TOSEC

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TOSEC, or The Old School Emulation Center, is a group of people dedicated to the preservation of games and other programs for home computer and console systems.

They have produced several things which further the goal of preserving computer and video game software:

The TOSEC Naming Convention which provides a clear, concise and consistent naming scheme for the cataloging of any software images for these systems.
A database of old computer systems, software which runs on them as well as checksums for each software title to enable users to verify that their copies are correct
A programme called TIM (short for TOSEC Information Manager) which allows users to check their collection against the database, reporting files which are corrupted or missing and allowing them to be renamed according to the TOSEC Naming Convention

Unlike other renaming projects, TOSEC have shown a demand for correctness. For many console games, particularly those released on Optical Media, TOSEC refuses to accept Warez releases which are often modified. Instead, they require checksums to be created from the original media in many cases.

TOSEC is entirely legal since it provides only a naming convention, software and system database, and a tool to verify and rename software. However, its tools are often used to verify/rename copies of software which have been obtained without the permission of the copyright holder (where one exists). In fact, complete sets of TOSEC games are often traded over Peer-to-Peer networks, Usenet and IRC DCC.

[edit] See also

Good Tools is an older software renaming project which covers a lesser range of systems but is usually quite comprehensive for those systems which it does cover.
no-intro Rom dumping project focusing on listing only the best ROM version available (i.e. the ROM’s that are as close as to the original as possible)
ROM image