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This is a personal software preservation project. The archive hosts freely distributable software recovered from old CD-ROMs, floppy disks, and other physical media from the 1990s and early 2000s -- shareware, freeware, drivers, demos, and utilities that are disappearing from the internet or were never uploaded in the first place.
Most of this material comes from shareware compilations, magazine covermounts, driver diskettes, and budget publisher releases sourced from secondhand markets. Each item is ripped, documented, and made available here for anyone who needs it.
There is a vast amount of software from the DOS/Windows 3.x/9x era that exists only on physical media nobody is looking after. This material sits in the dead zone between "too common to collect" and "too obscure to preserve." Sellers on secondhand platforms do not bother listing it. Buyers do not search for it. It ends up in landfill.
This archive is an attempt to catch what can still be caught.
* Shareware and freeware (DOS, Windows, OS/2, etc.) * Hardware drivers and configuration utilities * Game demos and sampler discs * Freely distributed utilities and tools
Full disc images with preservation records are archived separately on the Internet Archive for completeness.
Commercial software (or cracks for it), even from defunct publishers, is not hosted on this site. If you are looking for full disc images of commercial releases, check the Internet Archive. This site serves only content that was intended for free distribution.
Media is acquired from secondhand markets across European Union. Disc images are created as BIN/CUE and ISO with SHA-256 checksums. Physical media -- covers, inserts, disc labels -- is scanned at 1200 DPI. Each item is documented with a preservation record containing identification, publication details, hashes, and provenance information.
Ripping hardware includes a Panasonic UJ890 DVD-RAM drive (selected for aggressive error correction on damaged media), a CanoScan LiDE 25 flatbed scanner, and a Hewlett-Packard FD-05PUB USB floppy drive. Period-correct testing is performed on a 486 DX2-66 workstation running DOS.
All material hosted on this site is believed to be freely distributable -- shareware, freeware, demos, drivers, and other software originally intended for public distribution at no cost.
No commercial software is knowingly hosted here. However, if you are the rights holder of any material on this site and believe it has been included in error, please get in touch. Any such inclusion is unintentional, and the item will be promptly removed upon a valid request.
No questions asked, no hassle given.
All items in this archive are sourced from physical media found on secondhand markets, and purchased with personal funds. If you find this archive useful and would like to help it grow, contributions through Ko-fi are appreciated.
All donations go directly toward acquiring more media for preservation -- every euro means another disc saved from landfill.
Physical contributions are also welcome. If you have old software discs, driver floppies, shareware compilations, magazine covermounts, or other media gathering dust -- consider sending them in rather than throwing them away. Equipment donations are equally appreciated. Anything sent will be imaged, documented, and preserved.
Currently needed equipment:
* 5.25" floppy disk drive (for imaging older media) For mailing address and shipping details, please get in touch via the contact information below.
Corrections, contributions, and tips on unpreserved media are always welcome.