Where did you get your WADs from back in the day?

[Enjay]

DoomGater said:

Firing up good old DOS-CIM (CIM = Compuserve Information Manager)
and typing in the magic keyword "GO ACTION"!

Hah! Yes! Exactly that. :)

[LogicDeLuxe]

printz said:

Before that, I only knew of the FTP sites from the Doom FAQ, all outdated and dead.

The Doom FAQ is badly outdated indeed.
It doesn't even cover Ultimate Doom, Final Doom, source release etc.
And probably none of the listed 3rd party tools are of any importance nowadays other then historical interest.
Also the trouble shooting section should be adjusted for modern operating systems. Questions about Soundblaster 1.0 are hardly "frequent" anymore.

[iori]

Cdrom.com. Probably 1999. Pentium IIIs had just been announced.

I discovered the magic of winrar that let me split larger files into 1.44mb sections so I could bring stuff home from school. I didn't get home internet until 2004... I would've been about 19 then.

[Reisal]

In the 1990s I had a couple of spots: Compuserve's Action section, AOL's section and the original ftp.cdrom.com

I also had the D!Zone 2 CD as well which I still have but it's heavily used so I have an copy of the WADs only on my drive for nostalgia's sake.

[GreyGhost]

Graf Zahl said:

I got my first internet access with AOL in 1996 and had to use it carefully because it was horrendously expensive to download larger files.

Heh - the good old days. I started in 1999 with a small local ISP whose account fees were mainly based on hours spent on-line, with a sliding scale of fees from $1.65 to $4 per hour. I was on their Flatrate plan, $2.50 per hour - paid in advance.

yakfak said:

and much respect for using the Kickstarter avatar

Looks more like a Workbench avatar to me.
</pedantry>

[LogicDeLuxe]

GreyGhost said:

Looks more like a Workbench avatar to me.

The Workbench disk picture is part of the Kickstart ROM, though.

[DeathevokatioN]

Although I bought Doom at it's release in the early 90's I never had internet until 2004 or something ridiculous, nor did it ever really cross my mind that Doom had such great mapping talent until 2009 when I accidentally stumbled across Curse of D'sparil. :P

[GreyGhost]

LogicDeLuxe said:

The Workbench disk picture is part of the Kickstart ROM, though.

In most models, yes, but not in the Amiga 1000 or early model 3000's. They prompted the user to insert a Kickstart disk.

[roadworx]

Enjay said:

Compuserve Action Games Forum (the source of most of the stuff I got by a long way)
Magazine Cover Disks
Various random BBSs - either by me getting them or friends getting them and sharing them around.
Occasionally Commercial Shovelware

Hey, I've been trying to get my hand on an archive of CompuServe Action Games Forum...would today be my lucky day?

[GreyGhost]

Some of us are still waiting for Bob Evans to re-surface with an ISO of CompuServe's Doom forum.

[Doomkid]

Lot's of geocities sites.. There's still a few elusive Deathmatch WADs out there from back in the day that I've yet to find, but no one seems to recognize the descriptions I gave in the "Find the WAD" thread :(

[Phendrena]

Got quite a few from the staff in a local computer shop. However I also had these:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/90631521@N04/12756105053/

Three D!Zone CDs!! Woot woot woot!!
Learnt to map using DEU. Now that was a proper editor, none of your new-fangled easy to use stuff like DoomBuilder!! Actually it was an utter pain the balls until you got the hang of it, even then.......

Dave