In October of 2022, the DISCMASTER site arrived, providing amazing semantic search of thousands of shareware and compilation CD-ROMs at the Internet Archive. In the entry written on the blog back then, the advantages and features of this site were pretty well enumerated.
Unfortunately, the site went down in June of 2023, due to a number of factors, the most pressing of which was a need to switch hosting and administration duties. (It is not run by Internet Archive and is not hosted at Internet Archive’s datacenters.)
However, DISCMASTER HAS RETURNED!
Thanks to a set of generous donors and the efforts of multiple volunteers, the site is back running with all the data and functionality it had in its previous incarnation.
The website is at http://discmaster.textfiles.com.
The previous blog entry has fuller details on the meaning of this site and the many uses it has for computer and internet history. All hail DISCMASTER!
Absolutely delighted to find Al Jolson’s movie The Singing Fool available- been looking for this for years, The size (1GB) a bit daunting, but set it running and let it do its thing. Sound/picture synchronization a little disappointing, but I’m glad to have seen it at all. Thank you
So glad the public library reference lady told me about you. You’re doing a great work to preserve the culture we inherited.
Yay! This is a wonderful resource to get back online. It’s especially useful for those of us who lived through the heyday of shareware. Thanks to all who contributed!
Amazing news, keep the good work! Thanks for your preserving efforts.
this is a big news for me ! It was so interesting to venture inside the archives back then, so neat it’s back up ! I’m so happy