VOGONS


First post, by douglar

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http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543

Out in Ohio, someone decided to sell nearly 200 issues of Computer Shopper for a few thousand bucks.
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Now, I’m not going to have $3,000 to throw around like that. So I put the challenge out there: If people get together and give me $3,000, I’ll buy this lot and scan it it. It hit goal in about 3 hours.
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When 14 large boxes arrived, they included all the issues, put inside large paper envelopes and wrapped in blue plastic that definitely didn’t look like cocaine to the storage unit guys I cruised past.
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Debinding, the taking apart of a bound issue of a magazine to turn it into a stack of papers to scan in, turns out to be a process. A painful, time consuming, involved process. One which I knew would be involved but not as involved as it has definitely turned out to be.
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Through all of this, we’re talking hours of work to do a single issue, and I have to do it a couple hundred times at least. This is going to be quite an epic task… which is, again, why we’re down to me doing it because the combination of cost, time and effort leaves almost nobody else who’d be in a position to be able to do, much less want to.
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Are There Missing Issues? Yes, there are. Here’s the list. If people want to donate or buy good quality copies for me, mail me at jason@textfiles.com. Here’s the missing issues as far as I can tell:

Everything before November 1983
1984: January, October, November
1985: October
1988: June, November
1989: April
1994: April, May, August, November
1995: February, March
1996: April, May, June
1997: July, September
1998: January, May
1999: April, July, August

Reply 1 of 11, by konc

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Wow, that's some dedication. I don't see the reason for this specific magazine-catalog, but I do admire the effort and they way it's done. It's huge.

Reply 2 of 11, by rasz_pl

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konc wrote on 2023-10-20, 06:51:

I don't see the reason for this specific magazine-catalog

Historical hardware prices, this is the definitive source for US market.

"I really hope that a group of people, together or separately, start using this bounty to rip out BBS listings, find trends in pricing and nomenclature, in tracking down humble beginnings and finding other amazing tidbits throughout computing history."

I would love a hardware database aggregating price data/availability.

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad

Reply 3 of 11, by douglar

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konc wrote on 2023-10-20, 06:51:

I don't see the reason for this specific magazine-catalog

Oh I understand. I used to have a subscription 1990-1995. Every month I'd spend at least an hour or two after it arrived, starting with the advertisers index, putting in bookmarks, reading the articles, wondering if those bios upgrades were scams or not. I only saved one issue, a massive 880 pager from 1993. Showed it to my kids yesterday. They were suitably impressed.

Reply 4 of 11, by Disruptor

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Look at the diskette prices in 1986.
Box of 10 ... >> $1000 !

Reply 5 of 11, by konc

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douglar wrote on 2023-10-20, 18:02:
konc wrote on 2023-10-20, 06:51:

I don't see the reason for this specific magazine-catalog

Oh I understand. I used to have a subscription 1990-1995. Every month I'd spend at least an hour or two after it arrived, starting with the advertisers index, putting in bookmarks, reading the articles, wondering if those bios upgrades were scams or not. I only saved one issue, a massive 880 pager from 1993. Showed it to my kids yesterday. They were suitably impressed.

As someone who had never experienced this, I thought that "there are many magazines already digitized with 100 ads each. What extra information another magazine that just has way more ads can possibly offer?"
I see now, it was a very nice explanation that made me imagine it.

Reply 6 of 11, by rmay635703

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I have wondered if any progress was made on this project.

I have noticed at least one issue is up and am very thankful someone is finally doing this.

Reply 7 of 11, by rasz_pl

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A lot of praise for Gaming Alexandria and their OCR procedure in that article, but sadly test upload of February 1986 issue shows otherwise. OCR is garbage tier 🙁
First error is in very first line of text:

"NATIONAL PUBLICATION FOR BU YING-USING-SELLING COMPUTER HARDWARE & SOFTWARE"

11th line
"Computer e Manito: © Floppy Drive » 10 Mb Hard Drive o Much More $i 799"

doesnt look encouraging 🙁

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad

Reply 8 of 11, by rmay635703

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Looks like the blog died the month they started scanning magazines, must be a zero dark 40 time doing so many.

Was hoping for an update

Reply 9 of 11, by Ferkner

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Scanning magazines is very time consuming and involved. Having scanned and edited over 1,600 magazines for Retromags, I know. I was relieved when I had nothing left to scan, but I just picked up over 500 issues of PC Magazine, PC World, PC/Computing, Windows Magazine and more from the late 80s and early 90s, including 32 issues of Computer Shopper. I'm not looking forward to the work that's coming in preserving those. They aren't skinny issues either.

Reply 10 of 11, by rmay635703

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Ferkner wrote on 2025-12-23, 21:36:

Scanning magazines is very time consuming and involved. Having scanned and edited over 1,600 magazines for Retromags, I know. I was relieved when I had nothing left to scan, but I just picked up over 500 issues of PC Magazine, PC World, PC/Computing, Windows Magazine and more from the late 80s and early 90s, including 32 issues of Computer Shopper. I'm not looking forward to the work that's coming in preserving those. They aren't skinny issues either.

At this point it looks like several more issues of the computer shopper are digitized, are you working with the original archive.org archivist or doing so on your own?

Reply 11 of 11, by Ferkner

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rmay635703 wrote on 2025-12-23, 22:03:
Ferkner wrote on 2025-12-23, 21:36:

Scanning magazines is very time consuming and involved. Having scanned and edited over 1,600 magazines for Retromags, I know. I was relieved when I had nothing left to scan, but I just picked up over 500 issues of PC Magazine, PC World, PC/Computing, Windows Magazine and more from the late 80s and early 90s, including 32 issues of Computer Shopper. I'm not looking forward to the work that's coming in preserving those. They aren't skinny issues either.

At this point it looks like several more issues of the computer shopper are digitized, are you working with the original archive.org archivist or doing so on your own?

We work on our own and we only host scans that are done by our members. We won't pull stuff off archive.org and host our on our site unless they were done by a member of our site and gave us the okay.

We often scan stuff that's already on archive.org simply because we'll often produce a better version. They'll also rip scans from our site and host them on their site. Most of the US gaming magazines on archive.org originated from Retromags.

I may reach out to Jason Scott to see if we have anything he's missing, though if we do it'll end up on their site eventually.