ByteRot is an archive for retro PCs and consoles: operating systems, ROMs, lost drivers, SDKs, software, games, utilities and documentation for machines that most of the world has thrown away. It started as an FTP site and an IRC channel, and now it has a homepage too.

What's on the FTP

The archive is split by what something is, then by what it runs on: OS, DRIVERS, SOFTWARE, GAMES, UTILS and DOCS, each with folders for DOS, Windows 3.x, 9x and NT, OS/2, classic Mac OS, Amiga, Atari, Apple II, C64 and more. There's also a big read-only LIBRARY of DOS games and console ROMs. See the Library page for the current numbers, or What's New for the latest arrivals.

Drivers and utilities are always free to download. Nobody should go broke fetching a chipset driver or a boot disk.

Why does this page look like that?

Because it's meant to work on the machines the archive is for. This site is plain HTML 3.2: tables for layout, no stylesheets, no JavaScript, GIF images, and plain HTTP that doesn't require modern encryption. Load it in Netscape 3 on a Pentium, IE 4 on Windows 95, Lynx in a terminal, or whatever you're reading this on now. It should look right everywhere.

If a site can't be read on the computer you're trying to fix, it isn't much of a retro site.

Getting in

Accounts are free. Join #retro on irc.fxnet.org, identify with NickServ, and type !req. Everything else is on the Connect page. See you there.