Softdisk PC

Softdisk PC was a diskmagazine of the 1980s and 1990s, which started in 1986 as Big Blue Disk and later became On Disk Monthly before settling into its final name of Softdisk PC. It ended publication in the mid-1990s. It was one of the publications of Softdisk Publishing, which also included Softdisk for the Apple II, Loadstar for the Commodore, Softdisk for Mac (formerly Diskworld), Softdisk for Windows, Gamer's Edge, and PC BusinessDisk (and a few others).

It had various specialized file formats used in presenting its articles and menus, run through a "shell" program which presented the issue.

Early issues used a text-mode shell that worked on the whole range of PCs from non-graphical Monochrome Display Adapters (although these weren't officially supported because most other programs on the issues required graphics) to the various graphical adapters (CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA). Later a new graphical shell was developed which required VGA or up. The storage medium for the issues also evolved with the times; originally one or more 360K 5 1/4" PC-format floppies, later a 3 1/2" 720K disk, and still later a CD-ROM with its whopping 600 megabytes or so of storage. While the floppy medium was still in use, compactness of size was of great importance, leading to the use of the Softdisk Text Compressor.

External documentation

 * Internal documentation of VGA shell files used in the early 1990s