It's an honest, well-intentioned idea. But as disclosed in the previous thread, it has three main flaws:

• The site content changes every 15 minutes. Before anyone has downloaded everything, it would be out-of-date, or have obsolete versions of downloads.
• You would have multiple requests from users that the torrent format is not perfect for OS9 limewire apps. You get the idea.
• The torrents will end up very quickly on all the well known torrent sites, and it'll be taken over by a core of downloaders who will contribute nothing and never visit the site.

If we can find a way to address the caveats, then we could try it out for a few months to see how people get along.

edit: the more I think about it, I'm not sure all this stuff should be in an archive - I don't know that, for example, Photoshop 7 should even be considered abandonware.

Perhaps not such a good analogy - PS7 isn't archived or hosted here (and comes in as being larger than your 50 MB file size "torrent" offer)... PS7 is referenced to here, yes.
But if it isn't abandonware yet (because you can't buy it today and it is at least 8 YEARS old), then AFAIK if it should be - it will be.

Why bother offering this "service" anyway? - Because as you asked:

Would it be possible to create a torrent for all the games on the site? Perhaps even a few separate ones, for all 68k Mac content, or perhaps all games under 50MB?

I have a 30 Mbit connection and would be willing to seed for as long as is necessary. I have no bandwidth cap, so this should not be an issue.

You have DL'ing and storage for multiple apps, each under 50MB file size? Why not not "Just Do It" (oops, Nike © or ®?) for all apps of that size or smaller - Then announce that you've done it? After all, all DL's here are free DLs.

As to the first, the majority of the data would stay the same - the torrent could be swapped whenever the content changed (this could even be automatic

It may just be my understanding, but the torrent works by detailing all files offered in the download, each with a checksum and a particular place in the download. Leechers then download all the blocks (maybe 1MB, 2MB or more - but they can be smaller) that contain all the files they want. If we go changing the torrent every 15 minutes or 3 days, we will be changing files and locations - file order - within the download. This will immediately invalidate many files for those currently downloading them, ie. they will download 1MB blocks of parts of other files. This is known as "poisoning" the torrent.

I'm not saying a No, but if we could circumvent that happening, we may have something that could work. We tried torrenting individual games / apps before, but I could download and seed a game for 3 weeks and no-one else would ever leech it off me. In the end the Bittorrent "chatter" bandwidth would account for more than the actual download and it was pointless to carry on seeding.

You've also touched on the other caveat I didn't want to mention, requests for games / apps that many of us may not consider abandonware (yet). Photoshop 7 may be a poor example, so lets choose something like Tropico. Abandonware or not ? It's still sold online by it's UK publishers. But someone in the US requests that it is included in the game torrent. What if they suceed in getting it included ? So here I am downloading and seeding the torrent to help the Mac abandonware community, made into a pirate. A small issue, but one that may put many off doing their share of seeding. They may already be put off seeding by the thought of keeping the entire contents of the torrent readily available and untouched on their hard disk.

Again, a tiny issue, but the idea of torrents used to distribute original software may not help the cite cause, that we are here to preserve Mac software. It just has a lot of bad press. We might think "so what ?" but we need the software publishers involved to take the same view.

Ideas welcome.

I have never downloaded torrents. So I do not much about this. But from what I was told you need a certain number of people to participate so that downloading does not take too long.

Therefore, what are the statistics with MacGarden? If someone uploads a game or app how many people download it right after uploading? Does download interest fade after a while or is there continuous download interest? Does download interest rise after a while? Are there popular games or apps and less popular?

Doesn't any one remember when the admins tried a torrent system? Everyone hated it.

The reason is that there were not enough seeders so often, new games/apps were undownloadable.
sorry if someone already said this. I just skimmed through this topic

As i said the admins tried that a year ago and it was a failure. Bandwidth went up because amazon(there server) was seeding. No one else would seed, and seeding won't be an option for me, as i have a cell phone modem.

I torrent on other sites. I don't see the necessity for this, other than the "archived due to bandwidth costs".

However, if everyone just backs up their uploads, to an alternate site such as Megaupload, I don't see the point in having torrents. If you can easily download a game/application, what is the point of getting it from a torrent? You haven't justified your suggestion IMO. Sorry.

Bertyboy was right:
The problem is that this site is constantly changing... i dont know, but the meaning of this site is about participation and colaboration, and a general torrent is not very viable.

Maybe ellaborating a personal torrent management by every user upload. Only actualized every new upload. Programs like Transmission let you visualize the torrent content before downloading, so you can choose whatever you need from there. This could be an option for the user, not a rule.

Well, i think, there s nothing like a direct click/download button....

and a general torrent seems to be impractical like a klaxon on a 747

The thought is right; distribute the strain from one server to many. It could work if parts of the content were accessible from other sources.
Say, some of the communities regulars here, w possibilities of storing and loading 24/7 at a reasonable rate, offered mirrored parts of MG's content. Access through any mean; preferably protocols used in Classic, like FTP/HL, but choice could be left to the actual 'Store keeper'.
To administrate this into fully functional, ie 24/7, is the main culprit w this scheme.
My 2 öre…

On the surface, it appears that the thought is right here (from this brand new member). But the very suggestion makes me question the motives.

While on this site and downloading, people are totally anonymous. Only our trustworthy Administrators can view our IP's. With a torrent, everyone participating can view everybody else's IP Address. So someone, if they wanted to, can keep track of who is downloading what. Out goes the anonymity.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just mirror your uploads here to a public server.

Nobody is stopping anybody from doing their own thing and setting up their own torrent site. The more abandonware sites the better, I say.

Think of it this way...do you want every Macintosh Garden download sitting on your hard drive?

Even though some of the downloads are very small, they will...accumulate.

I personally don't like Megaupload at all, due to their asinine waiting periods and limits (plus, about half the time Megaupload downloads just stop for me, and I can't restart them because it thinks I'm trying to run two downloads in parallel. This happens in both Firefox and Chrome).

Have you tried mediafire?

I support the idea.

Since filesharing boomed was introduced, collection packages have been more and more common. I personally see these as digital museums. Macintosh is now the only platform I know that do not have something like this floating around. Not mentioning the consoles, Amiga, Atari, Amstrad, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, MSX, and Sinclair all have near complete collections floating around. Amiga TOSEC is almost 50gb. MCSTeam's DOS Collection is 30gb.

I would personally host the file on the eMule network if I got my hands on it.