Dylan was not local, and had to travel from Wales to meet up, and get things going properly. We had little money between us, but spent several days trawling though our sofwtare libraries to produce the first Catalogue disk. This contained approximately 160 disks just in the form of text listings, which included games, pictures, music, utilities and so on. Not too impressive, but I designed the first advert in !Draw (a free vector graphics program with every 32bit computer), contacted Acorn User and it went into the June 1991 issue. The first ad was always a gamble, and at £120 for an 1/8th page ad in mono, it needed to work. We had no business account to begin with, and it was being run from my address, which was at first a shared house in Pinhoe, Exeter.

Shortly after going into partnership, I bought 1/2 the business from Dylan, and I was in complete control. By the summer of 1991, the business was taking so much of my time, that I was able to leave my full time job at Minerva - I do remember though taking a lot of the Minerva customer information with me before leaving, but didn't really think that we were in any direct competition.

There were only a couple of other Public Domain Software Libraries around for the Acorn 32bit range, namely Skyfall, Arcaynia, Datastream and Datafile so starting up was so easy. Customer numbers grew quite rapidly, Multistore was used to keep all customer information in check. I worked extremely hard to get out the orders the same day, and to keep abreast with new software, liase with publications and authors, and develop new ideas.

The advertisements got bigger, more flash, and the reviews and articles were an added bonus. In addition to Acorn User, I'd advertise in Archimedes World and Micro User. Things were steaming. I moved to my first flat, Bridge House, under the Iron Bridge in Exeter. It was a tiny flat, but at least it was a bit more private. The flat always seemed to be full of disks, jiffy bags and bubble wrap. I had to buy in bulk (500 jiffy bags at a time), to get a good deal. There were a lot of dodgy disk traders around at the time, and it was pot luck if you went for the cheapest possible deal, but you win some you lose some.

So what made Arch Angel so popular? Well most customers loved the Pick 'n' mix service. This allowed you to choose exactly what programs you wanted, and make up your own tailored disks. Merlyn Kline (Minerva/Zynet) wrote me a fabulous piece of software for the Catalogue system, which did pretty much everything except make the tea. It allowed you to browse the catalogue disk, select what disks or programs you wanted, worked out the best way of fitting them altogether, and even printed the order form, ready to be picked by me. It was a labourious task to create these pick n mix disks, but customers paid that little bit extra to have this service. Sometimes I would be up all night copying disks, and packing them up, then the following morning there would be another 30 - 40 orders to process! The post office loved me though....especially when I did mailshots.

Shows & Exhibitions....I attended and exhibited at several shows, in London, Yorkshire and in the Westcountry. These were manic...especially the London shows....Myself and my trusted friend David, (also an ex Minerva employee), would get to London or wherever, stay in a B&B, then the next 2 or 3 days would be mayhem. The first day would usually involve completely selling out of something, so I'd end up duplicating disks in the hotel room until midnight or later...and still have to face a full day. The money was good though, meaning you could turnover around £1000 a day - and no postage or advertising costs to worry about either....just a lot of hard work!! Still I did enjoy it, meeting customers face to face, and rubbing shoulders with the directors of the larger companies.

Christmas Packs....Arch Angel did some great packages of disks, one of the most popular was the Christmas Pack. This was basically 3 or 4 disks all with a Christmas theme....but the bonus was that each pack was wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper! The things I did to be different. Other bundled packs were 'Games Pack', 'Utilities Pack', 'Graphics Pack' etc.

So what happened?...well it's the mid 90's, the competition was expanding, and growing, I had other things happening in my life, which meant I could not devote so much time to it...I fell behind....eventually I decided to sell the remainder of the disks and 5000+ customer database to APDL in London. At this time, I had pretty much run the business down. Soon after, I became the assistant manager of a Quasar Laser Centre, in Exeter, which was fun, but that's another story.

If you would like to read more about me working for Minerva Software, in the hey day of the Archimedes, before Arch Angel was around, click HERE.