These are local mirrors of long-defunct historical websites, as taken from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine using ShiftaDeband's rate-limited fork of wayback-machine-downloader.
"So why not just browse them on there?" I hear you cry!
Well, don't get me wrong, The Internet Archive does absolutely amazing work, but the Wayback Machine is slow by its very nature and users often come across broken or missing things. They're now also heavily rate limiting historical proxies and the like (an issue I've run up against time and again in the course of this work). So I've made it my mission to create these independent mirrors, track down every single missing element where possible and reinstate them, and package them up nicely here in their mostly original form for your perusal (some broken elements are removed at my discretion for a better user experience, but the substance and content is very much original).
These mirrors are also submitted to search engines, which can't / don't crawl the Wayback Machine, making them widely available to the world once more.
Note that it's still early days for this project, and this page will build into a proper directory as things grow. I've also used git to track the comprehensive work that I've done to get these sites back online, and intend to share the repositories in due course. But lets not walk before we can run.
By the way, the intention is and always will be that this entire archive be browsable using actual historical browsers on real vintage hardware. If they also work in modern browsers, that's a bonus! :)
Original URL: http://www.atarihq.com
Author: Ex-Atari employees Les Caron and Keita Iida
Date of dump: 2002-12-02
Brief Description: Once a leading authority on all things Atari, Atari Gaming Headquarters features comprehensive history sections, news, reviews and more, with a large number of contributors including ex-Atari staff.
Mirror State: Work In Progress This site underwent a few revisions over the years, this is the last iteration of the original design from 2002 before they moved to a PHP-based Content Management System. There were 2 complete redesigns in the site's lifetime. I have these all the way up to the site's demise in late 2016 and intend to reconstruct them and get them back online, but for now enjoy this complete dump from 2002!
Bonus: It seems the authors of these sites had an agreement with Keita Iida to share his hosting, so they're also mirrored here:
Jaguar Explorer Online, an online Atari Jaguar e-zine.
The Ancient Atari PAL Division, a European Atari fan site.
Dan Boris's Homepage, a small personal Atari fansite.
tsr's NES Archive, perhaps the most noteworthy, was a legendary NES site "back in the day" and indeed a future candidate for a full restoration in its own right. At the time of this mirror it was on hiatus, but came back in a really big way in later years. For now, enjoy this early iteration.
Original URL: http://www.ataribook.com
Author: Curt Vendel
Date of dump: 2016-06-19
Brief Description: Marketing site for Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg's book "Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun". Features some excerpts from the book, Atari history and background information that doesn't appear to be available anywhere else online.
Mirror State: A couple of missing images but nothing major. Site has had some major work to remove interactive elements, now-defunct social links, nonfunctional search, and other WordPress rubbish created at mirror time. Also the original shop and contact form were removed as they were no longer functional. This was the last complete dump after Curt's untimely death lead to the termination of his website hosting.
Original URL: http://corvusmuseum.com
Author: Curt Vendel
Date of dump: 2021-06-19
Brief Description: From the site: In 1979 a small but amazing company was started in California. It started with the idea of bringing low cost, high speed mass storage to personal computer systems. This idea grew further to then bringing this to not just one computer, but then to allow multiple computers the ability to share high speed mass storage, then peripherals and more. As time went by, Corvus would create "Omninet" - which was its own proprietary networking protocol and hardware system. Corvus would also introduce a very innovative computer called "Concept".
Mirror State: Complete. This was the last complete dump after Curt's untimely death lead to the termination of his website hosting.
Original URL: www.winsupersite.com
Author: Paul Thurrott
Date of dump: 2002-04-02
Brief Description: Technology journalist Paul Thurrott's website all about Windows. Features contemporary news and reviews of Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP (including "Whistler" pre-release versions), Office XP, .NET, reports from trade shows including COMDEX 97-2002, Microsoft launch events and more. Also includes Paul's "Tech Showcases" taking deep dives into various Windows and Office technologies from around the turn of the century.
Mirror State: 100% complete. This was the last available dump before a site redesign and apparent move to a content management system, which will take a lot more work to piece back together. Non-functional newsletter signup form and email links / contact form have been removed, in addition to (broken, defunct) footer ads.
Original URL: www.xphomenetworking.com
Author: Paul Thurrott
Date of dump: 2003-04-24
Brief Description: Small marketing site for Paul Thurrott's "Windows XP Home Networking" book. There are only a few pages, it's a fine example of a small marketing website of the time, and it's linked from the other Paul Thurrott sites here so I decided to include it.
Mirror State: 100% complete except middle_fill.gif background image, which I took a guess at as it had never been dumped. It's a 1px slice from the top of the bottom banner. Otherwise all original. Last dump available before the original site was reworked as a news site gathering feeds from other Paul Thurrott sites.
Original URL: www.xpdigitalmedia.com
Author: Paul Thurrott
Date of dump: 2003-04-23
Brief Description: Small marketing site for Paul Thurrott's "Great Digital Media With Windows XP" book. There are only a few pages, it's a fine example of a small marketing website of the time, and it's linked from the other Paul Thurrott sites here so I decided to include it.
Mirror State: 100% complete. Last dump available before the original site was reworked as a news site gathering feeds from other Paul Thurrott sites.
I hope it goes without saying, but I didn't create these sites and don't own the content within them. Many of them are 20+ years old now and have been offline for a number of years. Some of the owners have sadly passed, and some have left the scene and moved on to other things. Some are even still active. My intention here is to preserve their work and make it available once more as a kind of museum, and of course I claim ownership of none of the actual content. Many thanks to the original authors for putting all of this hard work out there in the first place.