In December 1990 a full-page advertisement in RUN, an American Commodore magazine, asked: “Why do over 17,000 Commodore owners like you buy Loadstar every month?” Loadstar had no pages. Each month subscribers received two 5¼-inch floppy disks, and everything on them, from the articles and editorial to the games and utilities, was read and run on the computer. The disk was the magazine.
This entry covers the disk magazines that were sold as products, by subscription or in shops, and the newsletters that computer clubs put on disk. The demo and cracking scenes made their own disk magazines, for each other and for no money; those are in Scene diskmags. Paper magazines with a free disk stuck to the front are in Magazine cover disks.
Softdisk and Loadstar
The best-documented disk magazines came from one company in Shreveport, Louisiana. Softdisk began with the Apple II. In September 1984 Electronic Games reported that Softdisk, “the monthly publication-on-disk for Apple pickers”, was moving into shops. Each issue had “programming techniques, hints, tips, a variety of useful programs, games, novelties, plus a great deal of interaction between subscribers in an almost club-like atmosphere”.
Loadstar did the same for the Commodore 64. Its advertisements in Ahoy! and RUN in October 1984 offered an issue on “a double-sided diskette” for $9.95, “a bonanza of unprotected programs”: a lunar lander, a Cows and Bulls code-breaking game, disk utilities and “a random aphorism generator”. The pitch was four words: learn, use, enjoy, share.
By January 1988 Softdisk sold three disk magazines side by side, each at $19.95 for a three-month trial: Softdisk for the Apple II, Loadstar for the Commodore 64 and 128, and Big Blue Disk for the IBM PC and compatibles. In December 1989 Compute! reported that the company had added Diskworld for the Macintosh. Softdisk also ran a games subscription, Gamer’s Edge, whose programmers left in February 1991 to found id Software.
What a subscription bought
Loadstar’s December 1990 advertisement shows what the company thought made a disk a magazine rather than a pile of programs. Every issue had “two 5¼” disks packed with six to ten original programs”; issue 72 carried a puzzle game, a machine-code disassembler that produced source code, a quiz and a text compressor. Then came the services around the disks:
- Quality control. “Every issue of Loadstar passes through dozens of quality checks, all to ensure you of error-free enjoyment.”
- Support. “When necessary, you can count on the Loadstar technical staff to answer your questions quickly!”
- Previews. “Major software companies from around the world offer our subscribers advanced previews of what’s to come in commercial software.”
- Discounts. A Software Savers Club offered software “at up to 40% off retail price”.
A three-month trial cost $19.95: “That’s just $6.65 an issue!” A reader who was not satisfied could return the first issue for a refund. The 17,000 subscribers were Softdisk’s own figure, “as of press time, but growing by leaps daily”.
Loadstar after Softdisk
Loadstar outlived the Commodore 64’s commercial life. It was still advertising in RUN in December 1992. By March 1999 it came from J & F Publishing, at the same Shreveport post office box, and had reached issue 176. “You will not find us on the magazine stands,” its advertisement in Commodore World said: it was sold only by subscription, at $7.95 a month, with more than 170 back issues available. It still paid readers for programs: “For your well-written program, you’ll receive cold, hard cash.”
Online histories say Fender Tucker edited it from the late 1980s, that J & F was owned by Tucker and Judi Mangham, and that Dave Moorman took over in the early 2000s. They disagree on the end: Wikipedia says the magazine stopped in 2007 after issue 249, with a 250th issue released unofficially in 2010, and Set Side B puts the last issue, number 250, in 2008.
Amiga disk magazines
The Amiga had commercial disk magazines of its own in the United States. Amazing Computing’s product guide for spring 1989 listed Jumpdisk, “a monthly disk-based magazine for the Amiga”, at $66 a year or $9 an issue, and A.X. Magazine, a “disk-based magazine” of “reviews, articles, columns, and music”, at $9.95 for three disks and a bonus disk.
Britain: tapes, disks and the newsagent
British publishers sold software-only magazines in shops rather than by post. Argus Specialist Publications was advertising 64 Tape Computing in October 1984: a cassette of three original games, utilities and “on screen reviews of newly launched games”, at £3.99 every other month “from WH Smith, Menzies and other leading stores”. Argus called it “Britain’s top selling tape magazine”.
Argus later sold a disk version with a paper magazine attached. Commodore Disk User, “from the publishers of Your Commodore”, launched with a November/December 1987 issue at £2.50. It came out every other month at first. The disk carried utilities, games and Compunet demos, and the printed part explained them and reviewed disk-based games. Your Commodore itself sold each month’s type-in programs on disk for £6.00 from 1986. Commodore Disk User passed with Your Commodore to Alphavite Publications of Milton Keynes in 1990.
For the Atari ST there was Stampede, “the disk based magazine for the ST user”, advertised in Zero in June 1990: “at your newsagents from April 26th 1990”, with “two packed disks” and a free game, Dark Side by Microstatus. It did not last the year. In January 1991 ST Format reported that it had gone into voluntary liquidation, “leaving subscribers out of pocket and angry”. ST Format was a competitor, and blamed “low editorial standards and lack of reader loyalty”. It added that the free game given with each issue, at £3.99, was often an old one, and that issue 2’s disk had carried a virus.
User groups
Computer clubs found the disk useful too. In April 1988 Antic described the newsletter of ACENNJ, the Atari Computer Enthusiasts of Northern New Jersey, edited by Paul Tupaczewski, as “the first we’ve ever seen that comes on a disk”: a BASIC program with editorials, columns, reviews, graphics, digitised sound, local bulletin-board news and a game, filling about 90 per cent of both sides of a 5¼-inch disk. A reader in West Germany wrote in July to say it was not the first. The Bit Byter User Club had published “an excellent on-disk newsletter” for more than two years, and “many users groups here in Germany publish their newsletters on disk”. See User groups.
Where commercial and scene met
In Britain the commercial and scene worlds shared the same shelves. Public-domain libraries sold disk magazines by post alongside demos and utilities, and the magazines’ PD pages reviewed and marked them. In June 1995 ST Format‘s round-up of PD reviews rated Warp issue one from Keefy’s PD at 92%, Floppyshop’s Third Dimension 10 at 85%, STellar Diskzine 14 at 83% and Transparent Dreams’ Trannies 1 at 54%. The scene’s own diskmags went through the same libraries; see Scene diskmags and Public domain.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 15, March 1984: Softdisk’s address in Shreveport.
- Electronic Games vol. 2 no. 14, September 1984, news: Softdisk for the Apple II and its move into retail.
- Ahoy! issue 10, October 1984, and RUN vol. 1 no. 10, October 1984: Loadstar advertisement ($9.95; “a bonanza of unprotected programs”).
- Family Computing, January 1988: Softdisk advertisement for Big Blue Disk, Loadstar and Softdisk ($19.95 for three months each; Softdisk, Inc., P.O. Box 30008, Shreveport).
- Compute! issue 115, December 1989: Softdisk’s Diskworld for the Macintosh, Loadstar, Loadstar 128 and Big Blue Disk.
- RUN vol. 7 no. 10, December 1990, p. 3: Loadstar advertisement (“over 17,000”; issue 72; the eight reasons; $19.95 trial; Softdisk Publishing).
- RUN vol. 9 no. 6, December 1992: Loadstar advertisement.
- Commodore World issue 25, March 1999: Loadstar advertisement (issue 176; J & F Publishing; $7.95 a month; subscription only).
- Gamer’s Edge and the founding of id Software: see the id Software entry.
- “Loadstar (magazine)”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Fender Tucker, J & F Publishing, Dave Moorman, issue 249 in 2007 and issue 250 in 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadstar_(magazine)
- “The History of Loadstar”, Set Side B (web, secondary): Tucker’s editorship, Moorman, issue 250 in 2008. https://setsideb.com/the-history-of-loadstar/
- Amazing Computing, Amazing Amiga Product Guide, spring 1989, p. 91: Jumpdisk and A.X. Magazine.
- Your Commodore vol. 1 no. 1, October 1984, p. 69: 64 Tape Computing advertisement (Argus Press Software). Vol. 3 no. 1, October 1986, p. 72: “Software for Sale”.
- Commodore Disk User vol. 1 no. 1, November/December 1987: cover (£2.50) and p. 3, contents and masthead (bi-monthly; Argus Specialist Publications). Commodore Disk User, 1990–91: mastheads (Alphavite Publications).
- Zero issue 8, June 1990, p. 37: Stampede advertisement.
- ST Format issue 18, January 1991, p. 14, news: Stampede’s voluntary liquidation.
- Antic vol. 6 no. 12, April 1988: the ACENNJ disk newsletter (Gregg Pearlman). Vol. 7 no. 3, July 1988, letters: Joseph Kennedy of Marl on the Bit Byter User Club and German user groups.
- ST Format issue 71, June 1995: “PD Choice Round-Up”.