The Big Torrent: How Much Can You Seed?

[Zarxrax]

Sounds fantastic! I think I first joined this site like 4-5 years ago, and I have been lying in wait all this time, specifically waiting for the day when a torrent comes up!

[te72]

I'm still on board Philly. Will seed any time my computer is on, but out of respect for the room mates, I will have a somewhat limited upload speed, at least until our house is finished. Then it's all yours hahahaha! =D

[nesmaster14]

Awesome! Looking forward to the torrent. I'll definitely like to support this for all the effort involved. Unfortunately I don't have any mags to scan, but if there's anything needed as far as organizing files or whatever, I can help.

[te72]

So, February update on torrent status?

[Zarxrax]

How goes the progress on the torrent? Is help needed with anything?

[Ferneu]

Torrent!

Torrent!

Torrent!

humm....

Torrent!

[chronos86]

Torrent Update?

[Zarxrax]

So is a torrent ever going to be posted or what? It was originally said that hopefully it would be ready at the beginning of the year. And that was over a year ago!

Does anyone out there have most of the magazines and could just make a torrent?

I'm honestly not sure what all the hassle is. It literally takes a couple of minutes to create a torrent.

People put in a lot of effort to scan these magazines and make them available, I would just like an easy way to access them that wont take me another year in itself to get ahold of them.

[Phillyman]

So is a torrent ever going to be posted or what? It was originally said that hopefully it would be ready at the beginning of the year. And that was over a year ago!

Does anyone out there have most of the magazines and could just make a torrent?

I'm honestly not sure what all the hassle is. It literally takes a couple of minutes to create a torrent.

People put in a lot of effort to scan these magazines and make them available, I would just like an easy way to access them that wont take me another year in itself to get ahold of them.

Hello Zarxrax,

Putting together a torrent is on our list of things to accomplish, but it is not an immediate concern. We went through this years ago, putting together torrents and no one other than myself and 1 or 2 other members around here seeded. At the moment we are finishing up the magazine and game database. After those tasks are done, I have a big site that is willing to host our entire collection and provide us direct download links. This means that members of Retromags will no longer have to deal with FileFactory/Rapidshare/etc. Once that site is hosting our collection, we will have the complete Retromags collection in the following areas.....

1) Direct Downloads

2) NewsGroups

3) FileFactory

Then we can deal with putting up a mirror of the collection on torrents. I believe it will be a waste of time though, because no one will seed the collection. The nature of torrents is a download and disconnect mentality. That is why I uploaded the vast majority of our downloads onto Newsgroups, once they were uploaded that one time.......they would be available for years. If you are just looking to mass download the Retromags collection quickly, I suggest signing up for a $3 trial of UsenetServer and just downloading everything over the 72 hours of unlimited downloading they give you.

[KiwiArcader]

There's always someone wanting everything for nothing. E.g., they moan about slow speeds as a free user but are generally too cheap to pay for a premium plan from a file-hosting company so they complain about sites not using torrents. You just know the same people will leech everything off torrents and then cut and run afterwards, never contributing back to keeping the torrent active. That was tried years ago. It failed then and it will fail again if they try it again. It failed because the tracker site it was created on (Underground-gamer) bellied up and no-one wants to host it on a site as unstable as Pirate Bay nowadays.

Creating a private utorrent tracker means your PC needs to be on 24/7 and you end up using your power etc for what benefit exactly that isn't already provided through using a file hosting company?

Maybe if IP Board, the software running this site, have a tracker add-on then Phillyman might be persuaded to do it, but he's too been busy creating software lists and trying to make this place some sort of uber-everything site to even scan magazines, which was the whole point of Retromags in the first place.

[Zarxrax]

KiwiArcader: Sounds like you don't know much about torrents, as everything negetive you say about them is completely incorrect. Trackers have not been necessary for torrents for years. ThePirateBay's instability is irrelevant as well, as before it went down recently, they weren't even hosting torrent files either--because torrent files are not needed anymore either.

I'm also pretty sure content this awesome shouldn't have much trouble keeping seeders. I mean hell, I've been ready to seed this thing for months now. Almost any community with interesting content and more than a handfull of interested people shouldn't have trouble keeping something seeded.

Phillyman: I'll gladly pay a bit to get access to a newgroup server if that's the easiest way to get them. My former experience with newsgroups about 15 years ago was that content generally only lasted a few days or weeks, so I had no idea that any of the magazines could still be on there. What is the newsgroup that they are on? And roughly how many magazines are currently available on it? The whole collection?

[Phillyman]

Maybe if IP Board, the software running this site, have a tracker add-on then Phillyman might be persuaded to do it, but he's too been busy creating software lists and trying to make this place some sort of uber-everything site to even scan magazines, which was the whole point of Retromags in the first place.

Kiwi, If you are going to say something....at least get your facts correct. You say I am busy trying to make this place some sort of uber-everything site to even scan magazines? I call bullshit on that. First off Retromags is a hobby of mine, this is not my 9-5 job. Last time I checked, the following recent magazines were scanned by me.....

Game Players Sega Guide Issue 12

Numb Thumb News Issue 1

Numb Thumb News Issue 2

PSX Issue 3

Atari Age Issue 5

Turbo Force Issue 4

Mega Play Issue 7

See here is the thing, I can't sit at my 9-5 job each day and scan magazines. But I can work on a spreadsheet of existing magazines/games and run an import of said list to the database. Where I choose to devote my time on this hobby is my choice, and whether you think I am scanning enough magazines or not.....I don't really care. Last time I checked, no one is required to output any amount of scanned material per month.

[Sean697]

I hope you can get the mags up on archive.org. That would be much preferable to file factory. Also because they have a preview function that lets you page through the mag without downloading. They got a great interface for downloading. IE no hassle. Plus it works on my iPad which I primarily use. Can't access any of these on my iPad without transferring from my PC which is a hassle. A torrent is nice but it would take time to make and update. Honestly any one of us could make a torrent and post it. Why don't you make it yourself zarlaxx? I have no desire to download everything or I would do it myself,

[Zarxrax]

I can gladly get one going. I just need to know whats the newsgroup I can get the magazines from. I've been searching this forum trying to find the answer for a while now, but I can't find what actual newsgroup (alt.binaries.???) that its posted on.

[Zarxrax]

Oh, looks like newsgroups have searching features these days. I think I can find what I need then, and if I'm able to get most everything I'll post up a torrent.

[Phillyman]

Phillyman: I'll gladly pay a bit to get access to a newgroup server if that's the easiest way to get them. My former experience with newsgroups about 15 years ago was that content generally only lasted a few days or weeks, so I had no idea that any of the magazines could still be on there. What is the newsgroup that they are on? And roughly how many magazines are currently available on it? The whole collection?

Newsgroups are a very fast way to play catch up with the Retromags collection. If you use the Newsgroups provided by your ISP, yes they won't have a great retention rate. If you subscribe to a premium service like NewsHosting or UseNetServer, you will be able to go back years. I think Newshosting is $15 for 1 month, and UseNetServer has a deal $3 for 3 days of unlimited downloads. However we will be putting the entire Retromags collection on a very big site and you will not be limited in any way as to how much you can download. I just need to gather up all the magazines and guides and send off a hard drive

[Phillyman]

Oh, looks like newsgroups have searching features these days. I think I can find what I need then, and if I'm able to get most everything I'll post up a torrent.

Here is the flood from last year....

https://www.binsearch.info/?q=retromags&max=100&adv_age=1100&server=

I plan to do another push very soon

[KiwiArcader]

Phillyman,

A few years ago this used to be the place to come to get mags. That was the reason people like me came onboard and contributed scans to the site.

Probably 2/3rds of the content for UK mags archived here were created by Meppi and I. Then you fucked off Meppi and he left after I had already been banned and you asked me to come back so I did. Then you completely dropped the ball after Megaupload packed up. Not only did you not put alternatives in place for two years for people to obtain content but you left the site completely and E-Day had to try and sort out the mess so the site continued in limbo for ages. THAT was the reason I created my own site. Because you dropped the ball big time. So don't go acting high and mighty like you haven't done anything negative because the facts support the fact that you have.

I know that everyone has a personal life and that these sorts of things are hobbies. And I know that what you do with your time is entirely up to you. However, the primary reason for the site was preserving magazines is it not? A couple of bursts of a half dozen mags over the course of a year or two tends to indicate you are preoccupied with other things, one of which appears to be trying to make this site some sort of all things to everyone mega-gospel center.

If you can't take some criticism of the 'perceived' current misdirection of the site currently from someone who actually gave a shit enough to re-upload mags when you finally got your A into G then feel free to delete my account ... again ... like you (and Meppi) did previously, but have the decency to delete my magazine submissions this time like you did with Meppi. You probably wouldn't though because you'd lose most of your UK content.

[Sean697]

Whoa now simmer down. As a lurker for years. This site did have some hiccups but alot of positive things seem to be happening this year. Things seem on the uptick to me. And a small group of people can only do so much. I mean I realize how long scanning and editing takes. John Smith has nearly a complete set of Next Generation now. But with only him scanning and uploading it will take years. E-day has a huge pile I mags I gave him. Any the other few people who are scanning can only put in so much at once. This site could probrably use more scanners. I may start scanning some stuff in my self now that I see how long it takes to get stuff presereved. Lets just say the site is heading in a great direction judging by the changes the last 6 months, and that more great changes are coming, and not try to focus too much on the past. (That I wasnt here for, but people do still think this site has died until I tell them its active again.)

[Phillyman]

Phillyman,

A few years ago this used to be the place to come to get mags. That was the reason people like me came onboard and contributed scans to the site.

Probably 2/3rds of the content for UK mags archived here were created by Meppi and I. Then you fucked off Meppi and he left after I had already been banned and you asked me to come back so I did. Then you completely dropped the ball after Megaupload packed up. Not only did you not put alternatives in place for two years for people to obtain content but you left the site completely and E-Day had to try and sort out the mess so the site continued in limbo for ages. THAT was the reason I created my own site. Because you dropped the ball big time. So don't go acting high and mighty like you haven't done anything negative because the facts support the fact that you have.

I know that everyone has a personal life and that these sorts of things are hobbies. And I know that what you do with your time is entirely up to you. However, the primary reason for the site was preserving magazines is it not? A couple of bursts of a half dozen mags over the course of a year or two tends to indicate you are preoccupied with other things, one of which appears to be trying to make this site some sort of all things to everyone mega-gospel center.

If you can't take some criticism of the 'perceived' current misdirection of the site currently from someone who actually gave a shit enough to re-upload mags when you finally got your A into G then feel free to delete my account ... again ... like you (and Meppi) did previously, but have the decency to delete my magazine submissions this time like you did with Meppi. You probably wouldn't though because you'd lose most of your UK content.

Yes KiwiArcader, Retromags had a pretty good system back then. We were able to allow users such as yourself to upload magazines directly to Retromags and users could download them directly from Retromags. However, that system was not scalable for the amount of content we were creating. When you are paying $10-$20 per month for a shared hosting account, they don't take kindly to one site eating up 100GB of storage space.....and they really dislike when you are using 1TB of bandwidth per month. They told me to cut it out or face having Retromags shut down, so we had to look for alternatives. So what are the alternatives?

1) Pay around $100-$200 per month for a dedicated server. Then we could once again host the collection right here. But where is that money going to come from?

2) Use a service like Rapidshare, FileFactory, etc.....the cost is about $8 per month. But these sites can just disappear like MegaUpload did.

3) Use a service like Newsgroups, upload once, and let the users download at a cost to themselves. Hope other members create torrents from those magazines .

I am all for going back to the old system of letting users download directly from Retromags. Nothing needs to even be changed on the site, all I need to do is pay the bill of $1475.00 for 1 year of service. They will migrate Retromags to a dedicated server and we can allow up to 5TB of downloads per month. But I doubt that will happen....so lets continue.

Since 2005 Retromags has always suffered from one major issue. That we were a 1 trick pony. What that means is Retromags from 2005-2012 was just a forum where you could come and download magazines from. Sure we had people who would occasionally post topics and such, but the majority of our traffic comes to Retromags to click the download button and then to leave and not return for months at a time. So I wanted to add value to Retromags, something more than a site to just download a magazine. I also wanted to condense down many aspects of Retromags into a single entity.

That is where that Magazine Database came into this picture. Why have 4-6 different places for information on the same magazine?

• Download Manager Entry for Nintendo Power Issue 1
• Wiki Entry for Nintendo Power Issue 1
• Project Tracker for Nintendo Power Issue 1
• Gallery Image for Nintendo Power Issue 1

All of that information could be combined into one system to be managed. With the Magazine Database, now members can go to the entry for Nintendo Power Issue 1 and...

• Download the magazine
• Edit the Wiki contents of the magazine
• Enter in that they are going to scan that magazine
• Add an image of that magazine

One of the other issues Retromags has always suffered from, is that only a select few members are every going to take that step to scan a video game magazine, edit it, and upload it to Retromags. In the past this was pretty much the ONLY way that members could help Retromags be better than it was the day before. Sure they could help our forums be active by posting new topics or replies, but like you said.....the primary reason of this site is preserving magazines. So with the databases, I am giving everyone other ways to help make Retromags a more valuable resource. Now members can come and add information into an ever growing database, show me any site out there that has the ambition to try and provide a home for every single video game magazine, from every single country, across the past 35 years. That is what I am doing here with Retromags, that is a project that no one has ever attempted....but I am willing to take on with the help of a select few on these forums.

Everything I am doing at this moment is to make Retromags better and more reliable in the future. There is only one of me and I have a lot on my plate. From the outside you might look at my post about making a Retromags collection tool and think......Why is he wasting time on creating a program for Retromags. The issue is making things easier and more organized. If you asked me right now how many magazines Retromags has for download.....I could not tell you the answer to that. So how do I reupload the ENTIRE Retromags collection, if not even I know what that is? So I decided to leverage the power of the new magazine database, to give me the ability to digitally fingerprint all of our releases, and then have a program talk to that database and compare it against what is on my hard drive. Since 2010 when we stopped hosting magazines on this site, it has become very hard to keep up with a complete set of downloads. One member may upload his scans to Rapidshare, while another may use 4Shared. Other than when E-Day or myself notice a new upload and post it on the front page, how does anyone know a new magazine has been uploaded? These are problems that I am trying to solve around here, and all I get is complaints about missing magazines or the current download methods. All 4000 members here at Retromags now have the ability to create download links. Look through the Magazine database, how many people have taken the time to reupload a magazine that they downloaded 2-3 years ago?

Are the downloads important? Absolutely! But there are other parts of Retromags that need to be fixed and can only be done by myself or E-day. Download links can be restored by any member here at Retromags. I have a post outlining what files I was missing from my collection. Also you might want to subscribe to my WIP thread, as I am scanning 3 magazines at the moment......while coding a collection tool, and importing 17,000 game records, and importing 200 publication records, and coding some PHP tools to manipulate the databases each night, and talking to a designer about a new look for Retromags, and talking to a developer about a hook to let users add magazines to their own personal collections, and trying to rewrite all the guides around here, and trying to keep myself sane.

[Sean697]

Exellent post. I am all for it. The datatbase is great. especially with the contents. If someone is looking for a particular magazine or article, they dont need to wast time downloading all of them. They can just download the one they need because its contents are listed already. And I totally agree on getting people involed with the maging database entries. Its something anyone can do.

[KiwiArcader]

The main driver for my answer wasn't even related to him. He was just collateral damage in all of this. It related to people I like to call leechers whining about how long it's taking to download a FREE mag then moaning about how things would be better for THEM if we did it some other way. These people generally don't front up with the cash for a premium hosting plan so they can get better speeds etc so by that same notion don't ...

1. Scan anything and contribute or
2. Donate to the site financially or via any other meaningful way either.

This spiralled because I made one comment about Phillyman spending a LOT of time creating things like video games databases which places like Mobygames already have, or magazine databases which also have been covered by other sites like Magazines from the Past, and not a lot of time on actually scanning mags because of it so he took exception to it and yet this is actually the current scenario. I have a lot of respect for people like Rob or Andy who actually scan and create content even if both of them are not particularly putting a lot of content out there. But because of issues around that I created my own site as I see magazines preserved as more important than a fancy database. That's just me.

What I don't like are people who are getting content for free complaining like a whiny little bitch like we should be doing whatever they say. "Quote .... I'm honestly not sure what the hassle is ..." That's a nice way to ask right?

[Sean697]

I believe what phillyman has planned for the big site hosting will solve these problems. And like I said, anyone could then get all the mags easy and make their own torrent or supervise it for the site with a link here. I wouldn't put that as high priority for the site to do eigther if at all.

[E-Day]

What I don't like are people who are getting content for free complaining like a whiny little bitch like we should be doing whatever they say. "Quote .... I'm honestly not sure what the hassle is ..." That's a nice way to ask right?

Users like that pop up from time to time. I generally don't bother with them as they generally don't know what it takes to run this site (even without the current work being done) and are usually looking for a handout with no intention of contributing. I mean, a member since 2009 with only 10 posts, all in this thread in this year only? Nothing to get worked up over.

[Phillyman]

The main driver for my answer wasn't even related to him. He was just collateral damage in all of this. It related to people I like to call leechers whining about how long it's taking to download a FREE mag then moaning about how things would be better for THEM if we did it some other way. These people generally don't front up with the cash for a premium hosting plan so they can get better speeds etc so by that same notion don't ...

1. Scan anything and contribute or
2. Donate to the site financially or via any other meaningful way either.

This spiralled because I made one comment about Phillyman spending a LOT of time creating things like video games databases which places like Mobygames already have, or magazine databases which also have been covered by other sites like Magazines from the Past, and not a lot of time on actually scanning mags because of it so he took exception to it and yet this is actually the current scenario. I have a lot of respect for people like Rob or Andy who actually scan and create content even if both of them are not particularly putting a lot of content out there. But because of issues around that I created my own site as I see magazines preserved as more important than a fancy database. That's just me.

What I don't like are people who are getting content for free complaining like a whiny little bitch like we should be doing whatever they say. "Quote .... I'm honestly not sure what the hassle is ..." That's a nice way to ask right?

I can see where you are coming from, honestly if there were 3 of me and they were all focused on getting things done around here.....we could have had everything completed in 3-4 months. You want more preservation of magazines? Good, me too! I want to set up a very clear and easy process for members to come and find answers to the following....

How do you scan

What should you scan

How do you edit

How to upload the preserved magazine

How do you announce it on the front page

How else you can assist around the site

Right now our guides are HORRIBLY out of date, and I bet anything that some users come to Retromags and when they can't find the information they need.....they assume their help is not needed and leave. Again it all comes back to the databases making things much easier. Even if a user uploads last months Game Informer....the download link will never show up. So addressing your concerns....

Yes Magazines from the Past is doing a great job at gathering information on gaming magazines. But their concentration seems to be heavily UK based an what I am trying to do is be a worldwide resource. Also who knows what terms are on Wikia's site, or how long Andynick will continue his passion. I hope forever, but I know the burnout all too well.

Yes MobyGames is a fantastic resource for video games. Last I check I did not see them posting video game adverts from magazines. The video game database exists to give the review scores a home, the advertisements and gives members a fun place to come and create something from scratch. I would not dare edit the entry for Super Mario Bros 3 on Wikipedia/MobyGames for fear of being scolded for doing something wrong.

With these new changes, there is more to Retromags to keep members on this site.....rather than just downloading and leaving.