Cover tape/disk

This article currently deals with cover disks only. Changes and additions to the article in order to reflect the differences and commonalities between cover disks and cover tapes will be done shortly.

Cover disks (also commonly called by the single word coverdisks) were floppy disks with pre-installed content sold with issues of home computer magazines. They were most often packaged in clear plastic jackets stuck on the cover of the issue with adhesive tape or glue, hence the name "cover disk".

Most magazines had at least one cover disk on every issue, sometimes two or even three. Some magazines started out without disks but began having them later on, while others had disks straight from the start.

Because of the way cover disks were attached to the cover, they were easy to steal from the newsagent's without actually buying the magazine. To prevent this, some newsagents removed the disks themselves before putting the magazines on sale, keeping them behind the counter to give to the customer when selling the magazine.

Cover disks typically included demo versions of new commercial games and/or public domain or ShareWare games. Sometimes they even contained full versions of older commercial games.

Having cover disks was typical with British magazines but less popular elsewhere. Particularly in Finland, very few magazines ever had cover disks. The most popular magazine, MikroBITTI, instead offered its subscribers access to its own BBS, which started in 1994 as a traditional modem-based BBS but was later replaced by a WWW-based system.