data is, please email me so that I can update the database. What's
more, I have included a fill-out form in the main webpage so as to make
it even easier for you to communicate any news. Rewriting Kennedy: "Ask
not what the MSX database can do for you, ask what you can do for the
MSX database." :)
2.- Do you think it would be a good idea to ask the MSX soft site
mainteiners to modify (only where needed!) the filenames so that we could
set up a bit of order out of this caos and give more coherence to the
many different programs available? I do think that would be great, but
I just can't go ask them, I need to know what YOU think, then if we
reached an agreement we could ask them. And now quoting Armstrong: "That's
one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind". Well, that
_would_ be...
3.- I haven't had the time to visit EVERY MSX site on the web, so if you
have a game and you find it is not registered in the database, please
let me know about it and send me that info, so that I can update it.
Proposals to improve the database in a (near) future are more than
welcomed. Remember that this database belongs to the community and has
been conceived with that purpose. I just will try to keep some order in it.
So that was it. I hope this my share of contribution to the MSX community
is worth the efforts invested in.
Sincerely to you all,
Manuel Soler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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