💽 Software Archive 💽

💖 I have always loved collecting physical copies of things: DVDs, video games, CDs, you name it. I love physical media so much that I want to share my personal collection with you!

✅ CLICK HERE to navigate to my Internet Archive profile, where you'll find a small (but ever-growing) portion of my collection of vintage software, PC games, DVDs, and other physical media.

💽 I swipe most of these CDs from thrift stores, but I occasionally will pay a premium on eBay if it's something special that I'm looking for. Archiving them is purely a labor of love on my part; I think this sort of work is especially important in our age of streaming services with ever-changing programming and licensing rights. They really want us to own nothing, eh?

Other Archival Work

Most of my uploading happens on the Internet Archive, but there are some other places to which I've contributed my archival efforts:

• BigBoxDB - This is my friend Adam's creation, but I occasionally scan my own personal PC games and upload them here!
• The Sounds Resource - I don't have much approved here, but I have submitted a few game sound dumps to this site.

Workflow Information

Interested in my archival workflow?

🧹 Once I get a disc home, I'll clean it and try to get any scratches off of it. Then, I'll make a folder on my PC that'll hold the files associated with the disc. I use the following naming scheme for these folders:

"Software Name [Publisher] (Year Published)"

⚖️ After it's cleaned, I'll stick the disc in my external optical drive and use the open-source software, IsoBuster, to rip a virtual image of the raw disc data. Essentially, this software is just making a "virtual copy" of the physical disc. Depending on the age and/or format of the disc's contents, this virtual file type will either be .BIN or .ISO.

🖼️ While IsoBuster rips the disc, I go ahead and scan any accompanying paper ephemera (like CD inserts and manuals) with my Epson V600 scanner using the excellent SilverFast 9 software for This is paid software; it came bundled with my scanner.pre-cropping and processing.*

🧪 Once IsoBuster is done ripping the disc to a folder on my PC, I'll mount that virtual disc file and test the software to make sure it works. Most older software that I find doesn't work on modern versions of Windows, so I'll often use an era-appropriate virtual machine (usually Windows 98 or XP) to test it properly using VirtualBox.*

* If a disc is just clip art or some sort of graphics collection, I don't test it in a VM, as the images are usually directly accessible from the File Explorer.

📝 After I'm done testing the disc, I create a "Readme.txt" file using Notepad++. In this file, I'll write some general information about the disc. This is the longest part of the process; I usually spend 30-45 minutes writing about the software, including whatever research I conduct to find out more about it. Here's what my template looks like:

⬆️ Once I'm done organizing all the files into the disc folder, I key in the metadata for the disc's Internet Archive page, then I submit the files for upload. This usually takes another 10-45 minutes, but can sometimes take longer, depending on total file size. This is a hands-off part of the ordeal, so I just check in every so often to make sure the upload didn't fail, which does (unfortunately) happen.