I finally got around to digitizing my family's old collection of shareware mail order disks. We basically got these disks pre-internet, circa 1990-1994, ordering from mail order catalogues like Software Labs and Reasonable Solutions. Those mail order companies were basically middle men between BBSs where shareware was being uploaded, and computer owners who didn't have their own access to BBS or internet to download the stuff themselves. I guess it was a pretty good industry for a couple years until the internet became more accessible and widespread and there was no need for the middle man mail order companies anymore.
You can download the whole thing here, which is the files off the disks placed in directories corresponding to the disk labels. I also included a spreadsheet listing what is in here and what folder it is in. There's a lot of well known stuff like Commander Keen and Duke Nukem games, but also stuff that's a little more obscure. Also many non-game things like screensavers, simulations, math and music programs, and various utilities. Vast majority is for dos with some Win 3.1 stuff. I didn't count every program as some disks were collections of programs, but I estimate it to be approximately 150 programs.
You can download the whole thing here, which is the files off the disks placed in directories corresponding to the disk labels. I also included a spreadsheet listing what is in here and what folder it is in. There's a lot of well known stuff like Commander Keen and Duke Nukem games, but also stuff that's a little more obscure. Also many non-game things like screensavers, simulations, math and music programs, and various utilities. Vast majority is for dos with some Win 3.1 stuff. I didn't count every program as some disks were collections of programs, but I estimate it to be approximately 150 programs.
1990-1994 Mail Order 5.25" shareware disk collection : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Hello, welcome to my collection of 5.25” mail order floppy disks circa 1990-1994. When we were using 386/486 PCs in the first half of the 90s, prior to the...
archive.org
