RGB Classic Games Forum

Cire wrote:While not very obvious, I was able to find a mirror of Blizzard's FTP at the Internet Archive among an assorted Collection of website grabs here: https://archive.org/details/archiveteam ... bot_go_141

That seems to be a snapshot from 2014. The FTP is actually still there, but public access/viewing is blocked for whatever reason. You can view the contents (and get at least some files) via the Wayback Machine anyway: http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/. I've tried several links to files, they can still be downloaded from http://ftp.blizzard.com.

Cire wrote:Speaking of that, does anyone know a program that can open WARC files? I've been unable to succesfully do open such files.

WARC? Do you mean WAR, as in the Warcraft & Warcraft II data format? There's a couple of tools that can open and edit them, like WarDraft.

Yeah, I noticed that too, and know of the mirror at Gameaholic (which for some reason only works via HTTP protcol), but I thought I'd mention the mirror at IA incase the other go down. I'm talking about the .warc file format (apparently stands for Web ARChive), Internet Archive seems to use that format for a lot of website and filesite grabs (e.g. the Blizzard FTP grab I linked to). None of the programs I've tried seem to be able to open them.

Internet Archive lists a lot of files and directory structure of Sierra's FTP here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/ftp.sierra.com/*
Haven't tried yet how many (if any) files are backed up.

Some stuff from 2005 and 2006 works, mostly patches so far.

[Edit] Some demos too, but not sure if they're fully preserved.

BTW, do you happen to know if there's a list of Game FTP's or know of any ones besides those listed here? I mean the adresses, so doesen't have to be alive anymore. I Think a lot of game companies used to have FTP's, but I didn't have an interest in looking for them at the time. I'm looking in the Wayback Machine, but I'm not aware of any way to actually "search" it, so it's kind of hard when not knowing the adresses. It seems hard to find info about such things on the web too.
[EDIT] Also, if you know of any mirrors of BioWare's FTP, I would also be grateful, I'm trying to recreate it, since I lost the mirror I had. I've only found two mirrors at the Wayback Machine, both are only partial.

Usually I try to access the Wayback Machine version of of a developer's/publisher's website, if this is known (MobyGames often gives good leads on that). If the site's archived pages are functional the download links often point to an FTP, even if some of the files are mirrored as HTML at the same site. The Links section is also worth checking, as it might give leads to other interesting sites.

You can also approach this from the opposite end so to speak, if you're looking for a specific file. Old messages in newsgroups (archived by Google Groups) or stored search results at places like FileWatcher (and FTP search engine) can give clues to possible download locations. Just Googling for an exact files name (by enclosing it in quotes) may give some interesting results. Also there are pages with links to original downloads, like this, or the archived pages of Lord Soth's Games on the Internet.

You can also surf Wayback Machine copies of gaming magazines, e.g. PC World, GamesMania, NEXT Generation etc. (some of them are mentioned in this thread). In some cases this yields files (as described here), in others - info on file names and sizes. If you use this kind of combined approach to sources, you may find lots of interesting stuff, although it's not always what you were originally looking for

Right, thanks!
BTW, here's the two partial IA BioWare FTP links: https://web.archive.org/web/*/ftp.bioware.com/* and https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ft ... oware.com/*
EDIT: Also, I Think there's a way to know if a download is complete or only partially backed up at WayBack Machine. If it's incomplete, it usually fails to download and Cuts off where the file ends. At least in MS Edge web browser, not sure about others.

A while ago I discovered this old FTP list: https://www.piratepad.ca/p/old-ftp-list
Hope it can be of use to someone! A small Word of warning, it gives a certificate error, but I don't Think there's anything malicious with it.

Cire wrote:Also, I Think there's a way to know if a download is complete or only partially backed up at WayBack Machine. If it's incomplete, it usually fails to download and Cuts off where the file ends. At least in MS Edge web browser, not sure about others.

I noticed that many files from 96-98 that are incompletely stored will stop downloading roughly about 1 MiB (Litude mentioned this a while ago). However, I noticed that incomplete files from later dates (after 2000) may vary in the size of the part that has been archived. I've encountered at least one file which had 7 MiB of over 10 MiB stored, and another which IIRC went over 10-15 MiB (of the total size of about 50 MiB) before cutting off. From this I conclude that the only sure way to know is to download the entire file.

I'm attaching some pages with links I copied off the Interwebs, could be useful for reference.

[Edit] An updated archive can be found in the post below.

I dug up a few more sources in my archives and organized the entire thing more neatly.

Here's the official HTML mirror of Eidos Interactive's FTP from early 2000s:
http://web.archive.org/web/200111040423 ... pub/demos/

The HTML protocol seems to have at least partially preserved some files (check the stuff dated 2010; files from 2006-2007 seem to redirect to the FTP protocol instead).

Thanks for reminding me about Eidos!
At least some files from 2006 seems to work too.
They also had FTP's at "ftp.eidos.com" and "ftp.eidos.co.uk" at least, so it may be Worth checking if those have files backed up at Wayback Machine.
Many older files from Sierra seems to work, mostly videos this far, some files from 2007 and pre-2005 works too.

I just went through the first post and marked all FTPs that are now down. Luckily some were archived by the Archive Team and can be found over at archive.org.

MrFlibble wrote:Game developer and publisher FTP sites
ftp://ftp.atari.com/demos/
ftp://ftp.bluebyte.com/demos/
ftp://ftp.gtinteractive.com/demos/
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/
ftp://ftp.lucasarts.com/demos/pc/
ftp://ftp.team17.com/pub/t17/demos/pc
ftp://ftp.ubisoft.com/Demos/
ftp://ftp.wizworks.com/demos/
http://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demos/

Mirrors:
ftp://ftp.games.skynet.be/spool1/games/ ... com/demos/
ftp://ftp.games.skynet.be/spool1/games/ ... twood.com/
http://ftp.gameaholic.com/pub/mirrors/ftp.blizzard.com/

DOS games
ftp://ftp.padua.org/pub/msdos/dos/games/local/
ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/games/
http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/coast/games/
ftp://ftp.pgp.net/pub/msdos/dos/games/local/
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/games/PC/
ftp://ftp.uni-potsdam.de/pub/systems/dos/games/
ftp://delphi.hs-niederrhein.de/pub/dos/games/
http://www.ftp.funet.fi/index/msdos/games/
http://www.gamers.org/pub/archives/uwp-uml/ [mirror]

Windows games
ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/vol/rzm1/ntware/games/files/
ftp://ftp.farlep.net/pub/clubix/demo/
ftp://ftp.farlep.net/pub/clubix/demo2/
ftp://ftp.farlep.net/pub/clubix/demo3/
ftp://ftp.fi.netbsd.org/.m/archive1l/ft ... n95/games/
ftp://ftp.gamers.org/pub/mirrors/ftp.ga ... .uk/demos/
ftp://ftp.peliplaneetta.net/pelidemot/
ftp://ftp.uni-potsdam.de/pub/systems/win95/games/
http://elektron-bbs.dyndns.org/files/win95/spiele/
http://ftp.gameaholic.com/pub/demos/

Thanks, that's useful MrFlibble!
SUNET's FTP that you linked to are still available on the very same server, just moved to a different location, here: http://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp. ... /games/PC/

Glad to know that! The NTWare thing is also still available at a different address:
ftp://ftp.pl.vim.org/packages/ntware/games/files/

Guimo

• Shareware v2.2: guimo.zip
• Wallpaper (BMP): guimo-w.zip