BBS ads in zip comments
category: offtopic [glöplog]
During the first half of the 1990s, it was common for BBSes to add ASCII and even ANSI text adverts onto ZIP file archives. It is a different and much faster approach than inserting an advert into the compressed archive, especially for the clunky PCs of the era. Yet today, it is a forgotten feature even though you could consider this a form of proto-online advertising?
There are many thousands of BBS and FTP site adverts hidden in people's DOS and Amiga(?) zip file collections that I think are worth preserving by themselves.
So I wrote this tool, zipcmt, to display and extract these comments to individual textfiles for prosperity. I originally made it for the site defacto2.net, though anyone who is a digital hoarder for 1990s online files might find it helpful.
It's written in Go, meaning it's fast, portable, and dependency-free for major OSes. It converts the comments into web-friendly Unicode and preserves the zip file's last modification date. And it is open-source under an LGPL license.
https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt
I ran zipcmt over an extensive collection of files and compiled imperfect 25,000 BBS ASCII and ANSI ads into this file pack which some may also enjoy.
There are many thousands of BBS and FTP site adverts hidden in people's DOS and Amiga(?) zip file collections that I think are worth preserving by themselves.
So I wrote this tool, zipcmt, to display and extract these comments to individual textfiles for prosperity. I originally made it for the site defacto2.net, though anyone who is a digital hoarder for 1990s online files might find it helpful.
It's written in Go, meaning it's fast, portable, and dependency-free for major OSes. It converts the comments into web-friendly Unicode and preserves the zip file's last modification date. And it is open-source under an LGPL license.
https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt
I ran zipcmt over an extensive collection of files and compiled imperfect 25,000 BBS ASCII and ANSI ads into this file pack which some may also enjoy.
Finally :)
Nice idea!
Indeed.
awesome!
Cool idea!
Cool.
I have a bunch of old BBS advertisement executables from msdos era stored in some old hd somewhere, but no means to read those drives. Possibly ansi/ascii advertisements too, but can't recall because those weren't as interesting
I have a bunch of old BBS advertisement executables from msdos era stored in some old hd somewhere, but no means to read those drives. Possibly ansi/ascii advertisements too, but can't recall because those weren't as interesting
astu: We would really like a copy, please :) If you do Discord, would you kindly stumble into https://discord.io/demozoo and talk to us?
