Grindery

[Omega]

Does anybody have some pics of the Grindery from the front, side, and back?
Please PM me if you do.

[Angelalex242]

Check the screenshots. GhaleoneOne already posted all of that stuff on the main website

[Deathblood]

Check the screenshots. GhaleoneOne already posted all of that stuff on the main website

I did that. Took me like 2 hours just to look at some and they loaded up instantly. There's a lot of stuff there. I didn't look at it all, and I wouldn't bother trying to look at everything. TOO LONG!!! And, I've been sayin this a lot recently, but btw, where did G1 get all those? They are perfect pics. Camera on tripod? From another site? Or did he have one of those controllers with the ability to create a screenshot?

[GhaleonOne]

All the screenshots on this site came from me (with the exception of MS and WS). Emulators with screen grabbing capabilities were used to snap the shots. I about spilled my drink when you mentioned a camera setup with a tripod. I love using my camera, but that would be absolutely nuts to get pictures that way.

[Deathblood]

Same here man. Same here.

[White Shadow]

Even the 'legitimate' way to get screenshots (the one used by magazines like EGM or game websites like GameSpot or IGN) doesn't use a camera on a tripod. (Such a method would be murder on the equipment and on the people involved.)

You'd use a TV tuner card for a computer to take the video input from the game console, then output the signal to a TV. The computer could snap screenshots whenever you hit the button for it to do so.

Using an emulator for a cartridge-based game is technically illegal as you need a copy of the game that was produced illegally. (US courts have ruled that 'fair use' does not mean you can completely change the medium.) That said, all of the lunar games except WS have been CDs, so that point is pretty much moot.

[Alunissage]

Using an emulator for a cartridge-based game is technically illegal as you need a copy of the game that was produced illegally. (US courts have ruled that 'fair use' does not mean you can completely change the medium.)

Could you provide a reference or citation for that ruling, please? What case?

Also, as my husband points out, "it is possible to make emulators that do not rely on copies, and such emulators would not fall afoul of copyright law. (i.e. Nothing stops you from making hardware connecting a SNES cartridge slot to a computer, and then nothing stops you from writing an emulator that uses the slot and no intermediate copies to emulate the game."

[White Shadow]

Could you provide a reference or citation for that ruling, please? What case?

I'd have to dig it up, and I hope you'll pardon me if I don't get to it immediately. I don't do legal research that often and am not particularly fond of logging into Westlaw for something that isn't that important (to me, at least).

Also, as my husband points out, "it is possible to make emulators that do not rely on copies, and such emulators would not fall afoul of copyright law. (i.e. Nothing stops you from making hardware connecting a SNES cartridge slot to a computer, and then nothing stops you from writing an emulator that uses the slot and no intermediate copies to emulate the game."

*Disclaimer: This is not to be taken as sound legal advice, it's just my understanding of the various legal issues. If you have any serious questions related to this, talk to a competent intellectual property lawyer. I am not a lawyer and I only partially know what I'm talking about.*

If you have a 'copyright' on a piece of code, you can restrict who has copies of it or has the permission to make copies of or distribute it. (Hence, the 'copy rights'.) If someone reverse engineers how your software works, though, you cannot make any claim against them because they haven't copied anything; they've simply observed how your software works and made their own (compatible) implementation of it.

Pretty much any emulator for a 16 bit console or earlier uses none of the original console's code, so none of them run afoul of copyright law. Emulators might run afoul of patent law, if the patents haven't expired yet, but this isn't too big of an issue because software patents are not recognized in most countries in the world. (The US is one of the only first-world countries that does recognize them; Europe doesn't and I don't think Japan does either.)

ROMs themselves run afoul of copyright law, but emulators that do not use any of the original console's code are completely legal.

(Which is why, for example, Alexandre Julliard of the Wine project hasn't been sued by Microsoft yet; there's no legal claim Microsoft could make that wouldn't be dismissed by a court.)


Similar to your husband's example, newer emulators for disc-based consoles that simply allow you to insert the disc into your CD or DVD drive are completely legal if they do not require any of the console's code to run. You may be able to copy the games to your hard drive too as long as you don't distribute them, but I'm not sure about that.

[Alunissage]

Yes, I know all that. But the idea that changing the medium of the legal backup copy one makes of software one owns invalidates the legality of that copy is news to me, which is why I ask for substantiation.

My understanding is that ROM use is illegal only if one did not rip the ROM in question from one's own physical media, as this would be making that one backup copy for personal use. It's when someone other than the person who made the copy uses it that there's a problem.

[White Shadow]

Yes, I know all that. But the idea that changing the medium of the legal backup copy one makes of software one owns invalidates the legality of that copy is news to me, which is why I ask for substantiation.

My understanding is that ROM use is illegal only if one did not rip the ROM in question from one's own physical media, as this would be making that one backup copy for personal use. It's when someone other than the person who made the copy uses it that there's a problem.

A pretty robust article on the topic (far more eloquent and informed than I am) can be found here:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/njtip/v2/n2/3/

It seems either any cases on the matter (at least at the time of the paper's writing in 2004) have been either too small to be published or settled quickly.