Ask HN: Does anyone have scans of these missing PC Plus issues (1991–1993)?

111 pointsposted 8 days ago
by billpg

Item id: 45595807

33 Comments

jfil

4 days ago

I looked around for you - the best I could find is a listing for the magazines at the British Library at https://www.bl.uk/. It appears that they have a copy of all the issues and they are available by request for physical viewing.

PaulRobinson

2 hours ago

I regularly go to BL and had planned to go in the next couple of weeks, except I just got an email suggesting a strike might mean there are limited facilities available from Monday for a couple of weeks.

That said, I'm happy to go and try and pull those copies (it's sometimes hard to get physical copies), and send the OP scans of his contributions (if they're in there!), when I go in mid-late November.

OP - if this is a useful help to you, let me know and we'll find a way to connect!

reedf1

3 hours ago

I'm busy the next few days but I could clear an afternoon to check this out. I live nearby.

dandelionv1bes

5 hours ago

If you’re in the UK this is quite an easy solution. The library is right by two large train stations and you can sign up same day for a card.

dcminter

2 hours ago

> you can sign up same day for a card

Do you know if there are any hoops to jump through these days? My understanding was that a reader card used to require an academic referral or at least a write-up of the research you planned to conduct.

FWIW I was only ever there for the café or the bookshop though, neither of which required a card :D

toomuchtodo

3 hours ago

Not in the UK, would someone be interested in working with the library to get them scanned for the Internet Archive? What would the cost and logistics look like?

ta1243

2 hours ago

archive.org's been down for ages. I put it down to blocking the UK thanks to stupid UK laws, but I can't reach it from servers elsewhere either.

Is it still going or did it piss off the wrong person in America?

dcminter

2 hours ago

Random Sweden-based person here. I was using it fine yesterday & it's up and available today as well. Are you perhaps using some DNS provider that's blocking it? Or a VPN or something that's blocked from the other direction perhaps?

ta1243

10 minutes ago

archive.org resolves to 207.241.224.2 using cf, google and quad9

This is just tcp to 207.241.224.2 port 80 (delivered via curl) or from a router.

SYN goes out, nothing comes back.

I can't reach it from AS16509 (AWS eu-west-2), AS17547 (MOne in Singapore), AS18106 (Viewquest Singapore), AS20712 (UK), or AS4755 (Tata in India)

I can reach it from AS23674 (Nayatel Pakistan), AS174 (Cogent in US), AS3356 (Level3 in US), AS46887 (Crown Castle in US) and AS7545 (TPG Sydney)

I can also reach it via mozillavpn on AS39351 (London) and presumably other sites

Multiple machines, multiple ISPs, multiple ways to the internet. Very odd.

Thanks for confirming it's not fully broken though

foofoo12

4 hours ago

11h55 from Port Ellen.

trollbridge

5 hours ago

This can be a pain, but we’ve done the same thing at the Library of Congress. In theory, they have access to every digital book published, too.

xrisk

2 hours ago

Only books published by American publishers yeah?

billpg

8 days ago

PS. Link to the scans: https://archive.org/details/wpw-1991-1992-1993/WPW-1991-01/

Daneel_

4 hours ago

Unfortunately those don't contain the specific issues the OP mentioned.

js2

4 hours ago

You're replying to OP. :)

The link is in reference to "I found scans of his section on archive.org, including the issue where he announces the contest, but I couldn't find my particular contribution".

eterm

3 hours ago

I've always wondered why HN doesn't have an OP indicator. A blue name ( similar to the green name for new accounts ) or an asterisk, just something subtle, would do.

Perhaps they don't want to mark out the OP as "special" to the resulting conversation, but it would help make the situation here clearer.

maxbond

3 hours ago

A good compromise would be only marking their top-level comments. And/or doing this only for Show/Ask/Tell threads.

I'm sending this thread to the admins as a feature request.

rrr_oh_man

3 hours ago

Tampermonkey to the rescue!

jorvi

3 minutes ago

Can probably be made more optimal but hey it works

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name         HN OP highlight
  // @version      0.1
  // @description  Find OP username and change username color to blue
  // @match        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=*
  // @grant        none
  // @run-at       document-end
  // ==/UserScript==
  (function() {
    'use strict';

    // get OP 'userid'
    const opUsername = document.querySelector('span.subline a.hnuser')?.getAttribute('href');

    // Match other instances of same 'userid' in 'hnuser' class
    if (opUsername) {
        const style = document.createElement('style');
        style.textContent = `
            /* Post header username */
            span.subline a.hnuser[href="${opUsername}"],
            /* Comment header username */
            span.comhead a.hnuser[href="${opUsername}"] {
                color: #2749F5 !important;
            }
        `;
        document.head.appendChild(style);
    }
})();

iam-TJ

an hour ago

Have you checked out the The National Museum of Computing (TNMoC) archive. Last time I was there they had a rather good magazine collection going back to the early 1980s. It may be worth a call. I see they have an (incomplete) online catalogue:

https://www.tnmoc.org/library-archive

afavour

5 hours ago

Haven't heard that name in years! Thanks for a trip down memory lane. I was always more of a PC Format reader than PC Plus but would buy any of these magazines I could get my hands on and devour them. A simpler time...

dcminter

2 hours ago

I was a devotee of PC Plus back in the early 90s with my first XT compatible. I have exceedingly fond memories of the 5¼" cover disks and discovering a variety of shareware, freeware, nagware, commercial-but-lightly-maimed-ware and so on. I learnt a huge amount about the PC from their pages too.

Sadly most of the cover-disk images kicking around at archive.org are from the later 3½" cover disk era, by which time I was at college and more focused on Linux, SLS/Slackware, and so forth.

supportengineer

2 hours ago

All I have is Family Computing, INFO, and Amiga World

radial_symmetry

3 hours ago

This post is proof that I truly do not understand what it takes to get to the front page of HN

dcminter

2 hours ago

It requires that it offer the opportunity for an interesting discussion in the view of those checking the /new page at the time that it's posted.

This ticks several boxes - the desire to archive technical literature, sympathy for an achieveable goal, and nostalgia for the magazines of yesteryear.

The element of serendipity is part of the appeal for me; for example if OP had posted at a different hour, it might have sunk without trace.

toomuchtodo

8 days ago

Might inquire in r/DHExchange as well.

ta1243

2 hours ago

For the 120th (10 year) issue, I think in 1996, they had a "what will computers look like in 10 years time" article.

I'd love to see that.

roflchoppa

4 hours ago

oh wow! back in August of 2005, I was on a trip to the UK and found a magazine that was talking about Counter-Strike hacks, and I think it was published by PC Plus,

I could be wrong but man I want to find that magazine now.

roflchoppa

4 hours ago

ahhhh nah i don't think it was PC Plus, but man I wish I could locate the magazine. :(

jen20

6 hours ago

PC Plus in the days of Paul Stephens (RIP) and Dave Pearman was hands down the best computing managazine around. I believe I have every issue from -1994-2000 with the exception of Feb 97 (long story) but these ones predate me sadly.

stavros

4 hours ago

> he noted it didn’t quite qualify for the contest since I hadn’t written PKZIP myself.

Why? Had the other entries written GCC/LD themselves?