I finally ditched Wayback Machine for the old GeoCities archive on CD-Roms

I used to rely on the Wayback Machine for everything, but last week I found a set of CD-Roms from 1998 with GeoCities sites saved on them. A guy on a forum convinced me to try them because the Wayback often misses Flash elements and guestbook interactions. Popped in disc 3 and it had this super pixelated fan site for Xena with a working webring link. It felt way more authentic than the cached versions I was used to. Has anyone else tried finding old stuff on physical media instead of the usual archives?

2 comments

2 Comments

wyattbennett16d agoMost Upvoted

Disc 3 gave out on me after 10 minutes of reading a Geocities Xena site. Scratched to hell, just like every other CD Rom from that era. You're romanticizing a pile of plastic that degrades faster than a JPEG from 1996. The Wayback Machine might miss some flash stuff, but at least it doesn't require a working disc drive and a prayer that the data isn't corrupted. I've got three dead CD Roms in a drawer right now that claim to have the same sites you're talking about. They're coasters, not archives.

craig.reese16d ago

Disc 5 out of my set had a Star Trek fan page that refused to even spin up, just sat there clicking in the drive like a broken toy. Did you notice any weirdness with the read speeds on yours, like the disc spinning way faster or slower than normal? I'm wondering if these 90s presses are just on the verge of total failure or if there's a chance some of them survived better than others.