TIL GeoWorks - the graphical environment for the rest of us - had a shareware edition. it was $10, and let you use anything, except you couldn't save your data.

is this the only existing shareware OS?

thank you to @floppyarchaeology for scanning in the materials and imaging the install floppies

https://archive.org/details/geoworks-working-model/

Sometimes, I just enjoy browsing through those old ascii art catalogues from old 90s shareware disks. These ads are simply too precious!

every time i play quest for glory 4 all i can think about is how Erasmus is drawn like he belongs on wiz tech's stoner shareware diskette label

while Apogee games have no Report Thy Feat screen, i am proud to announce that after 30+ years of trying, i just beat Crystal Caves shareware @georgebsocial

back in the early 90s my parents brought home an ibm ps/1 with an internal 2400 baud modem. i assumed it was only for sending/receiving faxes.

one day my computer teacher (thank you mr. mckinney!) explained that the modem made my computer capable of dialing out to *other computers* and exchanging data with them. he printed off a five page ream of tractor feed paper titled "The 403 BBS List" and sent me home with it.

i stayed up until 3am that night, dialing every single board on that list using Windows Terminal, creating accounts, and exploring what BBSes were capable of. by the wee hours, i had a new terminal program (Terminate!), knew how to use the z-modem protocol, and had
pirated my first game

one of the little mysteries i came across that night was FILE_ID.DIZ files. every board had them. every zip file had them. they were tiny capsule descriptions of what a program/game was, constrained to 45 cols and 10 rows of ascii. they usually also included some kind of nod to the piracy group that "released" the program.

most BBS software would extract the .DIZ file from the zip, and use that as a file area description for the program, allowing users to understand what they were downloading.

to celebrate this weird little historical curio, today kiki got a FILE_ID.DIZ packed into the zip

in version 1.10 onwards every copy of kiki will now include a FILE_ID.DIZ.

if you haven't heard of kiki yet, check out the project page:
https://tomo-dashi.itch.io/kiki

and if you're new to the kiki community, please post to the #kiki hashtag so we can start building a little webring of kiki instances

thank you @ernie for this great writeup on #shareware

I had no idea that the file_id.diz standard was a creation of the ASP (association of shareware professionals). i always just assumed it was a file format created by one of the many #bbs programs of the 90s

https://tedium.co/2016/10/27/shareware-history-legacy/

more here on the file format:
http://artscene.textfiles.com/information/faq-file_id.html

i don't know who just paid more than double for the registered version of #kiki at http://tomo-dashi.itch.io/kiki but thank you from the bottom of my heart. you don't know how much that means to me.

i put in 12 hour days, 6 days a week, into making the software as frustration-free as possible over the past three months. users like you make it possible to feed the real kiki - who is a voracious cacodemon despite her 1/3-kitty-size stature.

on your behalf, i disturbed her lordship speaking of your deed, and she granted you a 3X Greater Blessing of Exceptional Luck for the next week.

Lordy spring has sprung, look what turns up in a bit of spring cleaning #VintageComputing #FloppyDisks #shareware

One of my favorite childhood games: The Game of Robot by TOM Productions. German shareware action adventure. Bit like Zelda meets Boulderdash and Robots (UNIX)
#shareware #gameofrobots #retrogaming #msdos

Some Duke Dukem (1991).. the 1st.

I'm adding more games on my new MSDOS system, & testing them!! :0))

I love the two first Duke games!
: 0)

You can still get it here (full version):
https://archive.org/details/dukenukem_202202

i can't believe that Ashampoo still exists, and it's still selling the same programs i remember from 1999

most of the programs are now at version 20+

https://www.ashampoo.com/en-ca

when i was a kid, you could build a simple game or application by dragging and dropping a few UI controls, and gluing them together with a few dozen lines of BASIC or Pascal or HyperTalk. it might take 15 minutes, at most, to get your little character walking around on the screen. this is how we ended up with a lot of hilariously good and cheap shareware you could share on BBSes in the 90s.

for the past year i've been quietly working on building a software thingie that doesn't exist anymore. i've been building a software toolkit that's kinda like Visual Basic and HyperCard and Borland Delphi, designed for making tile-based 2d games.

i've been using it to build my own little goofy games, and improving on the drag'n'drop IDE as i figuring things out. it's not done yet, and has a long ways to go before it's ready for other people to start making their own little applications and games. think PICO-8 or ZZT if they had grown up on a steady diet of Windows 3.1 and GeoWorks Ensemble instead.

i'm really, really bad about polishing turds to infinity and never releasing them. to break that habit, i've built a mini-website for the IDE/Shareware Creation Kit. it's called Exigy, named like a bad 80s metal hair band or richard garriott game.

https://exigy.org

i'll be posting weekly blog/devlog updates there, so i don't irritate anyone with them on this account. there is an rss feed button at the top right if you hate my demonic php and css.

@ajroach42 's article [1] convinced me to get back into physical media so I picked up these supplies for fun, might make a shareware CD later. I already had a bunch of CDs and paper sleeves, but i did buy a long stapler and some 9x6 catalog envelopes.

Bill Nale wrote in 2018 [2] that he could get away with using a regular Forever stamp on these, but the USPS website says you're *supposed* to use a Non-Machinable Surcharge stamp for 'rigid' mail. They're just like Forever stamps but they cost extra, currently $1.19.

Since Forever stamps are worth $0.73 right now you *could* just use two of those, for $1.46 total, and write "non-machinable" on the letter yourself. In hindsight I should have done that, and saved myself some trouble. Oh well, it was a good excuse to visit my local post office!

Now I just need to actually write something worth printing...

1: https://retro.social/@ajroach42/113481632282311122

2: https://elivermore.com/mailing_dvds.htm

@rainbowcemetery 's Anzu Castle Gracula

Cool game I stumbled on today! ​Haven't gotten very far yet (it's hard!), but I love the ​Castlevania 2ish backgrounds, the great spritework, and the catchy soundtrack! Interested to take a look at the QBASIC source code, too!

Wieder etwas aus unserer Retrokiste:

Wer erinnert sich noch an Freeware oder Shareware? An die Listings, die in verschiedenen Zeitschriften abgedruckt waren und die man selbst seitenweise in den Rechner reinhacken musste?
Wenn man Glück hatte, lag noch eine DOS-Floppy-Disk im Heft dabei und mit noch mehr Glück lies sich diese auch noch einlesen.

Hier mal ein Beispiel aus den Jahr 1985. Wohl auch schon eine frühe Form vom Opensource Gedanken.

wondrous Boardwatch BBS magazine "top 100" boards in north america from 1994. this was based on a reader's choice vote-in.

the first two boards are (respectively) the homes of Apogee software and Epic MegaGames shareware publishers.

now just guess how many of the remaining 98 are porn boards!

credit: @fearfair on /r/bbs: https://i.redd.it/5pb1m577m9pd1.jpeg

Back in the late '90s I registered / paid for a few programs for the Apple Newton with Kagi, one of the early payment processors. I hadn't much thought about them since.

On IRC, I just overheard that there is some paid search engine called Kagi, at the same URL.

But, what happened to the Kagi I knew? A little digging revealed that it did not end well for the beleaguered company headed by Kee Nethery.

Kagi Shuts Down After Falling Prey to Fraud (article dated 2016)

https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/

"The news was as sad as it was unexpected. Kagi, one of the earliest digital commerce companies and long a favorite of many Mac shareware developers, has shut down as of 31 July 2016, just shy of 22 years in business."

Sad story.

Web archive link of the old Kagi website: https://web.archive.org/web/19990208004939/https://kagi.com/ (from Feb 1999)

back in the early 90s, i only knew of four ways to get new computer games:
- buying my own (i could afford a new one every 3-6 months at best)
- trading with friends (only 3 kids in my school had computers at home)
- buying shareware diskettes at the grocery store for a few bucks
- downloading shareware from local BBSes

of all of the above, only the last two were reliable sources of new games every week. i was one of the only kids in the school that had a modem, so i spent every evening sourcing out hot new shareware on my local boards. i'd wear out my credits and time limits downloading every single disk i could find at 2400 baud, usually taking about an hour

of the dozens of games I downloaded, two of them proved to be mega-hits: Tank Wars and Crystal Caves. for over a year, my two best friends and i huddled around the computer playing hotseat tank wars, and took turns trying to finish CC levels.

consider that, at the time, we owned AAA titles like Wing Commander II and Space Quest IV, and a sega genesis with a dozen games between us. and yet, crystal caves was the first thing we'd load up on sleepovers. it found the exact right balance of addictive, fun and friendly.

a few years ago i started collecting old shareware distributor diskettes - the kind you'd find for $2 at a grocery store. and i absolutely treasure them.

this crystal caves fansite is proof that the old world wide web is still alive and well:
https://spikenexus.rewound.net/pccw/pages/index.html