I think I still have my bleem! for... Metal Gear Solid laying around somewhere.

REMOVED
The disc is pretty cheap on ebay or buyee.

Thank you all for chiming in! Indeed I have tried many different images that exist out there; right now I have about 8 burned CDs I'll use as coasters. I can safely say that the images found at REMOVED does not work.

I'm in Brazil so buying international is always tricky, but I'm determined to get an original CD to try and make a working backup. The 1.6a and 1.6b betas were the last versions before bleem! shut down and, AFAIK, there were no copy protection patches for those.

Reopened.
Thread cleanup.
No sharing of links to software or hints of sharing said software involving copyright infringement. For those that already posted such future such posts will result in consequences for them. This thread will be monitored.

Really are strident on our preservation efforts! We're not doing this "to break the law of copyright infringement" we're trying to prevent bitrot and irrevokable loss of digital software and tryig to preserve history. By the time the (78?) year copyrights expire, all of this stuff will be gone forever, into the digital rot ether for want of "copyright" and lack of insight.

I think that bleem! CD image is very interesting.

It's not about piracy because you can download patched versions of bleem! that removes entirely the need to have the CD; also you can get better playstation emulators anywhere. The thing is that the disc was one of the most difficult things to duplicate that I've seen. Many errors, probably subcodes and "weakl" patterns... trying to dump that disc could take days, and you would not be sure that it would work. Also it seems the kind of image that could not be recorded by most drives.

As I said, it would be easier going into pcsxe or looking for a patched download.

Having a recorded CD that could run the "official" bleem! is a thing I'd like to see.

Zup wrote on 2024-09-13, 04:56:

I think that bleem! CD image is very interesting. […]
Show full quote

I think that bleem! CD image is very interesting.

It's not about piracy because you can download patched versions of bleem! that removes entirely the need to have the CD; also you can get better playstation emulators anywhere. The thing is that the disc was one of the most difficult things to duplicate that I've seen. Many errors, probably subcodes and "weakl" patterns... trying to dump that disc could take days, and you would not be sure that it would work. Also it seems the kind of image that could not be recorded by most drives.

As I said, it would be easier going into pcsxe or looking for a patched download.

Having a recorded CD that could run the "official" bleem! is a thing I'd like to see.

Will the Plextor 716D or the Plextor Premium run it and / or create it properly? Will the Mitsumi 1640? These were two of the best back in the day. They supported massive overburning and had very good lasers.

Update- I've purchased an original from eBay, and it might take months until it arrives for me in Brazil, but I'll be definitely spending time trying to achieve a working copy myself and writing a guide on how to do it. Right now what I'm thinking is not how modern drives will fare with that media, but rather the software. CD burning/authoring software is past its peak about 10 years ago, so I'm anticipating a lot of trial and error using different drives and old software.

zyzzle wrote on 2024-09-13, 04:06:

Really are strident on our preservation efforts! We're not doing this "to break the law of copyright infringement" we're trying to prevent bitrot and irrevokable loss of digital software and tryig to preserve history. By the time the (78?) year copyrights expire, all of this stuff will be gone forever, into the digital rot ether for want of "copyright" and lack of insight.

yeah i was one of the ones that posted the name of the file, and the name of the site where to find it, tho it wasnt a working copy anyway due to the copy protection, that got deleted, i'd never post any direct links, but i thought i could at least be helpful by hinting the type of place to find it, that also got deleted, as this thread hadn't been deleted right away or locked i thought it was ok to discuss, bleem isnt an officially licensed product, its also out of print and the original company closed back in 2001, also being an emulator for running retail playstation games, i thought it'd be ok as its also obsolete and has no value considering there are better alternatives.

after looking into it seems there a new company thats taken on the bleem name, and original code is now owned by sony, surprise, surprise! which word has it they used in the PS3, but didn't sony use the open source pcsx emulator in their playstation classic? im sure they made some money off of that.

but i agree things like this need to be preseved before they are lost to time, i cant even find CDRwin 3.7c or 3.7d from 1999.

bregolin wrote on 2024-09-13, 13:21:

Update- I've purchased an original from eBay, and it might take months until it arrives for me in Brazil, but I'll be definitely spending time trying to achieve a working copy myself and writing a guide on how to do it. Right now what I'm thinking is not how modern drives will fare with that media, but rather the software. CD burning/authoring software is past its peak about 10 years ago, so I'm anticipating a lot of trial and error using different drives and old software.

let us know if you're successful, but dont post any links. 🤣

I've been doing a lot of reading on the topic of disc preservation, and it seems that, unless I have specific Plextor model drives (and very few of other vendors), it's impossible to do a bit perfect dump in order to contribute to preservation efforts like redump.org (FYI moderators- no software is made available at redump.org, only cue sheets and other useful information).

With that said, a working backup doesn't necessarily need to be bit perfect in order to work, it just has to be good enough for the copy protection to identify the backup the same as it would an original, otherwise copy protected discs would fail verification on drives other than Plextor.

As far as bit perfect preservation goes, there are a few successful dumps of bleem! CD keys at redump.org, which is a great thing, however I'm still inclined in achieving a working, albeit "bit imperfect", backup copy and writing a guide on how to do it, given there's interest.