You can get back images for disks you have contributed, disks for which can be proven you own the originals, or disks that the publisher has said can be redistributed. Otherwise, we cannot legally redistribute them, as we are not the copyright holder. Most of the disks we have preserved already have existed on the internet in other forms for over a decade, but still we cannot open up any sort of legal implications.

Q: Why should I help you? You're just hoarding 'teh ROMz!'

If you feel that way, you shouldn't. Do a little research on me. There are other teams that contribute and therefore have access to the collection, such as GameBase64, HVSID, Stadium64, and the various tape and compilation sites, so the data is also contributed for use in those projects.

Q: How do I use the images I get back?

All modern emulators work with provided images, which are a raw representation of the data on each track. There are some tougher protections that won't run due to the inexact way some emulators work. There are also some images that work on the emulator that can't be put back on a real disk.

Q: What equipment and/or cables do I need to dump my disks?

Kryoflux and a suitable floppy drive for the media you wish to image.

Q: You already have all the disks I own in your database. Should I bother to redump them or send them to you?

Yes! There are many different reasons.

* Not all disks even with the same publisher, region, and disk label have the same protection. The disk we have might be a different version, from a different region, from a different mastering run, or from an alternative publisher (like a budget release). The disk we have might even be bad and we don't know it yet.

* Checksums are generally not strong (many times only a simple rolling XOR) and prone to flag a sector as good when it is not, and heavily protected disks are even worse since they don't even have these checksums. This can happen on old disks that have deteriorated and caused some of the flux transitions to weaken. The only way we have to verify that an image is "good" is to compare it to other dumps of the same exact disk.