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[Web] CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll resultsANN.lu
Posted on 25-Jun-2003 05:17 GMT by Kieron Wilkinson8 comments
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Results to the CAPS poll are now on the website, along with the decision, and the reasons behind it. http://www.caps-project.org
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 1 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Elwood on 25-Jun-2003 07:14 GMT
What is the need for this ? Did you try Back To The Roots ?
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 2 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by reflect on 25-Jun-2003 07:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Elwood):
the reason for CAPS was on the site, last time I checked. They had a good explanation there which made sense, atleast to me.
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 3 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Gareth Knight on 25-Jun-2003 07:27 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Elwood):
BTTR and CAPS have different goals. Back to the Roots aim is to gain permission to legally distribute games. CAPS goal is to preserve game content in its original form by introducing quality control into the dumping process.
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 4 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Oliver on 25-Jun-2003 08:16 GMT
CAPS is confusing, I get the general idea that they want to save ORIGINAL games as oposed to cracked stuff.

However the web site just confuses me, I think the site assumes you know to much already. I mean where do I get the CAPS games from, how do I use them, how do I submit my original games?

It is a good idea, but they would receive more support if people understand what its all about (idiots guide maybe).
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 5 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Kieron Wilkinson on 25-Jun-2003 09:51 GMT
Oliver: Thanks for your input. Your right, and we really should rectify this. In the mean time. You might be interested in the following. Question/Answer (4) I guess this is what you mean we should post on the site? It meant for a future FAQ update, but your right in that we should make something like this more visible.

Let me answer questions anyway.

1) I mean where do I get the CAPS games from?

You get the games released that you contribute. We do not want to expose ourselves legally, so we don't really have any choice but to provide the games to the people that we know own them. Hopefully in the future sites like BTTR and Amiga Sector One and the sites of the original authors will provide them. I have seen most of them floating round the net, but this just depends on the people who contribute them.

Here is the future FAQ entry:

We can't distribute the games since it is, in most cases illegal. It is immoral since it may very well be against the authors wishes and it is irresponsible since it may jepodise the project.

We only give them to:

1) The authors of the game itself
2) Sites with permission to distribute them (BTTR, Amiga Sector One, etc.)
3) The people who dump the games for us, since we know they own the game

Ultimately, this is a technical project - to do what is involved in the insensly complicated task that is preserving original Amiga games, verified, unmodified, and in their original form. This complixity is why this has never been done before. However, we are not a download site - and will never be (unless an author of a game wants us to host their game for them, and even then we may not be able to).

2) How do I use them?

The remastering solution (to write the images back to disk) is not available yet, and so unfortunately, they can only be currently used under emulation. Also unfortunately, the base UAE source does not include the information we provided to run copy protected games. So the WinUAE source (that does contain there enhancements) would have to be ported back to a gcc environment. So basically, you can only currently used the images under WinUAE, though this will change in time (as soon as WinUAE is ported really).

We provide a "plugin" which loads the games. This is currently used by WinUAE but it can be used by anything.

3) How do I submit my original games?

Just email us (contributions@caps-project.orf) and we will take you through the process of verifying your machine is suitable for dumping copy protected media, and give you the tools in order to do it.

4) What is CAPS? (background information on why it all started)

The future FAQ entry:

Q. I don't understand most of the info on your site, can you give me a simple condenced rundown of what you actually do?

Yes, most of the info on the site is very technical in nature. After all, it is a complex subject. So lets start at the beginning, when the games were originally produced...

As you probably know, disks for different systems stored their data in different ways called the disk format. This was taken to another level on systems like the Amiga, where the flexible nature of the hardware (actually just a cheap move by Commodore supplying minimal hardware and shifting as much work as possible into "cheap" software) allowed it to not be restricted to any particular format like, for example, the PC is. This also meant that the developers could implement various types of copy protection for things that the Amiga could read, but not write.

The games were bascially all written on commercial mastering machines (duplicators). e.g.. the ones from a company called Trace. They did very acurate and high quality disk mastering. They used a disk image in RAM which was witten to every disk in the disk feeder or "hopper" used to load 50, 100 or more disks depending on the model. The mastering machines were controlled by a Unix workstation, equiped with some specialised software implementing a disk structure description language called "Freeform", something developed by Magnetic Designs Inc. This basically allowed the duplicator company to describe any disk format, implement custom ones, or even accept Freeform scripts from copy protection companies (so Rob Northen would have written a Freeform script for his Copylock protection, and supplied it to the duplicator in order to write the Copylock disks. Even AmigaDOS has a Freeform script. We actually got sent this, so you can have a look if interested, or look at the implementation we had already in one of the WIP's.

Why was all this needed? Basically, you need to know <b>how</b> to write the disk in order to write whatever data you want to write. This is heavy "Magnetic Recording Theory" stuff, and is very complicated, but it needed to be done for CAPS to be possible! Freeform provides this "description" of how to write the disks. It can also specify how to verify what you have written to be correct. So any integrity information is described by the script so the duplication machine can verify it on the second pass.

Nothing has changed. This is still how you have to write disks with copy protection and custom formats. So part of what we have done is something similar, except instead of writing the disk, we hold all the information a the IPF file. The IPF release files are bascially a combination of both the disk data and <b>how</b> this data is stored - which will be used when it comes to master the images back to disk. We use a language similar to freeform (though mostly by co-incedence, we found an example of Freeform quite late in the process, though it was still very useful) and every disk dumped has its format described by our language. Of course, there were not as many of these formats as people think, they were just used in slightly different ways, something which both freeform and our language handle automatically. We think we probably know anout 95% of all disk formats used on the Amiga now. Really not a huge number lef to do. - By the way, we have only added formats so far that we can verify are 100% correct, as we check the game and duplicator integity (duplicator integrity info is something the games didn't even use much of the time!)

So basically, we developed dumping tools that can read a disk at a very "low level". This "dump" image is then put into our analyser that automatically detects the disk format if it knows it, check it is unmodified since it was original mastered, and checks any integrity info is correct. The disk image (if it is from a good disk) is then saved our as a "release file" (very different from a dump file) which contains the disk data, how it is stored (and hence how to write it back) and also a few other things for storing copy protection (like how dense the data is at any part of the track). This is the released IPF.
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 6 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Kieron Wilkinson on 25-Jun-2003 09:55 GMT
Sorry, I forgot this bit, if you have not already read above, read this first. It was originally for a spot on Retrogaming Radio, but I don't think it was ever aired...

[
CAPS, The Classic Amiga Preservation Society, has been working for over two years to preserve original Amiga games. It was all started by István Fábián the author of Abandoned Places I & II, now the founder of CAPS in April 2001. He was generally fed up seeing his and other ex-Amiga authors games being cracked, hacked and generally messed up - even including seeing author credits being replaced by things like "cracked by Quartex!". All this to make the games into a form that is not tied to the physical copy protected media.

But not only that, many Amiga game collections are "dying". TDK themselves are quoted to have said that a floppy disk's lifespan is only around 5-10 years, but most Amiga games are older than this! Magnetic media like floppy disks eventually suffer some form of "bit rot", where the particles on the disk loose their charge and floppy drive hardware can no longer determine if a bit was a 0 or a 1.

The only way people have been able to "repair" their disks was to replace it with a "cracked" copy, which may have had bugs introduced while removing the protection, but almost all have "intros" added by the cracking group, this really ditracts from the game and is not really in the spirit of preservation.

Is anybody really surprised when old Amiga games companies will not let their games be freely download from the net? They are damaged goods!

CAPS wants to preserve the originals for the future. This may be a time when the Amiga games companies of old, allow them to be distributed, or it could be when the copyright runs out. Either way, if CAPS get's it's way - at least we all will have the choice when the time comes.

So, to get to the point, CAPS have now developed the technology to read *any* protection or disk format that has been found by them so far, and they have developed a "abstract digital recording medium", the "Interchangable Preservation Format", or IPF, to allow these disks to be preserved how they were always meant to be found: guaranteed unmodified from the original mastering and error free. They come complete with all the copy protection that existed on the physical disk. In fact, the technology is not really tied to the Amiga, in the future it could be used to preserveother systems games, like PC, Atari ST, Mac, or even C64 disks!

The aim of CAPS is to preserve every single Amiga game that can be found. They themselves own several thousand games, and the thought of not being able to play them in the future is what really drives them.

Now the time has come to actually releasing the games that have been contributed by CAPS and by others to the community. Support for the images has been added to WinUAE (http://www.winuae.net), and CAPS have started working on a "re-mastering" solution to write the images back to disk for those people who would like to fix originals that have already suffered bit rot.

However, no images will be available from the website, as CAPS are only providing the technology and are not not an Amiga games download site. The only game available to download is Abandoned Places 2 - because the author is the founder of CAPS and has provided it to the community for free. Hopefully people who own the games will be able to get hold of them, and the legal Amiga games websites can host whatever games they they have permission for.

So, if you happen to have any original Amiga games and are willing to help, why not contact CAPS so they can provide you will the tools to preserve your Amiga games for the future!
]
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 7 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Oliver on 25-Jun-2003 10:59 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Kieron Wilkinson):
Thats much better, it all makes sense now :-)

I imagine dumping the games is quite time consuming, when I have a bit of time I will ask for the tools (I am busy playing with my A1 at the moment).

Thanks!
CAPS -The Classic Amiga Preservation Society posts poll results : Comment 8 of 8ANN.lu
Posted by Kieron Wilkinson on 25-Jun-2003 12:11 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Oliver):
No fair! :)

Yes, dumping disks can be quite time consuming, but it depends on how many disks you have :) and your setup. My system dumps most disks in around 3-5 minutes, but I have never tried to time it...

But anyway, no rush, we will be around for quite some time... :)
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