I'd be interested in a digital magazine for DOS era computing. Similar projects have been done recently for the C64 and ZX Spectrum. I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I think a monthly print magazine is a bit too ambitious. This is already a niche hobby, so the people working on it would be doing so in their spare time. Having a monthly deadline would put a lot of stress on them and I don't think it would be sustainable. I think it would also be important to keep costs down, so it might be better to keep it digital. Maybe if it's successful, you could make a special edition at the end of the year that is available in print. If the cost is lower, you could build a larger audience.

Would be nice for my coffee table.

midicollector wrote on 2023-09-20, 22:45:

Would be nice for my coffee table.

I nice big coffee table book full of glossy pictures of beige boxes (-:

A magazine needs Ads. So you can see what you cant afford 😁

It was part of the fun to see prices and dream of unaffordable things.

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-20, 23:26:

A magazine needs Ads. So you can see what you cant afford 😁

It was part of the fun to see prices and dream of unaffordable things.

That's what eBay is for (-:

Joking aside, I like to find old ads to see how much my recent pickups went for new. I'm currently one of the coolest richest kids by 1998 standards!

Yet another survey? What about "The million dollar question on retrocomputing"? Just curious what are those surveys intended for?

Regarding the retrocomputing magazines, they already exist actually. If you ask me, old style magazine format (no matter paper magazine or digital one) is already dead for many years. What is needed, in my opinion, is some new multimedia format where you can have all the multimedia stuff included. Not links but the stuff itself (that means videos, podcasts, files, pictures etc) cause I don't want to find a year later that links in my magazine are all dead. Each magazine of course will weigh many gigabytes and most likely sold on USB Flash Drives, but in that case it will have a real value and will be relevant for many years to come, unlike PDF old style retrocomputing magazines of today.

It would be like a revival of the old times… For example: starting from January 1986, every month, it would re-cover products, hardware and software, comments, articles that would have been covered if we truly were living in that month of that year, almost as if we were in a time machine.

It would cover everything: From the release of the (at the time) new Compaq DeskPro 386 DX, to the release of the new version of Central Point Anti-Virus for DOS, or a new Cirrus Logic graphics card, a new type of L2 cache, or EDO RAM, or countless other issues. Only, with the availability of information granted by today’s era. Imagine covering the topic of optimizing the amount of available conventional memory in MS-DOS. Just by googling, we could write a 30-pages article.

I think there's a contradiction here. These days we have:

- latest and very polished drivers for each peace of hardware (so it's hard to appreciate how well any given product worked at launch)
- YouTube comparisons for sound and video cards (you had to go to a computer store, visit your friend, or find a sample CD like Gravis Experience)
- robust search engines, an ocean of digitized manuals and other documentation (and not every computer actually came with a good printed manual)
- Discord servers with nearly realtime community support

So yeah, these greatly affect how we deal with hardware and software issues, and how we see a lot of products. There is value in another resource that tries to aggregate howtos on using retro technologies, but it's not really a "time machine".

Personally, I think the one aspect that is not covered in retro media are interviews — there are in fact very few good retrospectives on technology involving the people who made it all happen. There's a good reference for games, but I am not aware of anything like that about hardware. The ones that do exist tell simply fascinating stories.

Imagine an interactive magazine (like a blog). Where each article can have discord integration, download links, curated articles and mixed in content from old sources as a blast from the past.
But made to look like a nicely animated magazine.

For me these threads are totally fine. I like to think about things that probably will never happen. Thinking in all directions keeps you young 😏

The question I have is - Why?

Looks like every issue of Personal Computer World is on archive.org now and the paper version comes up every now and again on eBay, so I can read the real thing if I want to. Combined with reliable sources of drivers and software, like the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library, I have everything I need.

Have I missed the point?

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-09-21, 16:28:

The question I have is - Why?

Looks like every issue of Personal Computer World is on archive.org now and the paper version comes up every now and again on eBay, so I can read the real thing if I want to. Combined with reliable sources of drivers and software, like the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library, I have everything I need.

Have I missed the point?

Some people enjoy having something new to look forward to each month even if similar content has been provided in the past. If you know ahead of time what you are looking for, you can look for articles in old magazines. However, having something that is curated by other people can lead you to stuff that you weren't aware of in the first place. You might also be aware of a certain topic or game, but you might not think about it unless your memory is refreshed. YouTube is a good example. There are a lot of retro game channels and the most viewed videos are for the classics. People enjoy seeing other people's takes on their favorite games.

I can think of a number of advantages for having a new magazine on retro PC gaming:

- The format matters. I could download old magazines from the Internet Archive, but the scan quality can vary between magazines or within a magazine issue. Also, scanned magazines can be huge and often don't work well with tablets. A large file can be slow to open or to render new pages. The PDFs on the Internet Archive also have nasty compression artifacts. Also, a modern digital magazine can have a table of contents with links to the different articles.
- A modern magazine can avoid a lot of the filler that old magazines had. We don't need decades old classified ad sections. I don't think that many people would be interested in articles on business computing on decades old computers.
- Hindsight is a benefit. We've figured out a lot of workarounds for problems with old games that weren't known at the time these games were covered in old magazines. Similarly, there are sometimes easter eggs that are discovered years after release.
- New games and drivers are still coming out. Not everything would be a rehash of old magazine content.
- New hardware is coming out. Some people would enjoy reviews of new ISA sound cards for example.
- Some people would rather read about a topic in a magazine article format than how it is available today. Sure, a lot of this information is available on message boards, but it often isn't easy to find what you are looking for. I personally find it intimidating when I have to go through a thread with dozens or hundreds of pages to find what I'm looking for. I would often prefer to read a summary of it in a magazine article.
- A new magazine could allow us to mix the old with the new. Some of the coolest projects involve installing old software on newer systems. For example, we can run DOS on some thin clients that came out in the 2010s. Given the price of old hardware, it's valuable to know how to emulate stuff like the MT-32 on a Raspberry Pi.
- Interviews. A lot of the retro gaming magazines and podcasts interview people who worked on this stuff back in the day. There's still a lot to learn about how games were made, what problems the devs had to overcome, what the design choices were, etc.

Those are just a few things that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure other people could come up with more.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-09-21, 17:12:

[...]
Those are just a few things that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure other people could come up with more.

Guys, you said everything, particularly Ensign Nemo's last reply. Very good points. Thank you.

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-09-21, 16:28:

The question I have is - Why?
Looks like every issue of Personal Computer World is on archive.org now and the paper version comes up every now and again on eBay, so I can read the real thing if I want to. Combined with reliable sources of drivers and software, like the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library, I have everything I need.
Have I missed the point?

As Ensign Nemo said, digitalized, old, online magazine sometime suck or look awful. And, the emotion of looking forward the release of a NEW issue, of going out to an actual store, buy it brand new, take the plastic film off of it, smell the new paper, and be served with content searched and selected by others, instead of having you to do the job, is a blend of feelings and emotions that can't even be remotely approached by online studies. Add to that, the memories of the old times, the nostalgia of the 'whole process':
The wait...
The new month approaching...
Going out to the newsstand to see if it's arrived...
The surprise of the cover: what's it gonna talk about this month?
The purchase...
Bringing it with you...
browsing it...

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2023-09-21, 09:03:

Yet another survey? What about "The million dollar question on retrocomputing"? Just curious what are those surveys intended for?

Regarding the retrocomputing magazines, they already exist actually. If you ask me, old style magazine format (no matter paper magazine or digital one) is already dead for many years. What is needed, in my opinion, is some new multimedia format where you can have all the multimedia stuff included. Not links but the stuff itself (that means videos, podcasts, files, pictures etc) cause I don't want to find a year later that links in my magazine are all dead. Each magazine of course will weigh many gigabytes and most likely sold on USB Flash Drives, but in that case it will have a real value and will be relevant for many years to come, unlike PDF old style retrocomputing magazines of today.

Curiosity. I want to know if my desires are also other people's desires or not.

And yes, nice idea the USB sticks, more convenient than the DVDs. In my proposal, you could buy the support-less magazine (just the paper), and download the stuff from the website. Or, for a couple extra bucks, you can buy the version with the DVD. But a cheap USB stick would be even better! Good idea, thanks. And of course, everything would be hosted on the magazine's website, own server, so, no risk of dead links in the future...

Well thanks everybody, for your inputs, suggestions, questions, recommendations, comments, observations, and to all of you who filled the survey!

aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-21, 21:24:

Curiosity. I want to know if my desires are also other people's desires or not.

And yes, nice idea the USB sticks, more convenient than the DVDs. In my proposal, you could buy the support-less magazine (just the paper), and download the stuff from the website. Or, for a couple extra bucks, you can buy the version with the DVD. But a cheap USB stick would be even better! Good idea, thanks. And of course, everything would be hosted on the magazine's website, own server, so, no risk of dead links in the future...

Well thanks everybody, for your inputs, suggestions, questions, recommendations, comments, observations, and to all of you who filled the survey!

Paper magazine and to download the stuff from the website?

Lol, thanks but no way! 😁

I want a complete package with everything inside, otherwise it make no sense for me.

Wow, what a concept. A monthly, glossy DOS magazine in 2023. I would buy it. However, we all know the cost per issue would be extreme, something like $20 per issue. That would quickly put a damper on it, the way prices are absurd these days for anything deemed retro. I can only be satisfied that I've got many issues of the actual old magazines on my shelf to peruse whenever I see fit. That should last me the rest of my lifetime. And, for those I missed, PDFs are available. So much reading, so little time left.

zyzzle wrote on 2023-09-21, 23:13:

Wow, what a concept. A monthly, glossy DOS magazine in 2023. I would buy it. However, we all know the cost per issue would be extreme, something like $20 per issue. That would quickly put a damper on it, the way prices are absurd these days for anything deemed retro. I can only be satisfied that I've got many issues of the actual old magazines on my shelf to peruse whenever I see fit. That should last me the rest of my lifetime. And, for those I missed, PDFs are available. So much reading, so little time left.

The costs of print magazines are very high these days, but digital is a lot more affordable. I just checked the prices of Retrogamer magazine. A digital copy costs $5.99 per issue if you buy them individually or $4.16 with a subscription. I know that many people prefer a physical copy, but going digital would keep the costs down. Another model is to ask people to pay what you will, such as what Reset64 is doing.

https://reset64-magazine.itch.io/

Digital isn't that bad. I find it convenient on my tablet. It also saves space in my apartment.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-09-21, 23:21:

The costs of print magazines are very high these days, but digital is a lot more affordable. I just checked the prices of Retrogamer magazine. A digital copy costs $5.99 per issue if you buy them individually or $4.16 with a subscription. I know that many people prefer a physical copy, but going digital would keep the costs down. Another model is to ask people to pay what you will, such as what Reset64 is doing.

https://reset64-magazine.itch.io/

Digital isn't that bad. I find it convenient on my tablet. It also saves space in my apartment.

And yet, The Game Machine, in Italy, colored glossy magazine, costs around 5 euros per issue. It is thin though!

zyzzle wrote on 2023-09-21, 23:13:

Wow, what a concept. A monthly, glossy DOS magazine in 2023. I would buy it. However, we all know the cost per issue would be extreme, something like $20 per issue. That would quickly put a damper on it, the way prices are absurd these days for anything deemed retro. I can only be satisfied that I've got many issues of the actual old magazines on my shelf to peruse whenever I see fit. That should last me the rest of my lifetime. And, for those I missed, PDFs are available. So much reading, so little time left.

Oh YES!!! Absolutely lovely concept! I'm glad we're on the same page.