I was so upset when I posted some of that that I missed a couple of details and may not have been clear enough on the order of how things were supposed to go. For example, with reselling the 2 boards, that was supposed to be later after we had recouped most of the money from resales. From reading one of my posts it sounds like I implied they were supposed to be immediately resold and that is not the case. When someone pisses you off bad enough you don't always think/type as clearly as you should. I think I forgot to mention also, the MCUs were also supposed to be decapped and replaced. That could have happened quickly if he actually cared about doing it because Dr. Decap was active at the time. Other than that, this is what happened:

I would rather die than to pay someone to hoard a dump or to pay ransom on a hoarded dump. If he would have released the dump and kept the ebay thing going from reselling community bought boards both from his garage and mine the money back would have been paid back from recycle funds within about a year. He would rather feel power over people than to preserve another game.

This recent situation was the final straw I'm ever dealing with with him. He's never coming back to MW and this will never be resolved between us because it's too far broken. We were supposed to make back the money from reselling boards he has in his garage (only the ones that were bought through the dumping project and MW/community/Randy) and DU community bought boards and then the later resale of the actual 2 boards Bygone and Wyvern which are worth a ton in Japan and we had someone there who could sell them for us. Instead, one day he up and tried to change the deal on me and decided he didn't want to sell anymore of his community bought boards and wanted me to just pay all the money back and him just keep the boards. I should have banned him back then in 2010 when he did this but I wanted things to go best for mame. Well I'm not doing that anymore.

This was the final straw with him trying to benefit from my misfortune with the IRS and bringing up this crap once again. Judging from what he has said, who knows, maybe his memory is so bad now that he forgot what we originally agreed to and believes himself? I don't know. The agreements were made pretty quickly while the auctions were live. I remember very clearly the day he tried to change the agreement into his new rules though and how pissed it made me. I accept some of the responsibility because it was really stupid of me to get into a monetary agreement of any type with someone like him.

What he always tries to do is rally people against some other dumper or collector and then he tries to use that to get people on his side because they now have a common enemy. It's a really pathetic move used in politics. I know people think it's some personal ego thing or whatever for both of us but it's not. I could not care less about "being the best dumper" or whatever. I never even wanted to start dumping. I only started to save money on shipping and to be able to resell/recycle funds - because that will end with more stuff in mame. I was able to put up with most of his ego garbage for over a decade for the benefit of mame, but I can only deal with so much, and now he's gone way over the line to the point of no return.

I've said before, both on-list and in my 2012 update that I felt this was unlikely to be resolved and we'd be best off finding a new board.

The game isn't THAT rare, one did change hands in Asia not too long ago and we could literally have had a dump (sans MCU unfortunately) at that point except the guy I know simply wasn't working on the day it came in and by the time he was it was packaged up for shipping out. Price paid was around the $1000 mark. It's also a game that has been dumped before (although hoarded) because I believe one of the Japanese music player apps 'supports' it.

There are also records of it appearing in Italy, so I have a feeling the PCBs may well be buried somewhere around there too if that one hasn't fallen into the hands of some unfriendly collector yet.

The same sh*t would have kicked off if we'd got another dump tho because Guru is adamant that he wants the $6000 he feels he is owed, or at least that's what he was saying on Mamedev, so other stuff would have almost certainly ended up hoarded instead.

It's a shame people can't just focus on what's important, and sorting the rest out later, even if it means dragging each other through the courts or something (because at this point it's clearly a matter of principals) but egos seem to be a problem for most dumpers, that's actually why I much prefer working with the .it guys because they quietly just get on with doing good work.

I'm surprised anybody still bothers to donate at all after all the broken promises on the too-good-to-be-true decap offers which really do appear to have been too good to be true for the real interesting cases but I guess there are people who don't want to give up hope completely.

Well if you want broken PCBs, legs snapped off and me spending most of the time in A&E because I managed to solder my ballsack to the circuit boards then by all means tool me up, and I'll let you and Guru do the actual drivers instead.

Or if this is the usual Guru-style bash about how I never actually put any money in then I'll use my usual response that what I put in is time, lots of it, most of my free time for the past 10+ years. I have no current income, and due to circumstance that is often the case.

For one thing you're grossly exaggerating the difficulty of dumping most stuff, like socketed roms, a complete klutz could do it if they follow directions from an experienced dumper and an eprom programmer manual. There's also for example the stuff Randy and I used to do with finding boards and raising funds, that would also count as getting your hands dirty and anyone could do it if they do enough research. I'm not judging and don't care what you do or how you do it, but you make every effort not to get your hands dirty like refusing to upload roms you add to the source. Again, I don't care, I'm just saying, it must be really easy to throw things out like "court" talk when you never take a risk.

Believe me, I *am* a complete klutz when it comes to technology stuff, I've managed to break PC cards removing them from my PC on multiple occasions.

I keep an eye out for interesting boards, I keep an eye out for interesting posts, I actively try to work with people to ensure things are done correctly, and emulated in a timely manner, or at least that the dumps are good. A lot of that is grunt work, but also needs somebody with an idea of what to look out for when it comes to early indications of problems (eg somebody who can actually gfx decode and the like)

I also work to raise awareness for things, keep some level of interest, promote what's being done, and try to make even the dull parts sound interesting by showing why if looked at from a different point of view than 'crappy game' they can be both interesting and important. That 25k word document didn't write itself overnight.

I don't like to beg for money. I say court, because unless you're happy seeing people throw $3000 at Guru (and I'd be surprised if he doesn't say 'oops, I raised it to $6000' once he gets that) instead of actually going towards DU stuff then there is likely no other way it can be resolved. Who is in the right / wrong doesn't bother me, what bothers me is users are being pissed all over, devs have been in the past pissed all over, and the actual game is suffering, all because of some stupid power game. It's likely Taito don't even have the ROM data for it either, so until it gets emulated they probably can't even put it in one of their own retro packs.

Emulation is about doing a service to the community and often the creators of the original games, not all this nonsense.

I agree with you there is a stupid power game going on but Guru is the only one playing. If people want to give their hard earned money to someone who is filthy rich for hoarding a game they already partially paid for then they are welcome to. I'm not going to get into some stupid game where I try to pull the donations another way. For one thing that's exactly the type of emudrama crap that Guru lives for. For another thing, I don't take donations anymore because of the IRS.

Nobody likes begging for money. I don't like solder work either or reselling or standing in line at the post office etc. It's crap I do/did to preserve games.

Saying court means you don't understand basics of copyright law. I'm going to sue him for not releasing an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted game onto the internet or what exactly are you thinking could happen.

Who is right or wrong has to matter. If you throw that out then I'm not even interested in continuing to talk to you about it.

I'm not saying court due to copyright law, I'm saying if he thinks you owe him this money, and has evidence of such in any way that could be seen as a contract then maybe that's what needs doing because the fundamental issue here seems to be that each of you think the other has changed the terms of some agreement and thus money is owed. Of course the cost involved with that would probably be greater than just saying shit happens and getting on with things, but like I said, it seems to be that at least for Guru it's a matter of principal at this point.

For the rest the point I'm making is that I'll do emulation, I'll do a bit of PR, I'll work with people, that's my role. That helps you, it helps MAME, and it helps people get an understanding of what's going on.