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by ahonhn 1039 days ago
For me dialup wasn't an option to get fish disks. Nearest BBS were in the city, so it was a long distance call ($$$), and I'd have to stick to 1200 bps because of the line noise. Downloading a full 880k disk would have tied up the phone at long distance rates for hours and hours.

But there were a couple of shops in the city that did Amiga stuff and some of them could get you fish disks, so I got a lot of my Amiga stuff from fish disks.

Things like Az text editor, many small games. Med and Octamed! So much cool stuff. Getting box of 10 fish disks was like opening Christmas presents.

For what its worth, my favourite fish disk (well, the one I still remember individually with great fondness) was #162, and I'll post the contents below as its a great example of them in general. Many hours I spend playing LabyrinthII - a text adventure style single player battle royale game - with the "Unknown Girl" track playing in another window on my Amiga 2000 with its fully multitasking operating system...

CONTENTS OF DISK 162 ====================

Avi A workalike version of the UNIX vi editor for the amiga. Though not especially recommended for beginners, designed for those of you who may have the vi commands permanently hard-coded into your fingertips! Version 1.0, binary only. Author: Peter Nestor

CLI_Utilities This directory contains several subdirectories with small utilities, collected from various sources, that are only usable from the CLI. See the Readme file for further information. Some include source. Author: Various

Dark A small graphics and animation demo. Includes source. Author: Phil Robertson

Flow2Troff A little utility to convert from New Horizons Software "FLOW" files to UNIX "troff" files, suitable for printing on any troff-compatible laser printer. Version 1.0, includes source and a sample "FLOW" file. Author: Daniel Barrett

LabyrinthII A shareware role-playing text adventure game similar in operation to the Infocom text adventures. Includes source. Author: Russell Wallace

Iffar Maintains archives of Interchange File Format (IFF) FORM, CAT and LIST files in a manner that complies with the IFF CAT specification. Version 1.2, includes source. Author: Karl Lehenbauer

SetPALorNTSC A couple of utility programs for testing the suitability of a developed program in either the PAL or NTSC environments. Includes source and a sample program. Author: Peter Kittel

TES "The Electronic Slave" adds a gadget strip to the top of the cli window to perform such functions as device directories, info, run ED, and time. Currently, assignments are hardcoded but not difficult to change if you own a compiler. Version 1.1, includes source. Author: Joerg Anslik

UnknownGirl Another small musical piece similar in execution to "Synthemania" on disk number 153. Binary only. Author: Holger Lubitz

Source for listing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629192847/http://www.amiga-...