Weird date issue on PSX Prototype Discs

This may be the wrong place to post this, if so I apologize.

I am working on dumping the lot of Populous: The Beginning prototypes I bought but have ran into a minor issue. The dates/times on many of my discs are identical, but with different file sizes (not dramatically different, off by >1MB in every case, but still different).

Take for example the disc titled Pop 3 M6 Load-Save 45 which is one of the few discs with a date written on the front: 19/10/98. Yet my computer tells me the last edit made to the disc's contents was 11 days earlier 08/10/98 at 11:18 AM. Every build I've dumped so far between 31-46 have all give me 08/10/98 11:18 AM time, despite each one having different data sizes. I have come across other discs not in this range with identical date/times compared to another disc nearby in build number. Every disc with a date on it that I've checked so far is different than the date on the most recent edited file.

To make maters worse the name of every disc I've done so far has been: POP3, POOP3 or IMAGE, so everything has had to be renamed. My current solution is to focus solely on organizing them by build #, and only list dates for those with a date on the front of the disc since the dates on the files seem to be incorrect (so Build, Other Disc Stuff, Date ex: 45, M6 Load-Save, 19/10/98) but I was wondering if anyone here might have a better idea, or even an explanation for the date issue. I had a txt file listing build dates/time but I stopped after having so many with dates that seemed screwed up.

 

Mostly TDK CDs, although not all the same variety. Could all be backups burned on the same day I guess. Some Sony discs in there too, just cant find one to take a picture right now. Took those a while back



Unrelated note can anyone read what that first one says? I think it says 81 XY the (?), brother thinks it says Sixy the Wal which makes 0 sense to me.

--EDIT--

Conflicting dates are on a mix of the Reflex discs and the Pink ones. The one I cant read does not have a conflicting date with the other one just one of the only pictures I've taken of the discs.

 

Early CD-Rs, such as some PSX/Saturn discs, were burned with really barebones CD-R writer software. Often the software would let you "compose" the CD-R file list manually in a text file as well as manually supply the date(s). I've seen dates like Jan 1, 1995 00:00:00.

It could also be that the burning software just ignored the file modification dates and used something else.

Never fully trust file/volume modification dates on early CD-Rs, especially if they appear fishy.

What is the primary volume creation date? It occurs at:

• 0x963d of the first track on raw 2352 (bin/cue) dumps.
• 0x832d of the first track on 2048 (iso) dumps.

Is it also 08/10/98 11:18 AM? It's in ASCII format (more or less anyway).

 

I recall that a lot of the PSX discs that came from the Climax Lot had an issue similar to yours where the timestamps on the files seemed to be fake and didn't match the date the disc was burned. In your scenario, if it's getting a bit out of control, the one way you can be sure to distinguish between every disc you dump is to generate a MD5/SHA1 hash value for every individual .bin/.iso that you make. If a hash value matches another .bin/.iso, then you can be sure that the contents of every build are exactly the same (no changes).

There's a lot of software that can generate a hash for every file in a directory. But for the sake of convenience, you'd want to find something that can give you a truncated hash output (since the size of md5 and sha-1 outputs are pretty big). I can't think of any available software that can do this, but it's easy to do as a python script.

 

I've always considered myself pretty good with computers, then I read that comment. Now I feel like I'm probably really stupid. How would one find 0x963d of the first track on raw 2352 (bin/cue) dumps?

The date is actually 10/08/98 11:18 AM on my computer. But I changed it in my post to match the European Day/Month/Year that is written on the disc.

Downloaded one and checked for duplicates, none of the builds that I have confirmed have a date issue are duplicates. Although I did find two duplicates, one of which was removed. Still have a handful of discs to back up but should be done tonight, then I'll start uploading them.

 

I wouldn't worry, this is really really specialized knowledge, in a field that's dying. Get a hex editor, open track01.bin, or if you have a single .bin file open that. Find an option named "Go to address" or "Go to location" and go to 963d in hex (or try 38461 in decimal). The date should appear in the text section, like this (I marked it in red):

 

Alright checked a couple with confirmed dates and they match so that seems to be the most accurate way to find the date. I'll start using that to rename the files by date. Expect these to start popping up via Hidden Palace in the very near future.

 

My current experience with the Climax stuff it seems that they have bat scrips that resides in the project folder that basically creates the CD content (creates directories, copy files and place them in the right place). They seem to have built CDs left and right. Just look at the Superbike lot - 710 CDs! Different people requested builds for different reasons (many discs are labeled with names). There are many discs created at the same date. If you want a chronological order of all discs you are going to have a hard time unless the burn time and not just date is part of the data.