Miggybyte was a free disk based magazine for the Amiga

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

 range of computers, published by Pickled Fish Software and edited by Ben Gaunt. From 1995 to 1997 twelve issues were published all being on a single floppy disk only.

There is no secret that the magazine was inspired by Grapevine (disk magazine)

 the legendary scene based disk magazine also for the Amiga range of computers but that is where the similarity ends. Miggybyte was never a scene publication and never intended to be.

The publication focused on news about the Amiga, software, games and entertainment. The entertainment section proved to be a main stay of the publication and consisting of jokes and stories from readers. There was even a small classified section and BBS section where many Sysops from around the UK (thought there were a few from the USA too) would publicise their boards.

The interface consisted of two sections, the top part containing the text and in latter version graphics, the bottom the control interface (GUI). The engine behind the publication was called MultiMedia Magazine Creator (MMMC) and was developed by Pickled Fish Software / Ben Gaunt during the time of the publication. A side note here is MMMC was originally a simple text reader designed for the game Maze Madness (F1 Licenceware). MMMC was programmed in the popular Amiga basic language AMOS (programming language)  and also used the Power Packer library to compress the publication onto a single disk.

Distribution

Miggybyte was distributed by post, BBS, FidoNet

FidoNet

FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...

, PD Software Libraries and the Internet, its main distribution being on Aminet

Aminet

Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web.-History:...

 and its WHQ BBS Channel X. Two version were released digitally one in LHA (file format)

LHA (file format)

LHA is a freeware compression utility and associated file format. It was created in 1988 by , and originally named LHarc. A complete rewrite of LHarc, tentatively named LHx, was eventually released as LH. It was then renamed to LHA to avoid conflicting with the then-new MS-DOS 5.0 LH command...

 that omitted any copyrighted Amiga, Inc.

Amiga, Inc.

Amiga, Inc. is the company that holds the intellectual property associated with the Amiga personal computer , including the Amiga trademark.-Brief history of Amiga brand:...

 files and a DMS (Disk Masher System

Disk Masher System

The Disk Masher System was an often used method on Amiga, to create a compressed image of a disk . The disk is read block-by-block, and thus its data structure is maintained...

) version that was a full disk image.

External links

• http://aminet.net/search?query=miggybyte Miggybyte on Aminet
  Aminet
  Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web.-History:...