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.

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!

Hello there! I had sent this HN submission in a few weeks ago and I thought it had disappeared off the "new" page with only one comment. I came back on today and happened to notice some activity and HN had reposted my piece five days ago.

I have since contacted the British Library and they have the eight issues I was looking for, but I live way up north and it would take a little planning and spending whole day to get there, but if you'd be willing to do that, yes please. I've narrowed it down to these eight which are in the right timeframe and are missing from the archive.org collection. I do remember my mention was right at the end of that month's column, right before the usual sign-off and the address in Bath to send in contributions.

My email address is my HN username at gmail.

I have emailed you, so if you haven't seen that, check your junk folder.

Thank you. I've written back.

(Short version of email: Yes please!)

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

Thanks very much. That’s a generous offer. If you do find time to check, I’d be grateful. I’ve narrowed it down to eight issues that aren’t in the archive.org scans. My submission was mentioned near the end of Wilf’s column, just before the usual sign-off and the postal address in Bath.

(You might meet PaulRobinson while you're there, looking for the same issues!)

Thanks again for even considering it. Much appreciated! My email address is my HN username at gmail.

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.

Only books published by American publishers yeah?

The Library of Congress has tons of books from foreign publishers. I have gone there many times for their extensive collection of German and Russian scientific and technical monographs. They also have a ton of obscure foreign publications and periodicals.

Unfortunately, their catalog does not list this particular magazine as far as I can tell.

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.

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?

If I end up going to London myself, my intention was to scan Wilf's column of those eight issues for archive-org. Two other HN users have offered to go look for me and I can't really ask them to do extra work to do if they're already doing me a favour.

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?

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?

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

A bit late back to the party, but checking today I can curl archive.org from an AWS Cloud Shell in eu-west-2 no problem.

More specific is behind CloudFlare

I'm in California, no issues accessing it. I'm sure it'd be front page news if Internet Archive went down.

> 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

11h55 from Port Ellen.

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

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

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".

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.

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.

Tampermonkey to the rescue!

Quick slaptogether. I'm decidedly mediocre at web so if anyone has improvements, please post them :)

  // ==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' from class 'hnuser' in post subtext
    const opUsername = document.querySelector('span.subline a.hnuser')?.getAttribute('href');

    // Match other instances of same 'userid' in 'hnuser' class elsewhere in page
    if (opUsername) {
        const opHighlight = document.createElement('style');
        opHighlight.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(opHighlight);
    }
  })();

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.

Paul Stephens contributions were incredible. His web design articles in PC Plus and those Lotus Screencam tutorials on the SuperCD were what got me started. They were my first proper lessons in building web pages, and they ended up shaping my whole career in software.

I still remember following Huw Collingbourne’s Delphi and C++ Builder tutorials too. I actually learned to write a word processor in C++ from those.

PC Plus was such a good magazine. I bought it religiously from around 1996-2002. Miss those days.

Same, largely. As were the tools they somehow managed to negotiate for inclusion on the SuperCD.

Sadly paulspages.co.uk appears to be down. It would be great to recover the screen cam videos for YouTube though!

I did see a memorial recently [1] - turned out he lived up the street from me for many years.

[1]: https://www.brlsi.org/a-sad-farewell-to-paul-stephens/

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...

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.

You've probably already looked but it may be possible to purchase physical vintage copies if all else fails, e.g.: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?item=145752856587&rt=nc&_t...

There's at least one of the issues on eBay.

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.

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

Might inquire in r/DHExchange as well.

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

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.

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

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.

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

mmm PC Plus, UK mini version of Computer Shopper, 300 pages of product listings with prices to lust over.