The package was destroyed. The preservation project is now truly dead.
EDIT: Smarthuman's continued generosity, among other things, means that the preservation project is not quite dead, but really close. Still, the contents of this post below the line hold true.Good news! The games have been located!==================================
Hello, everyone. I'm sorry to bother you all about a problem that isn't even mine (and when I have such little cred here), but this is urgent:
byuu, the author of higan, arranged to have a box of 100 PAL SNES games shipped from Germany to his home for him to scan and preserve, but they have not arrived. It has been more than 45 days as of this writing since it was first sent out from Germany.
This package's estimated value is between $5,000 and $10,000, and it is really important that he receive it so that he can scan the cartridges and send them back to their owner. If the package is lost, byuu will dedicate years of his life reimbursing the owner for every single lost cartridge, he will never receive another package of SNES games again, and SNES preservation will be over permanently. That means the Japanese Super Famicom cartridges will not be preserved, either.
Unfortunately, USPS is incompetent when it counts. byuu filed a missing mail complaint 15 days ago, but to this day, it has been ignored. He has attempted to contact them on
Twitter and
Reddit, but in both cases, USPS employees have refused to lift a finger to help.
We need to raise awareness and get a senior representative of USPS to respond, and byuu's efforts alone are not enough to make that happen, so here I am on NesDev, spreading the word.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to get USPS to do their jobs? byuu has offered a $500 commission to anyone that can help him get his package. If you are unable to contact USPS directly, you can still help; just spread the word to other forums or social media sites you frequent, or write to any media you think might be interested. Even a YouTube video will help.
The full details can be found
on byuu's forums.
USPS is slow. It has only been a week since the last scan. So the package is in the system. Be prepared to wait.
The only difference between this package and Byuu's previous package is that this one had to survive a presidential inauguration, and people protesting a travel ban. Even so, the package did eventually make it to the US, so it really is just a matter of transport at this point.
With something as precious as 100 PAL SNES games though, I can understand Byuu being upset and panicking over a sudden exponential increase in delays, but the answer really could be to just give it more time, even though +35 days is a worrying amount of leeway to give.
Edit: I also like all the people being so quick to conclude that it's been stolen or lost... do you honestly think a bunch of postal workers are going to care about a box of old video games? Also, given the potential for delays due to us changing presidents and stuff, it might be too early to declare it "lost".
Many people have told byuu to wait as well. But he has
an example of a package which hasn't moved in over half a year (which isn't byuu's own package, by the way), and he knows that there are many more that are stuck like that one. If you do trust that it will eventually make it to him, just remember that he's heard it all before, and even if it does, it's possible that he will have started the reimbursement process then.
byuu wrote:
If they had a backlog that big, it would be affecting all customers, and would be national news. Regardless of which case it is, waiting isn't going to do anything. There are endless cases of people reporting this and having packages that never showed up...
And I'm not sure, but I think USPS are strangely selective and/or random about which packages get held up like this. I ordered an NES PowerPak which started shipping no earlier than 2017-01-26 (judging by the modify dates on the included Compact Flash card), and it arrived at my house on
2016-01-30 2017-01-30, or only 4 days at most (but it came from California, not New Jersey). On the other hand, byuu had previously arranged for another set of PAL cartridges prior to this one, and that arrived just fine after 10 days. This one is identical in every way except for the actual games themselves.
EDIT: corrected typo as pointed out by tokumaru.
1. Don't panic yet. Unless the destination is 1/4 mile from the warehouse, it's not likely to arrive on the same day.
2. I've had UPS/Fedex turn around and send things through the post system when I lived in a more rural area. Thus enduring an extra week in transit and no confirmation from them.
The key thing is, If it was lost, it would never be "In transit", it would have disappeared immediately before that. The only possibility is that the delivery vehicle had an accident/ran-out-of-fuel or it was stolen. If it was stolen you'd likely see a "delivered" notification, as nobody is going to steal something off a delivery vehicle unless they planned it.
So I'd probably suggest giving it about 2 weeks and if nothing happens, contact the media about USPS stealing/misplacing a $10,000 video game collection.
(I live in Canada, and it's not unusual to have to wait 5 weeks for items sent from Europe or Asia, but things from the US tend to be a solid 2 weeks max.)
hex_usr wrote:
I ordered an NES PowerPak which started shipping no earlier than 2017-01-26 (judging by the modify dates on the included Compact Flash card), and it arrived at my house on 2016-01-30
I think you got one of those rare time-traveling PowerPaks!
> USPS is slow. It has only been a week since the last scan. So the package is in the system. Be prepared to wait.
Long waits in customs are rare, but they happen.
When
local mail is delayed 8+ days (guaranteed 10+ now that it's Saturday evening), that would be on the nightly news as an emergency.
Everyone's packages would be delayed by that much, not just mine.
Something happened to mine. My package is being singled out and lost somewhere, not being worked on at all. Not being scanned. Not being moved.
Thinking it's going to just suddenly start moving again is truly wishful thinking at this point. I hope it does, but the longer we sit around and ignore it, the more likely this package is to become truly lost.
I'm absolutely blown away at how difficult it is to escalate a case with the USPS.
> even though +35 days
39+ days and counting =(
> do you honestly think a bunch of postal workers are going to care about a box of old video games?
The estimated worth is as high as $10,000. Bullshit like Stadium Events and NWC '90 have made a whole lot of people aware of the insane prices of video games. So yes.
> The key thing is, If it was lost, it would never be "In transit"
"In Transit to Destination" is a fake event. It's added, to the minute, exactly 24 hours after a package has failed to have a single scan in that time frame. The package, if it's not stolen, is still in Jersey City. A "departed from location" event would have appeared if it were in transit for real.
https://www.reddit.com/r/USPS/comments/ ... ere_first/> contact the media about USPS stealing/misplacing a $10,000 video game collection.
Hmm ... actually, that might be a really good idea.
When I went to sell my 725-game US collection, a local news reporter contacted me, wanting to cover the story. I declined, but I can probably dig up his contact info and tell him he can also cover my 1450-game JP collection if he wants to.
byuu wrote:
When I went to sell my 725-game US collection, a local news reporter contacted me, wanting to cover the story.
I remember you made the news in one of Brazil's most famous news portals... They didn't have much to say besides just reporting that you were selling the carts and for how much, though. Anyway, hope you get the package.
Yeah, here's hoping it gets resolved, because I'm curious about what's going on too.
Meh. I've had parcels sit for a couple weeks at the last scanned location then boom it suddenly shows up at my local post office. Of course, it then took them a couple days to deliver to my home.
One Priority Mail package went from CA to VA then back to CA then to me. No reason why it decided to travel to the East Coast. A 2-3 day delivery turns into 2 weeks.
There are some USPS black hole locations. Maybe your package got into one of them.
tokumaru wrote:
I think you got one of those rare time-traveling PowerPaks!
Oops, thanks for pointing out my typo. The year is still new.
Does anyone have a NeoGAF account with new topic creating privileges, by any chance? Someone on ROMHacking.net suggested that it be brought up there, but byuu can't do it because his account is barred from creating new topics for whatever reason (I'm not familiar enough with the site to know why).EDIT:
The SNES preservation project is dead. It's over. byuu's given up.
So did the sender contact DHL? Because there is no contract between the recipient and USPS. Therefore USPS will just ignore the recipient since he is not their customer.
The sender needs to go here:
https://www.dhl.de/en/paket/hilfe-kunde ... ional.htmlAlso every parcel I send from Germany to the US since the beginning of the year was delayed and took twice the normal time.
I was considering double-posting to mark this thread as unread for everyone who read this thread previously, but I was too afraid to do so, as the forum rules don't make any mention of it. Now I don't have to!
byuu wrote
an article to answer the common questions he has received on Reddit and NesDev. Things like why he won't give out his tracking number and all that.
I've already referred ROMHacking.net to this article.It's likely that the sender has already went to that page. Thanks for the link anyway, though.
EDIT: Oh yeah,
this story is on Eurogamer now. Watch out for the comments, though; they're about as toxic as GameFAQs.
EDIT: Clarified what I mean for "double-posting".
Quote:
it's cleared customs. That's what the first 21-day wait was doing. The package goes from DHL to CBP, and it doesn't show up in USPS' systems again until after CBP clears it and hands it to one of their central hubs.
I've had packages go through customs when both departing the source country and entering the destination (which seems weird to me, but it clearly happens). Here's a recent example going from Canada to Russia (postal code obscured)
Byuu, are you 100% sure this isn't what's happening?
Also, a very quick google search for the USPS sorting facility turned up this 2015 thread on the Steve Hoffman forums. A few people complaining about unexplained delays ranging from 7-10 days to several weeks.
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/w ... ty.432415/Personally, I'd give it more time. It's only been 7 business days since the last update. To be honest that's probably why USPS hasn't given your missing mail claim all that much attention yet:
their website says "
If after 7 business days, your mail or package hasn’t arrived, submit a Missing Mail Search Request...". (I'm presuming they mean 7 business days without a tracking update.)
EDIT: Also, hex_usr, your thread title is pretty misleading. The tracking info screenshot you've posted shows that the package has only been in USPS's possession since February 3 2017. I'm not one to normally apologize for postal services (I've had PLENTY of not-so-great experiences with them in the past) but it's not the USPS's fault that the package took nearly a month before it even got to them.
byuu's heard so many "just wait" suggestions that it's gotten old for him.
byuu wrote:
It is my belief that the package has either been lost or stolen, as the delay is beyond reason. Of course, I can never prove this, and I have heard stories of people receiving packages six months later. But I am not going to hold out false hope for something that is unlikely to occur. Nor do I want to sit around and wait — the longer nothing happens, the more likely it will end up lost forever.
====================
jmr wrote:
Also, hex_usr, your thread title is pretty misleading.
I based it on byuu's wording and never bothered to change the thread title after byuu declared that the SNES preservation project is dead. I think I'll change it, actually.
Sorry, it's my fault on the title.
I did declare the project dead once the package was lost.
It was an utter shock to me that the sender was still willing to send the rest of the games. I know for damn sure that if I sent someone 100 games and lost them, that I would not be sending any more.
It was my fault for not waiting for his reply, and for that I am sorry.
But I still have a major problem: how to get the rest of the games over here. And no, I can't afford to go live in Germany for a few months, sorry.
> byuu's heard so many "just wait" suggestions that it's gotten old for him.
The thing with waiting is ... if it actually was stolen, then every day we wait is more of a chance for any CCTV footage to get recycled, for a package put into an "undeliverable" pile to go to public auction, etc.
This is priority mail with an 8-14 day window for delivery. We're on day 40 now. It may arrive tomorrow. It may arrive six months from now. It may never arrive. I'm operating under the latter assumption until I have reason to do otherwise.
If I'm wrong, great. I'll owe the whole world an apology for wasting their time. I can live with that.
byuu wrote:
This is priority mail with an 8-14 day window for delivery. We're on day 40 now.
In my experience, the quoted delivery windows have fine print that says something to the effect that it's only an estimate and doesn't factor in customs delays and so forth. Here's DHL's:
Quote:
Transit times are indicative. Your final transit time may differ based on the actual pick up time, service requested, characteristics of the shipment tendered, and/or regulatory clearance requirements. DHL Express has no liability or responsibility for differences between the indicative and the actual transit time.
Your package took ~21 days in customs. Blaming USPS for missing the delivery window is like blaming the chef at a restaurant for your dinner being late when the waiter took 40 minutes to check in your order (I spent a long time waiting at a restaurant tonight, so this example was pretty fresh in my mind.
)
I'm not saying you're not in the right to be worried about such a valuable package taking so long. I deal with international shipments a lot (I buy a lot of records - I just got a package from Germany myself). Lapses in tracking info seems to come with the territory, and just because one shipment took 10 days doesn't mean the next one always will.
Now that 7+ business days have passed since the last update on the tracking number, I'd say try to open up another lost package ticket with the USPS. Maybe call, if that's an option. In my dealings with Canada Post and UPS, I've generally had better luck getting answers over the phone than by email.
Good luck.
Edit:
byuu wrote:
for a package put into an "undeliverable" pile to go to public auction
wait, is that a thing that actually happens? D: I wonder if that's what happened to the audio mixer I sent to Philippines that supposedly never arrived...
> wait, is that a thing that actually happens?
Yes indeed it is. Happens whenever the shipping label falls of the package or is unreadable. Can also happen if sent to a non-existent address, although there's a chance they return those to the original sender (not a guarantee.)
This story has now been picked up by Kotaku. Who also didn't get any answer from USPS.
https://kotaku.com/10k-worth-of-snes-ga ... 1792409527
byuu pointed out an inaccuracy in that article:
Nathan Grayson wrote:
he confesses that he and Smarthuman could’ve done a little more to try and end up safe, rather than sorry. They didn’t split up the deliveries in such a way that they could insure packages for their full value, and Byuu’s kicking himself for that.
byuu never blamed the sender (hereafter known as "Smarthuman") at all. Smarthuman had no choice in which American mail delivery system DHL chose to receive the package.
byuu wrote:
I never put blame on Smarthuman. This was absolutely not his fault at all.
**I** am the one who suggested 100 games per shipment to reduce shipping costs. I thought that was a good amortization of risk (instead of sending all 400 at once), but failed to account for the fact that replacing even 100 games would be a real challenge.
I should have said 50 games at a time. As both Smarthuman and I have explained already, there were reasons we couldn't just drop $10,000 of insurance on the package.
This is entirely my fault. All Smarthuman did was trust me with a huge amount of his valuable games. And no matter what, I will get them all back to him, even if I have to rebuy each and every one of them myself.
Also,
here's a Destructoid article.
Yeah, I was really hoping that with some press attention, USPS would get a PR person involved, but ... nope.
So far, I've had four USPS employees who happen to be avid gamers offer to ask around for me, but no one in the Jersey City location has contacted me. Also had no response from the employees yet, been about 4 - 24 hours per person.
What do you guys think we should try next? CNN coverage? change.org petition? :P
byuu wrote:
What do you guys think we should try next? CNN coverage? change.org petition?
How about try not making more of a spectacle out of your lost mail?
Well, the package arrived today.
You guys still think I should've waited longer? :P
I'm sorry this has happened.
byuu wrote:
Well, the package arrived today.
You guys still think I should've waited longer?
How many of the games arrived, or did they just send you the packaging?
From the condition of the box, it looks like it may have sat in water.
Kismet wrote:
How many of the games arrived, or did they just send you the packaging?
From the condition of the box, it looks like it may have sat in water.
From what I read in the other thread that's the entirety of what arrived. No games, no box, just the outer layer of paper with the shipping labels on it.
> I'm sorry this has happened.
Thank you kindly.
> How many of the games arrived, or did they just send you the packaging?
All they sent me was the top of the box. Zero games. Not even the customs form.
> From the condition of the box, it looks like it may have sat in water.
No water damage.
Holy crap, why would they even bother sending you the remains and giving you proof that bad shit happened when they could simply have stalled you forever? It doesn't even make sense. Seeing the aftermath is simply revolting.
Wait.. $5000+ worth of games weighing close to 20 lbs were sent across the atlantic just wrapped in some paper? Or was there a cardboard box that the USPS simply couldn't be bothered to deliver? I'm not saying that the USPS still hasn't screwed up, but if what's shown in the photo is all the packaging there was that seems really careless by the sender.
It was a cardboard box with a paper wrapping, I believe.
Quote:
Wait.. $5000+ worth of games weighing close to 20 lbs were sent across the atlantic just wrapped in some paper?
And the cardboard box inside had both the sender's name and address as well as mine written on it.
Quote:
And the cardboard box inside had both the sender's name and address as well as mine written on it.
Ah. Well, that certainly is suspicious. If they were stolen, that seems like a pretty stupid move by the thief(s). How do you liquidate 100 PAL SNES carts in NTSC land quickly without garnering attention? A pawn shop maybe, but then you'd probably only get a fraction of the market value.
Damn.
I feel bad for giving sympathy to the USPS in my earlier posts. Personally I'm convinced of the whole "MOTHER FUCKING THIEVES" theory (Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - I find it much easier to believe that the USPS is incompetent) but maybe that's just the forgiving Canadian in me.
byuu & Smarthuman, good luck getting the insurance value of those carts; hopefully they don't drag this out longer than it needs to go.
The USPS has certainly
bungled rare things in the past, but this is the most blatantly mishandled and sketchy (on the USPS's part, not yours!) I've seen within these circles. Who knows what will become of the box.
Is sending the cartridge owner the dumper out of the question? I know this has been asked, but it might be worth making that more of a possibility or introducing him to people in that area who can help in order to reduce the chances of this sort of thing happening.
mikejmoffitt wrote:
Is sending the cartridge owner the dumper out of the question?
It's one of a kind and a bit more sophisticated than your garden variety Retrode.
My unique dumping hardware was made for me by defparam, a talented electrical engineer. He is currently working on an easier to design version that we can hopefully distribute to other people in the future.
Quote:
I feel bad for giving sympathy to the USPS in my earlier posts. Personally I'm convinced of the whole "MOTHER FUCKING THIEVES" theory (Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - I find it much easier to believe that the USPS is incompetent) but maybe that's just the forgiving Canadian in me.
I'm an angry, cynical bastard. And I went off in a fit of rage as soon as I opened up their envelope. I was expecting a customs duty form, which I was happy to pay just to get my package. When I found that torn letter, I could barely contain my anger.
It was very unprofessional of me to jump right into accusations of theft. I do still believe that this is the more likely scenario, because I am an unrelenting pessimist. Life has spent the past 34 years beating every last ounce of optimism out of me, you see. But yes, I have no proof. Just a feeling. Just like the feeling I had that there was a serious problem with the package when everyone was telling me to wait. And as always, I hope I'm wrong and I will publicly prostrate myself if I am.
But regardless, I shouldn't have acted that way. I apologize to everyone for that.
Quote:
Is sending the cartridge owner the dumper out of the question?
Even once defparam has them available for sale, the donor is disabled. I am not inquiring as to the nature of the disability, because it's none of my business. So no, it would be out of the question in this case to ask him to put in 400 hours of labor.
I will ultimately welcome as many people that want to perform their own cartridge dumps as possible. All the same, I also want to dump as many cartridges myself as I can. Maybe that's selfish, but the more verifications, the better, right?
I've gotten this letter before, exactly the same. Granted it was much less expensive, only $60 of magic cards. But at least then they included the cards, with wholes burnt completely through them. Pretty blatant that there's no remains at all, doesn't look at all like "normal machine processing". Whole situation is really messed up, my condolences.
byuu wrote:
It was very unprofessional of me to jump right into accusations of theft.
To be honest, I was kinda worried to see articles being published on the internet with "$10,000" in the headline when things seemed to be still up in the air to me. It felt like if there was still a chance it would get through at that point, suddenly putting out this info about the value might encourage theft, or alternatively might signal that its undeclared value was a customs violation and get it seized.
Probably in the end the damage was already done by the time those articles appeared, so maybe it didn't hurt. Perhaps at this point the media attention is good if it helps to get USPS to look into it.
> To be honest, I was kinda worried to see articles being published on the internet with "$10,000" in the headline when things seemed to be still up in the air to me.
Taking a serious look at buying the games again now, I'm starting to suspect I might have underestimated the value.
Mega Man X3 alone, loose cart, is selling for $850 right now. There's at least ten super rare carts in that box.
> suddenly putting out this info about the value might encourage theft
It was also the only way to get any media attention. "Guy loses $500 package" would not interest anyone. It's the way of the world, and the value claimed is no lie. Easily proven. (except for those claiming the carts never existed.)
> or alternatively might signal that its undeclared value was a customs violation and get it seized.
Possibly, but they are aware that you can't really prove the value of old video games. eBay auction sales don't count. The games are no longer sold, there's no industry for appraisal of value like you have with cars and homes and other high-value items. It's not unreasonable that postal limits on insurance would result in undervaluing of contents.
It was insured as high as it could go by Deutsche Post without any form of proof of value.
> Perhaps at this point the media attention is good if it helps to get USPS to look into it.
That's what I'm telling myself. 20-30% of the comments on it are horrific, and a whole lot of people that don't know me now associate my name with being a scam artist. But I'm used to it, so I'll take the hit if it gives a chance at recovering these games, slim as it may be.
Oh man, I feel really sorry for that.
I've lost a package once, but it was nowere near as valuable as yours, and got very sad.
In your place, I'd be totally insane!!
I think right now we should concentrate in trying to get it's contents (or at least part of it) back, if ever possible.
Let's find who's the guilty later.
I sincerelly hope this project don't dies so early!!
Power to you man!!!
Is it considered a good or a bad thing?
Well, let's see. The sender purposely misrepresented the contents of the package as being food (which is likely why the package contents could not be matched with the separated shipping label. Customs agencies generally have zero sense of humour about this sort of thing). The value of the package was fraudulently declared to be far lower than it actually was so the sender can continue receiving welfare from the German government. Byuu has publicly accused a hypothetical USPS employee of having stolen the package to sell while simultaneously trying to get USPS to help him locate it. All in the name of dumping copyrighted game software to illegally distribute freely online. Now I'll admit that the situation sucks and I wouldn't want to be in byuu's shoes right now, but I can't be the only one who sees how giving this mainstream media attention, not to mention starting a Patreon about it, might not go as well as he'd hope.
>Oh great, it made Slashdot.
Right on time, four days after everyone else saw the story :P
> Is it considered a good or a bad thing?
About fifteen years ago, it'd cause a massive surge in traffic to one's site. Nowadays it doesn't even cause a blip.
The Reddit post on r/emulation sent 152 guests to my forum at the same time, the Slashdot story has it sitting at 15 guests.
Sverker wrote:
All in the name of dumping copyrighted game software to illegally distribute freely online.
He's not doing that.
Quote:
He's not doing that.
Please don't feed the troll. He's been going after me since I pointed out that I personally found "bad (ROM) hacks" tasteless.
The mods don't care that he's now harassing me in unrelated topics in retaliation, so it's best to just add him to your ignore list like I did.
byuu wrote:
The mods don't care that he's now harassing me in unrelated topics in retaliation, so it's best to just add him to your ignore list like I did.
...no I am not? Just because I disagreed with you in one thread doesn't make me a troll.
Sverker wrote:
I disagreed with you
with perhaps with a little more vigor than necessary?
The word troll gets used way to often these days.
Well, when you take a crappy situation and misrepresent it by using personal assumptions and opinions about what you see on the surface in the name of justifying why you don't care about something, what else does it make you? There's dissent and then there's being an asshole, and those two things are different.
I'd bet $1000 that if I hadn't replied to that "bad hacks" thread (and I did so before this guy even showed up there), he wouldn't have said one word in this thread now.
For whatever reason, whenever I criticize something I don't like, even when I clearly express it's my personal opinion and people are welcome to their own opinions, it causes people to just decide to attach vendettas to me, and follow me around anywhere else I go, to stir up shit.
It happened with mudlord when I took a stance favoring accuracy over performance. It happened with I.S.T. when I took a stance on favoring game folders to separate file paths. With squarepusher because I said I don't like it when emulator forks reuse their parent project's name, plus a "better than" suffix, as he did. With Mooglyguy when I stated that I didn't care for notch's DCPU-16 design. And now we have Sverker because I don't like "bad hacks." I don't even know what in the holy fuck I did to kddlb (he won't tell anyone), but now he's openly cheering on Twitter and IRC about my loss of $10,000 worth of games.
I just seem to be a master at attracting people who harbor long-term grudges over relatively unimportant personal opinions.
It boggles my mind, because I've never done this to someone else. If I don't like your opinion, I state it in the relevant thread, and leave it there. The end. These people just take it to psychotic levels of obsession that are truly terrifying.
What is it about the way I say things that makes it so that I can't hold any kind of a strong opinion on anything? If there's some "manner of speaking" I can change, yet still express honestly how I feel about things, I'm all ears. I'd be happy to change and avoid this sort of mess in the future.
It sucks that you lost that amount of money,cheering that you lost that is ridiculous.
byuu wrote:
What is it about the way I say things that makes it so that I can't hold any kind of a strong opinion on anything? If there's some "manner of speaking" I can change, yet still express honestly how I feel about things, I'm all ears. I'd be happy to change and avoid this sort of mess in the future.
That's it though,if you're strongly opinionated you have to expected the same from the opposite side you can't change that it's what makes you...well you.
Wow, this is getting ridiculous.
Drag: I didn't claim anything that hasn't already been posted on the multitude of gaming news sites and forums that are talking about this incident. I'm not trying to prove that I "don't care," wherever you got that impression from, I was saying that this situation could have been handled much better.
Byuu: We had an argument in another thread where you said bad hacks were ruining the good reputation of rom hacking. I countered that rom hacking never had a good reputation to speak of. Then you bowed out of the argument after completely misconstruing what I said and insulting me. Anything beyond that is entirely in your head, including these "harassing messages" that I don't seem to remember making. Sure, I have diminished respect for you after you called me a pro-aids neo nazi (whatever that means) and insulted my intelligence, but who in my shoes wouldn't? Judging by the other examples of "vendettas" you posted it seems like you simply have trouble with having people disagree with you. I don't see how having an argument with you in the past bars me from giving my input on this situation, but if that's the case I'll step away from this thread.
Sverker wrote:
nazi
At the moment you're just posting about personal disputes that happened elsewhere. Your misrepresentation of the situation and aggressive judgement on this matter have not been constructive so far. If you have meaningful input on the future direction of this project I'd suggest you share that rather than bicker about whether or not you have a grudge, and whether what's already happened should have happened differently.
I for one hope this work is completed somehow.
What were the original intentions of Byuu, something like BootGod's site?
Althouth it's not totally correct to accuse someone without proof, I think I understand how pissed off Byuu was/is.
Other than that, that seems the most logic reason to the package disappearing. There's no proof of it right now, but I trust in Byuu's instincts.
Sometimes it's just it what you have to try explain what happened...
But for now I think the focus should be on trying to recover the lost contents of the package (if possible) and find the guilty later.
What I'm going to ask is probably sort of insane, but, could Byuu please try to calm down and think the most clear way possible?
Maybe a lawyer could be of some help in this case.
Hope this problem get solved soon, on the best possible way!
Very similar to BootGod's site, yes.
See:
https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/Specifically, these sections:
* What do you mean by preservation?
* Aren't there already ROM dumps out there of every SNES game?
Well, your site explains everything.
You also seem to be really calm and thinking clearly.
I really can't do anything to help other than wish you the best.
So I'll just keep watching and wishing this ends fine and the preservation continues.
Oh, and thanks for all the great work you've done!
byuu wrote:
https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/
Quote:
The hash is all that is necessary for others to confirm they have legitimate, bit-perfect copies of games.
Quote:
First, there are many revisions of games that are undiscovered.
What if I have a hash that doesn't match any of yours, how can I tell whether I have a bad dump or an undiscovered revision?
> What if I have a hash that doesn't match any of yours, how can I tell whether I have a bad dump or an undiscovered revision?
You can't. That's why I need to dump every known official cartridge for this to truly be successful.
In the mean time, the more carts I dump, the more likely I'll be able to spot good revisions. And the rest will just have to be treated as "may be good, may be bad", and given very permissive, inaccurate memory mappings.
Wow! Great news! The package was found, after being lost in Atlanta for a month. Read all about it:
https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/found-package/
But they are now truly worthless. After that long time, it's more than likely that the thieves (or the post office staff) have replaced all ROMs and memory controllers, or even swapped the PCBs and stickers on all carts. At this point, it's impossible to tell if the carts are still containing any authentic hardware, and it would be almost easier to re-create all PAL games from scratch up. Panic: now!
nocash wrote:
But they are now truly worthless. After that long time, it's more than likely that the thieves (or the post office staff) have replaced all ROMs and memory controllers, or even swapped the PCBs and stickers on all carts. At this point, it's impossible to tell if the carts are still containing any authentic hardware, and it would be almost easier to re-create all PAL games from scratch up. Panic: now!
Fortunately, the 100 copies of Kevin Keegan's Player Manager that they get secretly replaced with would still be worth $10,000, of course.
I'm fairly certain USPS would have just washed their hands of it if it didn't start getting media attention. Persistence paid off though.
That said, I think the next time people send multiple cartridges in the mail internationally, we need to make sure photos of the cart, the parcel and the mailed package are made and tracked.
For example the cart I ordered from Japan took 49 days, registered post, while another cart took 35 days (not registered) and even the SFC arrived sooner than both carts did and they were all bought at the same time from the came country. International mail is a crapshoot.
I'd probably suggest that for more valuable carts, send the cart reader and instructions instead. At least a cart reader can be replaced.
nocash wrote:
it would be almost easier to re-create all PAL games from scratch up.
Is this a veiled request for a SNESdev compo, or just
paranoia?
Glad to hear that this got resolved.
Congratulations on your recovery!
nocash wrote:
But they are now truly worthless. After that long time, it's more than likely that the thieves (or the post office staff) have replaced all ROMs and memory controllers, or even swapped the PCBs and stickers on all carts. At this point, it's impossible to tell if the carts are still containing any authentic hardware, and it would be almost easier to re-create all PAL games from scratch up. Panic: now!
Don't worry, I'm going to be delayering every single IC and capturing electron scan images of each and every chip inside all 100 cartridges.
Hey ... I said I'd return the games to the donor once finished, but I never said they'd still be in working order, did I? ;)
Quote:
I'm fairly certain USPS would have just washed their hands of it if it didn't start getting media attention. Persistence paid off though.
Absolutely. Though I am probably not one to talk after presuming this was most likely theft, when it wasn't :/
byuu wrote:
nocash wrote:
But they are now truly worthless. After that long time, it's more than likely that the thieves (or the post office staff) have replaced all ROMs and memory controllers, or even swapped the PCBs and stickers on all carts. At this point, it's impossible to tell if the carts are still containing any authentic hardware, and it would be almost easier to re-create all PAL games from scratch up. Panic: now!
Don't worry, I'm going to be delayering every single IC and capturing electron scan images of each and every chip inside all 100 cartridges.
Hey ... I said I'd return the games to the donor once finished, but I never said they'd still be in working order, did I?
But what if they stole your authentic set of PAL games and replaced them with
another authentic set of PAL games?! You'd never know if they were stolen or not!
You'd better hire someone to steal them from you, just to be safe. That way you'll know for sure that they were stolen.
Use Amercan Made (tm) cardboard boxes next time.
Certainly not boxes with that wimpy Yurop linerboard.
I lost 120 games before with presumably USPS from an ebay sale about 8 years ago.
But they were all EA sports games and I was only going to use their shells.
Nothing of value was lost.
(except my super affordable flash cart project idea).
Quote:
You'd better hire someone to steal them from you, just to be safe. That way you'll know for sure that they were stolen.
Brilliant! I like the cut of your jib.
Quote:
But they were all EA sports games and I was only going to use their shells.
Too bad you weren't in Columbus, OH six years ago. When I was building the US set, this flea market vendor had something like 600 SNES sports carts for sale for around $1-2 each. I'm certain if you offered to buy them out, they'd halve the price of each one for you.
Probably already been raided by this point. I should have done so myself for back shell swaps. Oh well.
I really want to know the story of how this person got so many SNES sports games. I didn't bother to ask then. But yeah, literally 100% sports. No other games whatsoever.
Revenant wrote:
Fortunately, the 100 copies of Kevin Keegan's Player Manager that they get secretly replaced with would still be worth $10,000, of course.
Probably more than that. Those undead zombie carts from the year 2017 incident might go for $800/pcs. But yeah, I am also slightly concerned about the preservation project ending up with most PAL titles being identified as soccer-clones.
I'm very glad to know everything ended up fine!!
Wouldn't it be a better idea to split the work with some other emu authors?
Does any lives in Germany?
In-Country shipping should be safer and cheaper, and other emu-authors should not have much difficulty with homebrew hardware.
I think it's a nice idea, what do you guys think?