The Old School Emulation Center (TOSEC) is a

retrocomputing Retrocomputing is the current use of Vintage computer, older computer hardware and software. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuabl ...

initiative founded in February 2000 initially for the renaming and

cataloging In library and information science, cataloging (American English, US) or cataloguing (British English, UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging ...

of software files intended for use in emulators, that later extended their work to the cataloging and

preservation Preservation may refer to: Heritage and conservation * Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible * ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...

of also

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

, device drivers, games,

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

, magazines and magazine cover disks, comic books, product box art, videos of advertisements and training, related TV series and more. The catalogs provide an overview and cryptographic identification of media that allows for automatic integrity checking and renaming of files, checking for the completeness of software collections and more, using management utilities like ClrMamePro or ROMVault. As the project grew in popularity it started to become a de facto standard for the management of retrocomputing and emulation resources. In 2013 many TOSEC catalogued files started to be included in the Internet Archive after the work quality and attention to detail put into the catalogs was praised by some of their archivists. TOSEC usually makes two releases per year. As of release 2023-01-23, TOSEC catalogs span ~195 unique brands and hundreds of unique computing platforms and continues to grow. As of this time the project had identified and cataloged more than 1.2 million different software images and sets (more than half of that for

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (India), in India ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ' ...

systems), describing a source set of about 8TB of software and resources.

References

Bibliography * {{cite book , title=Gaming Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools , last=Carless , first=Simon , authorlink=Simon Carless , year=2004 , publisher=O'Reilly Media , location=Sebastopol, California , isbn=978-0-596-00714-0 , pages=46–49 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zrqz84QUuSEC , accessdate=March 16, 2010

External links

TOSEC Project HomepageTOSEC ForumTOSEC Discord

ClrMamePro HomepageROMVault Homepage
Computing culture Discipline-oriented digital libraries Online databases

See also

References

External links