ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2026
Entry 22nd October 2026: Post 1: Yahoo Groups - Preserving Amiga history.
Yahoo Groups - Preserving Amiga history.
In 2001 Yahoo launched their Yahoo Groups. Basically you signed up
to send and receive emails on an approved mailing list moderated
by the owner. A number of the Amiga magazines created groups to
support their user base after the magazines closed down. For a
while they were quite busy. Groups like AFB for Amiga Format, the
CUAmiga group, JustAmiga, Samba, AMOS, AmigaActive, AmigaSA. I
would receive hundreds of mails each day at certain times.
Prompted by a number of members I was encouraged to create my
own group for the purpose of advising of my collecting activities.
The group was quite busy for the period I was predominantly
collecting, that being 2004 to 2008. The group then went into
limbo up until 2017 when I began posting again regularly. For a
while it was home of my blogs until I transferred them to the
website.
In October 2019 Yahoo closed the group down along with all the
other groups. Yahoo Groups formerly went offline 1st Feb 2020.
Before closure Yahoo offered to mail me an archive of all the
posts made on the group. This arrived some weeks before the full
closure to avoid missing group posts.
Anyhoo ... I am still rebuilding my own archive on the XP machine
which is taking a lot longer than I thought. I managed to build
the Amiga 4000 Repository very quickly, but all the other archives
are all over the place. Once recovered I then have to catalogue
them and place in alphabetical order.
Whilst going through the archives I found the Yahoo Groups file
and the archive. Unfortunately Notepad does not decifer the file
combo files. Google were very helpful, but in the end nothing is
as effective as reading all my saved posts on YAM and the Amiga.
I still have all my posts for the various groups stored on the
Amiga 1200 and so I am still able to read every single one. It
is most entertaining and really I kinda got lost in it for a
couple of days.
I may just place the archive online as it is a historical record
of actual Amiga users from the day. For me its an invaluable
resource as there are incredibly useful guides for things like
SAMBA, AMOS, AWNPipe to list but a few. In the day I really would
have been lost without the groups. I don't think that today I
would ever be able to source the nuggets of information I gleaned
from the Yahoo Groups.
I reflect on my time on this planet more and more these days and
I am very grateful to those people that made my life the richer.
The Amiga has always been blessed with a fantastic community and
saving some of those valuable memories is an honour I am happy
to accept.
Thanks to everyone that ever read or posted a Yahoo Group message.
Yahoo Groups - Preserving Amiga history.
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