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For someone who hadn't lived through that era to really understand how valuable a collection of shareware/freeware software on a disk was back then, you have to

For someone who hadn't lived through that era to really understand how valuable a collection of shareware/freeware software on a disk was back then, you have to understand that it was an era of information scarcity. Nowadays you can easily get your hands on pretty much any software you want in a matter of seconds. Back then, before most people were on the internet, your options were: - buy it from the local computer store - buy it from an ad in a computer magazine - type it in from a program listing in a magazine or a book - log in to a bulletin board system (BBS) and download it through your modem - trade some software at a user's group (where you could maybe pick up some Fred Fish disks) BBS's actually had pretty good collections of software, but the software was scattered over many of them, and Amiga BBS's were relatively rare compared to the legions of PC-centered BBS's. Fred Fish provided the valuable service of collecting all that freeware for you, so you didn't have to hunt around for it yourself -- all you had to do was get ahold of his disks (of which there were literally hundreds).

tjr 3y ago
We had a local Amiga user group, and they had many (most? all?) of the Fred Fish disks on floppy disk, a big box of them, and would make you a copy for a small fee. I remember being so excited to get a CD-ROM drive and the "Frozen Fish" archive CD!
- User23 3y ago
  Yeah CD-ROM was a game changer. I remember what a big deal the EduCorp CDs were in the Mac world.
awful 3y ago
Or even -rent- software from another state, even; place your order then a week or two later, it would show up. You had to then repackage and resend.
acherion 3y ago
A lot of shareware was also distributed on coverdisks for computer magazines. Not sure if this was a thing in North America, but in Europe and Australia, coverdisks were very popular.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  Circa '89 here in the UK there was a 400+ page book of shareware you could get by filling out a form in most magazines, the book then listed shareware by what it did and encouraged you to order a copy (for a modest fee to cover disk and postage fee) from them, with each order you'd receive the most recent copy of the book as well. Most of the time I just used the book as a guide to what I could extract via bitftp email from ftp.funet.fi, but the book came in handy during holidays when I had no internet access.
bombcar 3y ago
Part of it was even learning what you should be looking for - so the listings of software titles alone were valuable, as then at least you might know the question to ask.
digitalsankhara 3y ago
I don't remember the name of the MSDOS shareware vendor, but they had a monthly catalogue which was sent out by post. Each item had a pretty good description and I'd spent hours reading through the catalogue trying to visualise what the software would do. Then I'd fill in the order form, post it back with payment and wait a week or so for the floppies to arrive. That did not seem slow to me - it was my normal. I remember the excitement of installing the software and learning via the README.TXT files.
- Daub 3y ago
  Do read me texts still exist? I loved that tradition, but can't recall seeing one in commercial software in recent years.
- verve_rat 3y ago
  I had a similar experience as a kid. I remember ordering a couple of disks from a catalogue that listed program sizes and trying to pack as many games into those floppies as possible.
ahonhn 3y ago
For me dialup wasn't an option to get fish disks. Nearest BBS were in the city, so it was a long distance call ($$$), and I'd have to stick to 1200 bps because of the line noise. Downloading a full 880k disk would have tied up the phone at long distance rates for hours and hours. But there were a couple of shops in the city that did Amiga stuff and some of them could get you fish disks, so I got a lot of my Amiga stuff from fish disks. Things like Az text editor, many small games. Med and Octamed! So much cool stuff. Getting box of 10 fish disks was like opening Christmas presents. For what its worth, my favourite fish disk (well, the one I still remember individually with great fondness) was #162, and I'll post the contents below as its a great example of them in general. Many hours I spend playing LabyrinthII - a text adventure style single player battle royale game - with the "Unknown Girl" track playing in another window on my Amiga 2000 with its fully multitasking operating system... CONTENTS OF DISK 162 ==================== Avi A workalike version of the UNIX vi editor for the amiga. Though not especially recommended for beginners, designed for those of you who may have the vi commands permanently hard-coded into your fingertips! Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Peter Nestor CLI_Utilities This directory contains several subdirectories with small utilities, collected from various sources, that are only usable from the CLI. See the Readme file for further information. Some include source. Author: Various Dark A small graphics and animation demo. Includes source. Author: Phil Robertson Flow2Troff A little utility to convert from New Horizons Software "FLOW" files to UNIX "troff" files, suitable for printing on any troff-compatible laser printer. Version 1.0, includes source and a sample "FLOW" file. Author: Daniel Barrett LabyrinthII A shareware role-playing text adventure game similar in operation to the Infocom text adventures. Includes source. Author: Russell Wallace Iffar Maintains archives of Interchange File Format (IFF) FORM, CAT and LIST files in a manner that complies with the IFF CAT specification. Version 1.2, includes source. Author: Karl Lehenbauer SetPALorNTSC A couple of utility programs for testing the suitability of a developed program in either the PAL or NTSC environments. Includes source and a sample program. Author: Peter Kittel TES "The Electronic Slave" adds a gadget strip to the top of the cli window to perform such functions as device directories, info, run ED, and time. Currently, assignments are hardcoded but not difficult to change if you own a compiler. Version 1.1, includes source. Author: Joerg Anslik UnknownGirl Another small musical piece similar in execution to "Synthemania" on disk number 153. Binary only. Author: Holger Lubitz Source for listing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629192847/http://www.amiga-stuff.com/pd/fish.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230629192847/http://www.amiga-...
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
> Nowadays you can easily get your hands on pretty much any software you want in a matter of seconds. ...Kind of; there's plenty of choice, but a lot of them are padded with marketing and come with e.g. a subscription or things like that. Besides that there's often a lot of choices to be made, whereas back then utilities like a text editor were so new that you didn't even know there was a choice.

tjr 3y ago

We had a local Amiga user group, and they had many (most? all?) of the Fred Fish disks on floppy disk, a big box of them, and would make you a copy for a small fee. I remember being so excited to get a CD-ROM drive and the "Frozen Fish" archive CD!

User23 3y ago
Yeah CD-ROM was a game changer. I remember what a big deal the EduCorp CDs were in the Mac world.

awful 3y ago

Or even -rent- software from another state, even; place your order then a week or two later, it would show up. You had to then repackage and resend.

acherion 3y ago

A lot of shareware was also distributed on coverdisks for computer magazines. Not sure if this was a thing in North America, but in Europe and Australia, coverdisks were very popular.

NikkiA 3y ago
Circa '89 here in the UK there was a 400+ page book of shareware you could get by filling out a form in most magazines, the book then listed shareware by what it did and encouraged you to order a copy (for a modest fee to cover disk and postage fee) from them, with each order you'd receive the most recent copy of the book as well. Most of the time I just used the book as a guide to what I could extract via bitftp email from ftp.funet.fi, but the book came in handy during holidays when I had no internet access.

bombcar 3y ago

Part of it was even learning what you should be looking for - so the listings of software titles alone were valuable, as then at least you might know the question to ask.

digitalsankhara 3y ago

I don't remember the name of the MSDOS shareware vendor, but they had a monthly catalogue which was sent out by post. Each item had a pretty good description and I'd spent hours reading through the catalogue trying to visualise what the software would do. Then I'd fill in the order form, post it back with payment and wait a week or so for the floppies to arrive. That did not seem slow to me - it was my normal. I remember the excitement of installing the software and learning via the README.TXT files.

Daub 3y ago
Do read me texts still exist? I loved that tradition, but can't recall seeing one in commercial software in recent years.
verve_rat 3y ago
I had a similar experience as a kid. I remember ordering a couple of disks from a catalogue that listed program sizes and trying to pack as many games into those floppies as possible.

ahonhn 3y ago

For me dialup wasn't an option to get fish disks. Nearest BBS were in the city, so it was a long distance call ($$$), and I'd have to stick to 1200 bps because of the line noise. Downloading a full 880k disk would have tied up the phone at long distance rates for hours and hours. But there were a couple of shops in the city that did Amiga stuff and some of them could get you fish disks, so I got a lot of my Amiga stuff from fish disks. Things like Az text editor, many small games. Med and Octamed! So much cool stuff. Getting box of 10 fish disks was like opening Christmas presents. For what its worth, my favourite fish disk (well, the one I still remember individually with great fondness) was #162, and I'll post the contents below as its a great example of them in general. Many hours I spend playing LabyrinthII - a text adventure style single player battle royale game - with the "Unknown Girl" track playing in another window on my Amiga 2000 with its fully multitasking operating system... CONTENTS OF DISK 162 ==================== Avi A workalike version of the UNIX vi editor for the amiga. Though not especially recommended for beginners, designed for those of you who may have the vi commands permanently hard-coded into your fingertips! Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Peter Nestor CLI_Utilities This directory contains several subdirectories with small utilities, collected from various sources, that are only usable from the CLI. See the Readme file for further information. Some include source. Author: Various Dark A small graphics and animation demo. Includes source. Author: Phil Robertson Flow2Troff A little utility to convert from New Horizons Software "FLOW" files to UNIX "troff" files, suitable for printing on any troff-compatible laser printer. Version 1.0, includes source and a sample "FLOW" file. Author: Daniel Barrett LabyrinthII A shareware role-playing text adventure game similar in operation to the Infocom text adventures. Includes source. Author: Russell Wallace Iffar Maintains archives of Interchange File Format (IFF) FORM, CAT and LIST files in a manner that complies with the IFF CAT specification. Version 1.2, includes source. Author: Karl Lehenbauer SetPALorNTSC A couple of utility programs for testing the suitability of a developed program in either the PAL or NTSC environments. Includes source and a sample program. Author: Peter Kittel TES "The Electronic Slave" adds a gadget strip to the top of the cli window to perform such functions as device directories, info, run ED, and time. Currently, assignments are hardcoded but not difficult to change if you own a compiler. Version 1.1, includes source. Author: Joerg Anslik UnknownGirl Another small musical piece similar in execution to "Synthemania" on disk number 153. Binary only. Author: Holger Lubitz Source for listing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629192847/http://www.amiga-stuff.com/pd/fish.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230629192847/http://www.amiga-...

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

> Nowadays you can easily get your hands on pretty much any software you want in a matter of seconds. ...Kind of; there's plenty of choice, but a lot of them are padded with marketing and come with e.g. a subscription or things like that. Besides that there's often a lot of choices to be made, whereas back then utilities like a text editor were so new that you didn't even know there was a choice.