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A disk magazine, colloquially known as a diskmag, and also known by the portmanteau magazette (from "magazine on diskette"), is a magazine that is distributed in electronic form to be read using computers. These had some popularity in the 1980s and 1990s as periodicals distributed on floppy disk, hence their name. The rise of the Internet in the late 1990s caused them to be superseded almost entirely by online publications, which are sometimes still called "diskmags" despite the lack of physical disks. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (731x617, 188 KB)Screenshot of the Amiga diskmag Jurassic Pack. ...
Image File history File links Download high resolution version (731x617, 188 KB)Screenshot of the Amiga diskmag Jurassic Pack. ...
This article or section needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ...
Look up Portmanteau word in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
The field of electronics comprises the study and use of systems that operate by controlling the flow of electrons (or other charge carriers) in devices such as thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) and semiconductors. ...
The tower of a personal computer. ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
See also 1990s, the band Germans dancing on the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the symbol of the cold war divide falls down as the world unites in the 1990s. ...
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. ...
Defining characteristics
A unique and defining characteristic about a diskmag in contrast to a typical ASCII "zine" or "t-file" (or even "g-file") is that a diskmag usually comes housed as an executable program file that will only run on a specific hardware platform. A diskmag tends to have an aesthetically appealing and custom graphical user interface (or even interfaces), background music and other features that take advantage of the hardware platform the diskmag was coded for. Diskmags have been written for many platforms, ranging from the C64 on up to the IBM PC and have even been created for video game consoles, like scenedicate for the Dreamcast. There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ...
An executable or executable file, in computer science, is a file whose contents are meant to be interpreted as a program by a computer. ...
In computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. ...
Kittens are often considered quite cute. ...
This article or section needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ...
Close_up of C64 Commodore 64 (C64, CBM 64) was a popular home computer of the 1980s. ...
IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ...
The Atari 2600, Sony PSOne, Nintendo Gamecube, and Xbox 360 A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer. ...
Sega Dreamcast The Sega Dreamcast (Japanese: ドリームキャスト; code-named Katana during development) was Segas last video game console. ...
Precursors Early home and hobby users of personal computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s sometimes typed in programs, usually in the BASIC language, which were published in the computer magazines of the time. This was a lot of work, and prone to error, so the idea of publishing a magazine directly on a computer-readable medium so that the programs could be run directly without typing came independently to several people. The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ...
Screenshot of Atari BASIC, one of the first BASIC languages for small computers. ...
Some ideas of putting bar codes into paper magazines, which could be read into a computer with the appropriate peripheral, were floated at the time, but never caught on. Since the common data storage medium of the earliest home computers was the audio cassette, the first magazine published on a physical computer medium was actually a cassette magazine rather than a disk magazine; CLOAD magazine, for the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, began publication in 1978, named after the command to load a program from cassette on that computer system. RadioShack Corporation (formerly Radio Shack) (NYSE: RSH) runs a chain of electronics retail stores in the United States, as well as parts of Europe. ...
TRS-80 Model I. TRS-80 was Tandy Corporations desktop microcomputer model line, and sold through Tandys RadioShack stores, in the late-1970s and 1980s. ...
1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ...
CLOAD was not the first electronic periodical, however, because various ARPANET digests had been published as text files sent around the network since the early 1970s. These, however, were pure ASCII text and hence were not diskmags by the current definition. Also, at the time, few people outside of academic institutions had access to this forerunner of the Internet. ARPANET logical map, March 1977. ...
Disk magazines in the 1980s In September, 1981, the first issue of Softdisk was published for Apple II computers; coming out monthly on a 5 1/4" diskette, this was the first floppy-disk-based periodical. This was the first publication of a company also known as Softdisk which would later bring out similar publications for the Commodore 64, IBM PC, and Apple Macintosh. Other publishers produced a variety of competing publications, including Diskazine, Window, I.B.Magazette, Uptime, and PC Life. The Atari ST, in 1986, saw the first disk magazine in the shape of ST News. This was an English-language on-disk magazine from the Netherlands. Some publishers of paper magazines published disk companions, either polybagged with the magazines (in the form of so-called covermounts) or available as separate subscriptions. 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Retail package of Softdisk #27 (1984) Softdisk (ISSN 0886-4152) was a disk magazine for the Apple II computer line, published from 1981 through 1995. ...
The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ...
Softdisk is a software and Internet company based in Shreveport, Louisiana. ...
The Commodore 64 is the best selling single personal computer model of all time. ...
IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ...
The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...
First issue of PC Life PC Life was a disk magazine for the IBM PC published in 1986. ...
The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ...
Covermount (sometimes written cover mount) is the name given to storage media (originally floppy disks or audio cassettes, usually compact discs, and increasingly DVDs) packaged as part of a magazine. ...
Disk magazines in the 1990s In the early 1990s, id Software founders John Carmack and John Romero had some of their earliest works published on disk magazines while working for Softdisk. A short-lived game subscription called Gamer's Edge published side-scrolling and 3-D games written by the team that would later create Commander Keen and Doom. id Software (IPA: officially, though commonly mispronounced /ay di: soft. ...
John Carmack circa 2004 John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is a widely recognized figure in the video game industry. ...
Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is a well-known game designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. ...
Softdisk is a software and Internet company based in Shreveport, Louisiana. ...
Yorp redirects here. ...
Doom (or DOOM)[1] is a 1993 computer game by id Software that is among the landmark titles in the first-person shooter genre. ...
By the mid-1990s, CD-ROMs were taking over from floppy disks as the major data storage and transfer medium. Some of the existing disk magazines switched to this format while others were founded as CD-based magazines from the start. The higher capacity of this format, along with the faster speed of newer computers, allowed disk magazines to provide more of a multimedia experience, including music and animation. Such things as movie trailers and music samples could now be provided, allowing a disk magazine to target fans of the entertainment industry rather than the computer hobbyists of the earlier times. The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ...
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. ...
Many disk magazines of the 1990s and later are connected with the demoscene, including Grapevine, for the Amiga computer. Demoscene diskmags have been known to cross over into the closely neighboring underground computer art scene and warez scenes as well. Some of the more commonly well known English diskmags include: Hugi, Imphobia, Pain, Scenial, Daskmig (IBM PC), Jurassic Pack, RAW, Upstream, ROM, Seenpoint, Generation (Amiga), Undercover Magascene, Chaos Control Digizine, Maggie, Alive and ST News (Atari ST). ST News folded in 1996 after a cool 10 years with its 42nd issue. See also 1990s, the band Germans dancing on the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the symbol of the cold war divide falls down as the world unites in the 1990s. ...
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes itself on producing demos, non-interactive audio-visual presentations, which are run real-time on a computer. ...
Missing image Grapevine issue #15, released 09/05/1993. ...
The original Amiga 1000 (1985) with Commodore 1080 monitor The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. ...
The phrase computer art scene or artscene for short, refers to a community of individuals and groups, that are both interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork. ...
Warez refers primarily to copyrighted material traded in violation of copyright law. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ...
The original Amiga 1000 (1985) with Commodore 1080 monitor The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. ...
The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ...
In the late 1990s, the Internet became popular among the general public, which had the effect of killing the market for disk-based publications because people could now access the same sorts of material through the net. As a result, disk-based periodicals became uncommon, as publishers of electronic magazines preferred to use the Web or e-mail as their distribution medium.
Demoscene magazines based on executable program files are still commonly called diskmags, although they are seldom distributed on physical disks any more. Bulletin board systems and the Internet took over as major distribution channels for these magazines already in the 1990s. Ward Christensen and the first public Bulletin Board System, CBBS A Bulletin Board System or BBS is software that allows users to connect to the computer system on which the software is installed. ...
Disk magazines in the 2000s The occasional CD- or DVD-based multimedia magazine has come out since 2000, though more often as a promotional gimmick than a self-sustaining publication. More effort has lately gone into creating and promoting Web sites, ezines, blogs, and e-mail lists than physical-medium-based publications. Some publications that are termed "diskmags" are today distributed through the internet (FTP, WWW, IRC, etc.). The former entertainment disk magazine Launch transformed into the online video site LAUNCHcast, owned by Yahoo!. WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Online magazine. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
FTP or file transfer protocol is used to connect two computers over the Internet so that the user of one computer can transfer files and perform file commands on the other computer. ...
Graphic representation of the world wide web around Wikipedia The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). ...
IRC redirects here. ...
A 1999 issue (#35) of the LAUNCH disk magazine, a precursor of LAUNCHcast. ...
Yahoo! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
The longest-lasting disk magazine is, surprisingly enough, for the long-obsolete Commodore 64 computer; Loadstar, originally published by Softdisk starting in 1984, and later an independent company, has continued publishing well into the 2000s for a "cult following" of Commodore buffs. Cover of Loadstar #53 (1988) Loadstar (ISSN 0886-4144) is a disk magazine for the Commodore 64 computer, published since 1984, and still in publication as of 2005. ...
1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
This does not cite its references or sources. ...
Types of disk magazine content Disk magazines differed in the sorts of material they emphasised. Several distinct sorts of things could be published in an electronic periodical, and different ones might have all or most of their content in one or another of these categories: - "Static" articles similar to those of paper magazines, including text and illustrations (though, if that's all that is present in a publication, it is usually termed an "e-zine" or "ASCII-zine" rather than a "disk magazine")
- Multimedia features such as video and audio
- Interactive features such as quizzes and surveys. In some cases you could send disks back to the publisher with your responses and other feedback so that it could be published in a later issue, making it into a (rather slow) user forum.
- Software you could run or install; either original software created by staff or freelancers specifically for the publication and usable unrestrictedly by the subscribers, or copies of freeware, shareware, or "crippleware" that might be limited in functionality unless the customer pays more for a registered copy
- Files and add-ons to be used with other software, such as clip art, sound clips, and fonts.
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Look up shareware in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Crippleware is a form of shareware. ...
See also This article contains a list of magazines distributed on cassette, floppy disk, CD-ROM, or DVD-ROM—collectively referred to as disk magazines. ...
External links - Diskmags on Pouet.net
- Ready-to-Run Magazines – Descriptions and reviews of early disk magazines including Cursor, Microzine, CLOAD, and Window
- Hugi, One of the best known diskmags in the world
- PAiN, One of the longest operating diskmags
- SAVAGE, Polish demoscene diskmag
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