Sorry for slightly hijacking this thread, but...
I was recently thinking about all those different "good" dump lists before (TOSEC, No-Intro, Redump, whatever) and wondered wether it would be possible to unify them into one big ultimate "list of all known dumps". I actually spent some time thinking about this. The ideas are:
- one huge database with entries for all ROMs (identified via different/multiple CRCs), CHDs, Tapes, floppy images, whatever
- references to where this particular dump comes from (so that it can be tracked back or cross-checked)
- metadata added to the dumps (i.e. chip type, "byteswapped" flags, you-name-it)
- online "perma-link" style references (via either SHA/CRC checksum or unique ID) which quickly shows you something like "this is a good dump according to TOSEC" or "this was a good dump in MAME 0.77 but it was redumped and replaced by [this dump]" etc.
- cross-links to other information sources for each game (MAWS, LemonAmiga, ...)
- possibility to export the db to various formats (dat, hsi, xml,...)
- import tools to (manually/semi-automatically) import dump lists from various sources
- most importantly: completely open database and tools
The idea is not to abolish the various "good-lists" but to create a superset which can be used as an online reference tool, but across all dumping groups and emulation systems.
Also, the database would not only contain "known good dumps" but also old dumps that have been replaced, known-bad dumps (with information what is broken), and hacked/cracked/trained versions (as long as data on those exist), so that you can identify almost every file through it.
Anyone ever thought about something like this? Feasible? Helpful? Or just helping the pirates?
As I said I already thought a lot about this and I even wrote up some sort of braindump that I could clean up and post somewhere if anyone's interested.
-Darkstar