Before the Internet we would rely on printed material such as books and magazines for information on using the Atari ST. We also had another source of material in the form of the diskzine. This was simply a magazine on a floppy disk that could be easily copied and shared amongst the community for free. The diskzine would consist of a collection of articles in text format along with free software. The main part of the diskzine was the shell. This was the name given to the program that would allow the reader to view the menus and content of the diskzine. The shell would contain code for a doc displayer which would read the text articles from the disk and display them on screen, allowing the reader to scroll through the articles as well as adjust the size and text of it.
There were many diskzines for the Atari ST. Here are a few of them.
STOSSER
Stosser provided articles, tutorials and a selection of free giveaways for people who wanted to learn about the STOS Basic programming language.
POWER
Power contained articles on just about anything. It had a selection of programming articles, game reviews – and a lot of silly nonsense.
ATARI TIMES
Atari Times mainly focused on everything ST related along with news from the Atari ST community.
Diskzines were put together by the community for the community. Unlike the commercial printed magazines who had paid writers, nobody got paid for their work on the diskzines. The general idea is that everyone submitted articles and software for free and receive nothing back except for fame and recognition, along with the thrill of knowing many people would be benefiting from their work. Along with general articles, diskzines would also contain software reviews, problem pages where someone could ask for help and contact pages where people could connect with new friends and swap software with. Diskzines found their way around the world via the Public Domain Libraries which were responsible for mass distribution of free software. They were also distributed by ST users who would send copies to their friends.
With information and software easily obtained from the Internet and social media such as Facebook there is no need for the humble diskzine anymore. However, they will always be a place for them in the hearts of many Atari ST users who remember a time before the Internet.