Universal Mega Dumper

Unnaturally tempted by this project, which has created a common platform for cartridge dumping w/ standard adapters for the major consoles. It auto-recognizes which type of cart you connect, too!

The Universal Mega Dumper (UMD) is a game catridge read/writer project designed around a Teensy++ microcontroller. The universality comes from the UMD’s ability to support many different types of catridge connectors by having general purpose 16 bit data and 24 bit address paths along with a dozen control signals – all of which can be customized for each game cartridge mode.

More on the project page.

US Library of Congress: Copyright Is Destroying Historic Audio

From the you’re-telling-us dept.

The report also highlights the problems posed by the rather complicated history of US copyright law. “All U.S. recordings, both commercially released and unpublished, created before February 15, 1972, are protected by a complex network of disparate state civil, criminal, and common laws,” the study explains. The consequence is that all sounds recordings made before 1972 will have their copyright expire in 2067 – 95 years after the placement of these recordings under federal protection in 1972. This means that the oldest sound recordings in the US dating from 1890, will only enter the public domain after 177 years.