Farewell, Hyperarchive

By Jason McIntosh on October 3, 2008 1:04 PM | | Comments (8)

My friend Noah, a sysadmin at MIT, reports that on October 1 he switched off the info-mac hyperarchive (hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu), one of the oldest websites on the internet. It was a web-accessible version of the info-mac archive, an online repository of Mac freeware and shareware, which before then was mainly browsable via FTP. I have fond memories of spending evenings trolling through the hyperarchive's directory structure, looking for neat stuff to fill my Mac LC's 40 GB hard drive, circa 1994.

Several years ago, when I was writing the Nutshell book, I discussed the possibility of being the hyperarchive's volunteer maintainer. Nothing came of it, though, and the server was allowed to coast into electronic senescence. I see from that Wikipedia article that there exists an info-mac website that claims lineage from the original archive and mailing list, but it's now just one more computer-news website in a vast sea. It does sport a mirror of the info-mac archive, where it's quickly apparent how little traffic it got since the turn of the decade; viewing some categories by date shows you software from the 1990s on the first page.

Though the hyperarchive's role was supplanted by better-organized websites years ago (hello, versiontracker), I won't forget its important role in the early history of Macintosh software, the web, and myself as a computer dood. Goodbye, old friend!

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8 Comments

Dan said:

Hey Jason!

The HyperArchive at MIT was the first searchable mirror of the Info-Mac Archive, but it was always a just a third-party mirror. You, I and many hundreds (thousands?) of others do fondly remember getting the latest goods from the Info-Mac Archive on a regular basis.

The "current" website you mentioned above really is Info-Mac, it just looks and behaves differently than you remember. The Info-Mac Digest mailing list has been replaced with a online forum, an entirely new searchable database-driven versions of the Info-Mac Archive and Digest have been created.

We're still in the process of importing all Info-Mac Digest mailing list content going back to 1984. It contains a great wealth of information, and all of it is fully searchable from our new Dashboard widget. There is also an iPhone-friendly version of the entire site in the works.

So by all means come drop us a visit!

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