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byuu's SNES preservation project: $10k in EU games missing in post. Update: Found!

Found some answers to some of the questions in this thread:

8f5e01f569bc4ac6a288d7e4f6e00562.png

a6f1afd6f37b49de8d0246700bcb773c.png

Uhh so his equipment is one of a kind but the other guy's collection isn't? :/
 

PrimeBeef

Member
My partner, who is a professional archivist says it would be the latter. This is what a museum curator would do , you don't let it out of your sight.
That or pay for it to be registered. That way every time it was touched it had to be signed for.
 

byuu

Member
Hey everyone, thanks for the concern and well wishes.

I noticed quite a few questions regarding insurance, why I'm doing this, and the like, so I wrote an article to try and answer everyone's questions. I hope this helps.

https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/

If anyone reads the entirety of the article (it's lengthy, sorry), and still has questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Thank you all!
 
Hey everyone, thanks for the concern and well wishes.

I noticed quite a few questions regarding insurance, why I'm doing this, and the like, so I wrote an article to try and answer everyone's questions. I hope this helps.

https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/

If anyone reads the entirety of the article (it's lengthy, sorry), and still has questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Thank you all!

Everyone needs to read this.
I'm very sorry Byuu, I've followed your work, and it fills me with pride when I hear about it, to think there is someone doing this for the good of preserving games perfectly.
I hope you can come to some resolution.
 

calder

Member
As someone who has shipped a lot of extremely expensive equipment all over for work, I feel his pain. Most options will have a maximum insurance amount and, for us, we ended up shipping a lot of medical gear with the max insurance available... which was about 1/3 the value of the stuff lol.

And then there's the stone fact that even if you are able to insure a shipment for the true value it's a coin flip as to whether the shipper will fight a claim. "Oh your crate went missing? Ok, but our records show it was in transit through a third party shipping company (actually a random dude with a truck who drives packages around sometimes for extra cash) at the time, we use them in rural areas as subcontractors for this sort of thing so you'll have to sue them to get your insurance money, they may or may not be bonded even though we told you they were lol"
 

Gestault

Member
They did, but not for the full value.
More details on byuu's forum: https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1525&start=0

This is the stupidest thing I can possibly imagine. If you're sending things this valuable, you insure them at the price it would take to replace them, and you have signature verification tied to you specifically. If there's a service that doesn't allow insurance at the required rate, you find another service that does.

Maybe I'm unaware of some practical limitation, but it doesn't sound like it. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't spring for a courier to deliver them directly.
 
Hey everyone, thanks for the concern and well wishes.

I noticed quite a few questions regarding insurance, why I'm doing this, and the like, so I wrote an article to try and answer everyone's questions. I hope this helps.

https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/

If anyone reads the entirety of the article (it's lengthy, sorry), and still has questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Thank you all!

Hey man! Hope you get things back on track soon. Take your time and do it right though. No need to ruin your life over this.

I hope you saw my post on the last page. Maybe all hope is not lost?

Also, above all else, please find a way to archive the mega man games, they mean a lot. I know that sounds selfish though. I can't help it lol. I'll keep an eye out for any games that you might be looking for.
 

Zarth

Member
Really sad but I used to live in NJ and know people that worked at that processing center. There was a reputation for theft there. They know what packages to steal for low impact which is why they don't take cash or gold which will usually get them caught/fired.

With some lucky it might just be sitting in storage somewhere but if their investigation declared it "lost" you will probably never see it again.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
As someone who has shipped a lot of extremely expensive equipment all over for work, I feel his pain. Most options will have a maximum insurance amount and, for us, we ended up shipping a lot of medical gear with the max insurance available... which was about 1/3 the value of the stuff lol.

And then there's the stone fact that even if you are able to insure a shipment for the true value it's a coin flip as to whether the shipper will fight a claim. "Oh your crate went missing? Ok, but our records show it was in transit through a third party shipping company (actually a random dude with a truck who drives packages around sometimes for extra cash) at the time, we use them in rural areas as subcontractors for this sort of thing so you'll have to sue them to get your insurance money, they may or may not be bonded even though we told you they were lol"


Which is something the USPS never does. They ship and handle all of it's own US deliveries. If it goes overseas then it is contracted out through FedEx(when I was there) or another large service. The rual areas are handled by Rual Route Carriers (RRCs), formerly the Pony Express. They usually drive their own vehicles but are USPS employees and are subjected to the same screening process as every other government civil servant. Although the USPS is no longer technically a government entity, congress still controlls parts of it.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
Really sad but I used to live in NJ and know people that worked at that processing center. There was a reputation for theft there. They know what packages to steal for low impact which is why they don't take cash or gold which will usually get them caught/fired.

With some lucky it might just be sitting in storage somewhere but if their investigation declared it "lost" you will probably never see it again.
If they get caight they get fired. The union can't protect them in that situation. Your claims of theft in processing are true and that is where most of it happens. We had a carrier that would take SI swimsuit issues, Victoria's Secret catalogs and the like. Some of his customers complained about missing little things like that. They investigated. He was stealing fapping material. Mostly nothing of value outside of a couple of magazines. Got fired and ruimed a 20 year career.
 

Zarth

Member
If they get caight they get fired. The union can't protect them in that situation. Your claims of theft in processing are true and that is where most of it happens. We had a carrier that would take SI swimsuit issues, Victoria's Secret catalogs and the like. Some of his customers complained about missing little things like that. They investigated. He was stealing fapping material. Mostly nothing of value outside of a couple of magazines. Got fired and ruimed a 20 year career.

That is really unfortunate someone ruined a career like that. Most of the people I know are kids who are only working at these places because they have lax hiring rules. They probably don't care much about their jobs in the first place.
 

7roject28

Member
Not lost, more like stolen. They take gps coordinates of packages whenever it's dropped off somewhere. Unless it fell off the truck or something.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
I feel so bad for both parties involved. And the USPS wonders why they continue to lose so much money every year.
The USPS loses money because congress passed a bill saying the USPS had to prefund the retierment heath care costs of all of its current employees at the time over a 10 year span that ended this year. They had to pay $5.5B a year. This plus congresa really wont give them autonomy when it comes to their rates. And email.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
That is really unfortunate someone ruined a career like that. Most of the people I know are kids who are only working at these places because they have lax hiring rules. They probably don't care much about their jobs in the first place.
I saw a lot of sad stuff while I was there bit for the most part everone was on the up and up and were paid decently enough to do their job properly.
 

nkarafo

Member
Im assuming these are rare games where there is no roms for. Or are not the original release from the cart.
Just about every game, even the most rare ones, have been dumped. This project was to make sure everything is 100% correct or something like that.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
- Agrees to ship valuable items across the globe
- Uses USPS

Fucking this. I bought Mr Gimmick and that alone warranted DHL in my mind

Vampire's Kiss, Hagane... holy shit

Edit: it seems they used DHL... so how did USPS get hold of it? I expect all DHL parcels to be delivered by a yellow coated person
 

foltzie1

Member
You would think with all of that shipping cost it would have been cheaper to fly to the collection and knock it out in a few days.
 

Mega

Banned
Lots of ignorant responses in this thread, as expected.

For important stuff, UPS is the only way.

USPS is just garbage, and FedEx is not that great either, at least in my experience.

UPS is the absolute worst at handling sensitive packages. They can and very likely will damage stuff that can't withstand being dropped and handed roughly. People who have had combined dozens of CRTs shipped will vouch for FedEx and strongly advise against using UPS. That includes me. UPS has damaged three of mine while FedEx was always perfect.
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
Fucking this. I bought Mr Gimmick and that alone warranted DHL in my mind

Vampire's Kiss, Hagane... holy shit

Edit: it seems they used DHL... so how did USPS get hold of it? I expect all DHL parcels to be delivered by a yellow coated person

DHL is the main carrier of Germany so it's regular mail for them.
When it arrived here it transferred to the US regular mail.

It wasn't sent via DHL premium courier service.
 
What the fuck. This is so sad. What releases (besides unreleased beta's) haven't been dumped yet?

Edit:

Some existing Rom Dumps aren't correct, the point of this project is to make sure there's a 1 for 1 perfect dump of every cart that can be used to assemble a list of checksums for verification (as well as to get have digital copies of the original packaging and manuals for these).


I see, thanks.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
DHL is the main carrier of Germany so it's regular mail for them.
When it arrived here it transferred to the US regular mail.

It wasn't sent via DHL premium courier service.

DHL is the main carrier? Germany really is the best country. Unless, DPD becomes the main carrier in UK. They are truly the best couriers. The best.
 

MLH

Member
Maybe if the news spreads onto social media these lost games can be found again.
Like when ebay didn't give a fuck about a member who got scammed by a lying buyer, took it to social media and ebay quickly changed their tone.

Taking this to social media might make USPS get off their arse and sort this properly. Seems pretty hard to loose 100 SNES games, a rather large package, they would know who would has handled it, when it was last scanned (what location, time etc) maybe even review CCTV footage of their warehouses.
Understandably Byuu feels hopeless and powerless over this, but I don't think USPS have tried hard enough, they wont have the motivation until it's all over social media and affects their public image.
 

Combichristoffersen

Combovers don't work when there is no hair
USPS is fucking trash. I've ordered some figures/statues from the US, and paid almost twice as much for internatonal express deliveryas I did for the figure. The delivery time from the US to Norway was estimated to be ~1 week. It's taken 3-4 weeks both times.

Fuck USPS.
 
USPS processed 1.6 billion parcels this holiday quarter. Statistically, they're doing a good job.

If I sell food to a billion people, and 0.001% of them get food poisoning and die, it doesn't really matter if I'm doing a great job statistically, because I still killed 10,000 people.

Granted, this isn't quite a life or death situation, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect mail carriers to actually deliver a valuable package, unless you're using a dirt cheap service option.
 

byuu

Member
Perhaps I dont know how long it takes to rip an individual title. But at two minutes a title you are talking 26 hours. 65 hours a five minutes a title.

It's common to underestimate the work involved.

First step is to clean the carts. I turn this:

sdRqyl.jpg


Into this:

GbxMxl.jpg


This step takes about 2-30 minutes.

Then I open the cart, and clean the contacts to ensure a good dump the first try. This takes 3-5 minutes to clean both sides.

Then I scan the PCB and game cartridge at 600DPI. This takes about 5 minutes (my scanner's a bit slow.) Then where possible, I use a heat gun to peel off stickers from boxes, takes about 2-3 minutes. Then scan the box front and back. Each takes 5 minutes.

Then I dump the cartridge using a serial connection between my PC and the SNES. This used to take 20-30 minutes when I was doing it over the controller port with the USA set, but it now takes 5-10 minutes thanks to an expansion port device made for me by defparam.

Then I log all the serial#s on the board and cartridge into a large database by hand. This takes another 2-3 minutes.

Rinse, repeat for every game.

I have very low energy levels and become exhausted after about 2-4 hours of this a day. I've had a lot of theories but never found the definitive cause. But my current guess is that I might have very low testosterone levels. But it's something. Because damn, I am always, always tired no matter how much I sleep.
 
US postal service sounds terrible! Although I remember UPS "losing" one of our trackers we posted to the USA and they found it almost the same day we told them it was a GPS tracker :D
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
I can see why it was going to take a lot of work. Didn't realize you were also scanning and cleaning up the cartridges.

DHL is the main carrier? Germany really is the best country. Unless, DPD becomes the main carrier in UK. They are truly the best couriers. The best.

Yeah, to be clear DHL is their main carrier (Deutsche Post DHL Group) which owns the DHL Express division that we're familiar with.
 

Exeunt

Member
I have very low energy levels and become exhausted after about 2-4 hours of this a day. I've had a lot of theories but never found the definitive cause. But my current guess is that I might have very low testosterone levels. But it's something. Because damn, I am always, always tired no matter how much I sleep.

This is a bit of a tangent, but have you considered checking out a sleep clinic? I'm no expert, but it could be a case of sleep apnea or something of the sort if you're getting a full night's sleep and still feeling tired.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Have you considered using a digital camera or even smartphone instead of a scanner? If you mount one securely and have even lighting you can get great results and it can be quick for multiple items.

Also international travel isn't that scary - it's fun :) With the internet in your hand and English being fairly widespread in many cities you'd be fine.
 

Dio

Banned
Have you considered using a digital camera or even smartphone instead of a scanner? If you mount one securely and have even lighting you can get great results and it can be quick for multiple items.

Also international travel isn't that scary - it's fun :) With the internet in your hand and English being fairly widespread in many cities you'd be fine.

Disgusting. Taking 'pictures' of stuff is hardly comparable .

Here's what I do when I scan album booklets for preservation:

[QUOTE="Jone2k5 from CoverGalaxy]
PREPERATION

First of all, you have to make sure you scanner's surface is clean, get a soft cloth and gently wipe it, getting rid of any dust that may have settle on the surface. You may want to use some Spray and Wipe or Windex if there are marks on your scanner glass, but make sure you wipe the glass dry before you place down the cover.

Make sure the cover is straightened in the corners of your scanner - If the cover is out of line, use Photoshop's straightening technique which will allow you to rotate it down to 0.01 degrees if you need to, which is alot more precise than most image editing software...

FLATTENING OUT THE COVER

Then make sure that the cover is perfectly flat, I use a my Lord of the Rings heavy hard-cover book to clamp the cover down, phone books also work well, but I would recommend a hard cover book. This extra weight will not damage your scanner, it will just flatten the cover more than it would have been originally, giving you a much better scan.

Now your ready to go! - Scan the cover following the regulations below...

Covers - Originally scan the cover at 600dpi, this should give you an approx resolution of 6480x4350. Then open in Photoshop (or which ever program you like to use) and apply the apropriate filters (SEE HALFTONE DOTS FOR MORE) then resize it down to 3240x2175 at 300dpi AFTER APPLYING FILTERS.

Labels - Originally scan the label at 600dpi, this should give you an approx resolution of 2800x2800. Then resize that down to 1400x1400.

I will assume the majority of people are using Photoshop, since that is the feedback i got from my poll on the topic.

STRAIGHTENING UP THE COVER

Open up your 600 dpi scan in Photoshop, go to the toolbar on the left-hand side of the screen. Find the Eyedropper tool, right-click it and select Measure Tool. When the measure tool is selected, view the scan at Actual Pixels. Then click and hold the measure tool from one corner of the cover down to another corner. Then go to Image --> Rotate Canvas --> Arbitrary. Click OK and the cover will now have been rotated so it is perfectly straight.

Then go to Image --> Rotate Canvas --> 90 CW or 90 CCW depending on which way you scanned your cover. Select the one which applies to you and your scan will now be perfectly straight.

CROPPING

Then go to the select tool on the toolbox. Select a rectangular shape around the border of the cover, try to chop off as little of the original cover as possible when doing this. Then go to Image --> Crop.

HALFTONE DOTS

Now we will try and get rid of the Halftone Dots while still keeping as much quality as possible. Go to Filters --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur. Set the radius from 0.8 - 1.0 but no higher or lower. Try not to blur the image too much...just enought to be able to rescue it later on.

Then go to Filters --> Noise --> Despeckle. Make sure your scan is still 600 dpi (6480x4350) then apply the Despeckle filter 2 times, because the image is larger, we need to apply this filter more, but DONT apply it more than 3 times, otherwise you will lose too much information and the cover will look too edited.

Then resize your cover down to 3240x2175, with 300 dpi

Then go to Filters --> Sharpen --> Unsharpen Mask. Set Ammount to 60%, Threshold to 1, and the Radius to anywhere from 1.2-1.6 but no higher. I would recommend 1.4 because I feel this is the ideal setting.

SAVE YOUR WORK

File --> Save the image at number 12 quality setting in Photoshop. And Your Done![/QUOTE]
 

Gestault

Member
This is a bit of a tangent, but have you considered checking out a sleep clinic? I'm no expert, but it could be a case of sleep apnea or something of the sort if you're getting a full night's sleep and still feeling tired.

Certain tasks are draining even after just a few hours. Honestly, even something like scanning 35 mm film is an absolute chore, and this seems more involved (but not in an interesting way).
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Disgusting. Taking 'pictures' of stuff is hardly comparable .

Here's what I do when I scan album booklets for preservation:

Consider me suitable reprimanded. Is it really a big difference? Assuming similar flat image and even 45 degree lighting to prevent glare? Just seems like scanners haven't moved on much in 10 years when digital cameras have.
 
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