Currently Available Collections

No seeds available? Read the FAQ

NameIssuesComplete?Published from……untilTorrent linkMagnet linkVersion
ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)55YesOctober 1987April 1992TorrentMagnetv3
Acorn User267YesJuly 1982Christmas 2003TorrentMagnetv3
Amiga Computing117YesJune 1988October 1997TorrentMagnetv3
Amiga Format136 + SpecialsYesAugust 1989May 2000TorrentMagnetv3
Amiga World107Yes1985April 1995TorrentMagnetv3
Amiga Power66YesApril 1991October 1996TorrentMagnetv3
Amiga Shopper72YesApril 1991January 1997TorrentMagnetv3 (fixed)
Amstrad Action117YesOctober 1985June 1995TorrentMagnetv1
Amstrad Computer User (ACU)90YesAugust 1984May 1992TorrentMagnetv3
Amtix!18YesNovember 1985April 1987TorrentMagnetv2
Antic88YesApril 1982June 1990TorrentMagnetv3
Atari User43YesMay 1985November 1988TorrentMagnetv3
BEEBUG123YesApril 1982March 1984TorrentMagnetv3
Big K12YesApril 1984March 1985TorrentMagnetv3
Commodore Format61YesOctober 1990October 1995TorrentMagnetv3
Commodore Power/Play23Yes? 1982October 1986TorrentMagnetv3
Commodore User26YesJune 1983February 1990TorrentMagnetv3
Computer and Video Games plus 1984/1985 “Yearbooks”126Sort ofNovember 1981May 1992TorrentMagnetv3
Crash98YesFebruary 1984April 1992TorrentMagnetv3
CU Amiga106YesMarch 1990October 1998TorrentMagnetv3
Dragon User69YesMay 1983January 1989TorrentMagnetv3
Electron User82YesOctober 1983July 1990TorrentMagnetv3
Mega Machines26YesOctober 1990September 1992TorrentMagnetv3
Mega Machines Sega53YesOctober 1992March 1997TorrentMagnetv3
Micro Adventurer17 + bookYesNovember 1983March 1985TorrentMagnetv3
MicroHobby217YesNovember 1984January 1992TorrentMagnetv3
MicroHobby Especial7YesNovember 1985December 1987TorrentMagnetv1
N-Force / SNES Force24YesJuly 1992March 1994TorrentMagnetv3
Page 6 / New Atari User85YesDecember 1982September 1998TorrentMagnetv3
Personal Computer Games15YesSummer 1983February 1985TorrentMagnetv3
Personal Computer News110Yes (torrent is missing issue 40 – grab it here)March 1983March 1985TorrentMagnetv3
RAZE12YesNovember 1990October 1991TorrentMagnetv3
Sinclair User134YesApril 1982April 1993TorrentMagnetv3
Sinclair Programs35YesMay 1982September 1985TorrentMagnetv3
ST Format86YesAugust 1989September 1996TorrentMagnetv3
ST/Amiga Format13YesJuly 1988July 1989TorrentMagnetv3
Super Play47YesNovember 1992September 1996TorrentMagnetv3
The Games Machine34YesOctober 1987September 1990TorrentMagnetv3
The Micro User115YesMarch 1983September 1992TorrentMagnetv3
The One88YesOctober 1988January 1996TorrentMagnetv3
Your Computer70No – issues and pages missingJune 1986April 1998TorrentMagnetv1
Your Commodore85+extrasYesJuly 1984October 1991TorrentMagnetv3
Your Sinclair93YesJanuary 1986September 1993TorrentMagnetv3
Your Spectrum21YesJanuary 1984December 1986TorrentMagnetv3
Your 6413YesApril 1984September 1985TorrentMagnetv3
Zero37YesOctober 1989October 1992TorrentMagnetv3
ZX Computing38YesSummer 1982May 1987TorrentMagnetv2
Zzap 64! / Commodore Force plus “bonus” issue 107106YesMay 1985November 1992TorrentMagnetv3

Non-Magazine stuff:

Sinclair and the ‘Sunrise’ Technology (EPUB/MOBI formats) – a “classic” hatchet job on Uncle Clive and his harebrained schemes. It’s a fantastic history of the man and his machines, as long as you can ignore the tabliod-esque sarcastic tone running through the text.
Alternative link

I’ve refined the OCR’ing process over time. The version number reflects the method that was used:

v1: OCR’d directly from the source image. However, the image was recompressed during the process, which made the files up to double the size of the originals and marginally impacted quality.

v2: The v1 images were recompressed to get them back to something approaching the original image quality. Therefore, the file size will be smaller, but having been recompressed twice the image has lost a little bit of quality.

v3: Re-OCR’d straight from source images, this time with NO decompression. These should be (almost) as good as the original images (there is a very slight change in contrast in some collections due to changing DPI, but honestly you’ll never notice unless you’re as picky as me). This is about as good as I can get it.

Eventually all v1/v2 collections will be replaced with v3.

Everything here is free (“as in beer”), but if you’d like to help me get more mags online:

Any amount will help – see the FAQ for more details.

Do you have a collection of tatty, rotting magazines that haven’t been scanned yet that you’d like to donate to a good home? Or have a question/comment? Feel free to contact me at fabwhack@gmail.com

Advertisement

109 responses to “Currently Available Collections”

  1. I did it deliberately just to annoy you 🙂

    But seriously – the problem is that the source images from WOS are low DPI and very lossy. OCR’ing involves decompressing the JPG and then recompressing it again, so it’s lossy in and even more lossy out. I spent a long time trying to get the right balance between file size and image quality, and I have to admit I didn’t think they were THAT bad – certainly not “completely blurry”. Can you give me an example page from issue 1 to compare between? What PDF viewer are you using?

    Reply

  2. Hi,
    The Zzap64 link seems to be broken – or rather the torrent on tpb. It just responds “no input file specified” wether trying to download via your link or a search within tpb.

    Great job, btw! The ability to full text search these old mags is brilliant!

    Reply

    • Thanks – well spotted, it’s definitely broken, something at TPB doesn’t like that link any more. I’ve removed it for now – the magnet link should still work fine, and I’ll see if I can find someone at TPB who can help me get it fixed.

      Reply

  4. In this age of mega fast broadband and huge hard drives, file size is not that important anymore so I would go for maximum scan quality with the least compression.

    Reply

    • There’s pros and cons to both approaches. Firstly, in the “v3” scans I’m not doing ANY recompression – the images are from the original scans, so they’re as good/bad as the originals, it’s beyond by control.

      I’m doing my own scans for Amiga Shopper/Power/Format and NCE at the moment, scanning them as 300DPI lossless 8-bit TIFFs. This generates a nice big file of 3 -5 Gigabytes depending on the number of pages- and that’s per issue! Multiply that the 300-odd issues of all the above combined … it’s nearly a terabyte. Plus those files take longer to open and view on anything except the beefiest PC or Mac.

      So I’m compressing them down to 150DPI JPGs, between 85% and 95% quality, resulting in a file of around 100Mb an issue. I’ve done some “blind samples” involving family members, and I’m happy the quality is pretty damn good. OK, it’s not 300DPI TIFF quality, but it’s good enough until we all get gigabit internet and holographic storage (which I think was predicted by now in Amiga Format 😉 )

      The other factor is mobile devices a la iPads – I personally enjoy having a few issues of something retro on my iPad for browsing, and if the files were too big it could easily fill up a tablet.

      Reply

  5. One seeder for MM and MMS at 5k/b per second? This is gonna take a while! No other seeders, or anywhere I can just download these from source?

    Reply

    • If I’ve got your IP address right, you’ve only been connected for a little while. During the day (UK time) I don’t have much spare bandwidth, hence the slow performance when I’m the only seeded. Leave it running overnight (UK time) and you should see a big difference … I’ll keep an eye on your IP, let me know if you’re still struggling after a couple of days.

      Reply

  7. This Site is GREAT! I love you man, i’m 40 i read all these magazines when i was young. I’m searching for Nintendo Magazine System (The Nintendo spin off from the faboluos Mean Machine, have you scan this magazine?).

    Reply

  8. just a big thanks for organising all these classics for the masses..
    out of interest, do you have or would you know where to get pdfs of sega power?? (full collection)
    and even better BYTE magazine from the 90s,
    all the resources on the net seem to have them but they finish in the 80s,
    thanks for all your doing

    Reply

  10. Found 2 sites today dedicated to old game mags and both are ninja efforts by a single person! Much respects guy! Also is putting the files up at Archive.org an option? Should save you the trouble of having to leave your computer perpetually on! Good stuff though! (Hopefully you get a hold of the complete set of Saturn Power issues too) May you keep doing your Amazing work!

    Reply

      • I know it’s been two years but have you had any luck with Sega Power (91 issues) or Saturn Power (10 issues)?

      • I hope you’re still out there Ben 🙂 Yes, Sega and Saturn Power is on the way – I hope it won’t take as long as Amiga Power did… :O

      • I am indeed 😀 I was lucky enough to find most of them on reddit a while ago – I shared them with you by google drive to the email address in your about page, hope you got them 🙂

      • I did – thank you very much, that completes the missing ones I was looking for. I’ve got them currently crunching away in the backgroup – hopefully I can get them released in the very near future.

  11. You made me happy. I threw away all my old computer magazines years ago and I am gutted I did. Yes scandalous. But this was before broadband.
    You are doing an amazing job and I praise you highly. I am happy that this is being done and that I can reread history.

    I cannot wait for when I you do Amiga Power. There are stuff I need to read in their.
    I bow my head down to you sir.
    Awesome.

    Reply

    • You’re too kind. Amiga Power is the holy grail: I have just over half of them either already scanned or physically in my cupboard. They’re a nightmare to scan (they’re bigger than A4), but it’ll happen one day: they’re too good to let crumble away.

      Reply

    • Cheers – those are the ones I’ve already snagged I think (“greetz” to Mr Jack, a master scanner and probably the source of many of the PDF’s here). Holding out for that complete collection on eBay, and a lottery win to buy that A3 scanner! 🙂

      Reply

  14. Is there any chance you can say on this site which ones are new scans and which ones are the same crappy low res scans that have been available for years (probable scanned by Mort) ??

    Or are all these previously available for many years ?

    Reply

  15. Is there any chance you can say on this site which ones are new scans and which ones are the same crappy low res scans that have been available for years (probable scanned by Mort) ??

    Or are all these made from previously available scans ?

    EDIT: Why did you delete my post ? I only wanted to know if you could label which ones you scanned because they’ll obviously be higher quality. I don’t want to download stuff that i’ve already got. (Just out of interest, what is the point of OCR in these mags ? You can quite easily look at the contents page. It would be better if you made the scanned text into vector fonts (displayed on top of page) to make the quality a lot better.

    Reply

    • I didn’t delete your post; all comments are “moderated” so they don’t appear until I click the little “approve” button. Which I hadn’t done yet (I’m a busy chap, as the lack of updates here reflects), so don’t panic!

      To address your first point: I have no idea where most of these scans came from. Honest. I trawled the internet pulling them together over many months, so I can’t say what comes from where with any degree of certainty. I’d love to give credit to those who did scan them (and Mort probably deserves more credit than anyone), so if anyone can help me identify them please let me know and I’ll gladly credit them throughout the site. The Amiga Shopper scans are the only ones on this site that are all my own work.

      As for “what’s the point?”: well, as I’ve said in the FAQ (), it’s all about searchability. Most OS’s now will full-text index PDFs (OS X’s Spotlight is fantastic), which means you can search across collections for text. So: when was first mention of Amiga? That letter you wrote to Your Sinclair, which issue did it appear in? All easily done with searchable PDFs. I’m not looking to provide a better quality scanned image, I’m trying to enhance the value of what’s already available.

      I’m pretty sure the fonts encoded in the PDFs are vectors. By default, the text is “under” the image, which means the bitmapped fonts are the ones that are displayed. However, if you remove the image in the PDF, or every copy and paste the text into something font-aware, you’ll get what I assume are the vectorised fonts.

      Hope that helps – reply back if you need more info.

      Reply

    • Um .. yeah. I’ve got ZX Computer just about ready to get released as a “v3” (better image quality), so I took the old torrent offline a while back. I’ve put it back online for now, it should seed nice and fast – drop me a mail if it’s still stuck.

      Reply

  17. Awesome work. Thanks. The only problem for me was trying to open the .pdf documents in Adobe reader on android. The files are too heavy for most pdf readers, and rendering every page takes minutes sometimes.
    So I applied a quick and dirty method to be able to read the magazines fast and comfortably in a cbr (comic book) reader (I like ACV best) : extract all images from the documents, and archive them in a .rar or .zip file. This of course makes the brilliant ocr job you did obsolete, so I kept the original .pdf’s as well.

    To convert fast and painless in Linux:

    for i in *.pdf ; do pdfimages -j $i $i ; rar a $i.cbr *.jpg ; rm *.jpg ; done

    Run this one-liner in the directory where your .pdf’s live.
    Software needed: rar and poppler-utils

    Reply

  18. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately the PDF’s are a bit hefty, but they’re cross-platform, as standard as anything gets, and most importantly searchable, which is why I started doing this in the first place. Hope this helps someone get the job done!

    Reply

  19. Thanks so much, appreciate all the work! 🙂 Just browsed through the N-Force/SNES Force mags: is there a reason why issue NForce09-Mar93 is only 16 pages in total and the others from around this time are around 100 pages?

    Thanks and keep up the great work!
    Patrick

    Reply

  20. Hi firstly just a massive thank you this is amazing. Secondly I am currently on the look for some 90s sega and nintendo magazines (minus the ones listed above obvs)? Wondered i you’d be able to point me in the right direction? Am really after some nintendo magazine system, maybe some total, official sega and, well anything else.

    Nevermind if you haven’t of course, what you have already assembled is of course, amazing.

    Thanks

    Reply

  21. Just wanted to say thanks for these Scans, they are great quality and it’s really nice to be able to search, top job. I’ll donate when I can.

    Reply

  22. Hi, Thanks for this amazing work! I look forward to complete scans of Amiga Format and Amiga Power. I just wanted to let you know that issue 61 of Amiga Shopper seems to be missing half it’s pages and what is included is jumbled up. The others I have checked all seem to be fine 🙂

    Reply

    • Oops – dunno how that slipped past my rigorous quality control 🙂 I’ve journeyed to the very back of my garage and fished out the offending issue, and it’s squeaking through my scanner as I type this. Watch this space and I’ll have the fixed issue available soon, along with (hopefully) the other AS issues where the OCR’ing was mangled.

      Reply

  23. Hi Ken,

    Beggars can’t be choosers, but I cannot access any of the torrent magnet downloads, it seems that all the seeders I would like to get files from have left the planet. Is this a permanent affliction or is there some other way of getting these scans? All the torrents lead to a page with a Mega symbol on it and, apparently, nothing else. I am only interested in old Sinclair and Amstrad magazines.

    Thank for a great idea and if you ever get any of those Practical Computing mags
    I would love to hear about it!

    Best regards

    Trevor

    Reply

    • That’s strange; the “torrent” links are currently hosted on Mega.co.nz, but the links are just small files, and the should download directly. Can you try the “magnet” links instead – those should work with the vast majority of torrent clients?

      Reply

      • Sometimes I just give up on modern technology! I tried 3 of the magnet/torrents that would not work before I texted my question and all three worked after I read your reply. Thanks for your help and thanks for a great site. I would really, really like to get August 1980 of Practical Computing. Hornet’s Nest was a great story.

        Trevor

  24. Very big thank you for this awesome work. And I’m a big Newspaper collector in Hungary. May I advertise my site here? If not, then just remove the link.
    It’s all in hungarian, but you may feel good, when looking at the pages, just like I’m doing it right now. 🙂

    http://retroujsag.uw.hu

    Reply

  26. Hi Ken

    Thanks for going through all the trouble of scanning these magazines and making them available online.

    One small problem, the torrent file for MicroHobby Especial cannot be downloaded because it links to the pirate bay. All the other torrents are okay as they link to mega.

    Will you be scanning any other magazine series? Such as Computing with the Amstrad?

    John

    Reply

    • Whoops – many years later, I’ve fixed the MicroHobby Especial torrent link. Really sorry! Yes, despite the woeful lack of updates recently, I still plan to gather together as many of the outstanding mags as possible.

      Reply

      • Thanks Ken!

        There are also numerous computer magazine scans over at archive.org. Including two sets of Amstrad Action (I think one of them is yours, IIRC?). The other set is a better quality scan, but two issues are missing (unless they have been added since last time I looked).

        Thanks again for your efforts.

  27. Thanks Ken for providing these!
    I am trying to download some Amiga stuff. Have Amiga Format and Amiga Computing good, but CU Amiga, The One and Amiga World Magazine looks dead (no one seeding). Any chance you let this go?
    Cheers!

    Reply

    • Humble apologies for the beyond-a-joke reply years later. Despite all appearances to the contrary, all torrents should still be online – I’ve served over 8Tb from my home connection in the last 3 years (or so my torrent client tells me). If something appears stuck please drop me a message and I’ll do what I can to help.

      Reply

  29. Just stumbled upon your collection after having a retro gaming session on my Amiga!

    I think we would all agree that It would be a shame for such great computer nostalgia and memories to disappear. Thanks to your efforts these magazines can be kept alive in digital format.

    Great work and a big thank you for your efforts!!

    Reply

  30. Thanks for these – fantastic collection and really good quality scans too. The OCR’ing is great for searching references of old games.

    Reply

  31. Wow, the torrents have gone mad the past few days! There are presently 16 leechers for Acorn User alone!

    By the way, the torrent for MicroHobby Especial isn’t downloadable.

    Reply

    • Yeah, I posted some of the torrent on a popular site that serves torrents and, er, Kicks Ass. A steady 15Mb/s upstream since then 🙂

      I forgot about MicroHobby Especial; it was one of the early “v1” ones, and I need to redo it. It’s only 7 issues, bear with me and I’ll try it get it sorted this week.

      Reply

  32. Hullo – obviously a wonderful job here. I’m still hoping to complete Amiga Power some day, I’ve got issues 1-19, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 40-42, 44, 45, 48, 52-63 and 65.

    So, am missing 20-28, 31, 34, 36-39, 43, 46, 47, 49-51 and 64.

    If if helps, I can upload any number of the ones I have?

    Reply

    • Hmmm – I’ve checked and they’re OK for me locally. If you’re still having problems (shamefully, it’s taken 5+ years for me to ask), please drop me a message and I can try sending the files directly to you .. unless anyone else is having problems?

      Reply

      • Great, thanks! Note to self: I must go through all the currently seeded torrents and update all the trackers to the latest set – some of them are 10+ years old and will almost certainly be offline.

    • It should be seeded pretty much 24×7 by me – if you’re still having problems getting it let me know (promise I’m keeping an eye on my comments now)

      Reply

  41. Hello. Thank you for a brilliant collection of retro mags – I’m still only part way through downloading and archiving them! Would you possibly have scans of two magazines from the late 70s/early 80s called: Computing Today, and Electronics & Computing Monthly? Please keep up your excellent work – it is very much appreciated.

    Stephen.

    Reply

    • No luck with E&CM I’m afraid – there’s no signs of any decent scans or physical copies out there (unless someone can break into the Computer History Museum and steal theirs). Better news on Computing Today – I have all of those ready to be processed. Quite looking forward to getting that one done, it’s my favourite type of retro mag: hard core geekery 🙂

      Reply

  42. First let me thank you for the amazing work done here and for sharing this fantastic treasure of magazines.

    I have an issue with C&VG magazine:
    Until issue 91 of May 89 (Blast It! Dominator cover) everything’s fine
    Then the next issue (Indiana Jones cover) does NOT show the Date, assuming it’s June issue Number 92
    Next in July (James Bond cover) we have the month on the the side that says July, so it’s presumably issue Number 93
    Then comes August 1989 which show 93 as well ! because after that, the September 1989 issue displays NO 94
    What happened? why is there 2 issues NO 93 ?

    Reply

    • Blimey you’re right – I’ve just checked my archive and the months are out of whack after issue 93; my naming script goes on the (not unreasonable, I think) assumption that there’ll only be one issue per month. So I’m afraid I have no idea. Like Sinclair User, C+VG descended into utter chaos in the late 80’s: a riot of fonts, “whacky” clashing colours and dreadful cartoon characters. I can only presume that there was something in the water at EMAP; so we shouldn’t be too surprised they couldn’t get the months right on the magazine covers – I’m surprised they managed to get the ink to stick to the paper.

      Reply

  44. As the original founder and MD of Gemini Marketing Ltd, I’m very thankful to you for providing the memories from ‘back in the day’. I’ll be seeding ‘Acorn User’ very generously!

    Reply

    • … and I’ve just searched for Gemini Marketing across all the PDFs and found a photo of you (The Micro User, issue 29, page 24) 🙂 Thank you for seeding!

      Reply

    • Nearly 3yrs later and this comment above is still stuck on waiting for moderation while there’s tons of others here before & after mine getting friendly replies etc. Feelin the love…

      Reply

      • Sorry Blake; I’ve neglected this site for too long, and it was only when logging in yesterday (for the first time in 5+ years) I noticed there were several dozen pending comments. I’ve started working through them all in no particular order; apologies to anyone waiting on a reply!

    • Thank you; the only advice I can offer is to update your blog more than me, and don’t forget to turn on email notifications when there’s a comment pending moderation 🙂

      Reply

    • I’m painfully aware that Torrents aren’t the ideal solution for everyone (myself included). I’d love to use IPFS; I like the idea and I’ve played around with it a fwe times. However, it does terrible things to my bandwidth and CPU usage, and there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to restrict either of at the moment. As soon as I can figure out a workable solution I’ll definitely offer it up as an option.

      Reply

  48. All I can say is thank you. Thank you so much! These magazines need to be preserved. They’re part of the history of these machines.

    Have you ever considered archiving books from 80s home computers? Things like operating manuals, technical/repair manuals etc?

    How about archives of the cover tapes/discs that came with these magazines? I know that it’d be a huge task, but I’m sure that people (myself included where possible) would be willing to help… 🤔

    Finally, a quick question…

    Were there ever any magazines for the Memotech MTX 500/512, Oric 1 or Atmos, Elan (flan) Enterprise 64/128 or the TI99/4a etc?

    Thanks mate for such a fantastic job!

    Steve

    Reply

    • Yeah when (if?) I ever run out of mags than I’ll move onto manuals; most are widely available already, but – as with everything else here – my aim is to collect things together, make them easy to grab and (most importantly) make them searchable (usually via OCR).

      The only UK mag I personally know of that occasionally covered the Oric, Flan etc was my favourite of the era, Personal Computer Games – I’m sure it carried the occasional games review and news item on all of the above.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s