Total Newbie needs guidance... scratching head with this retro stuff

[unbreakable]

Its not bad to admit ignorance if you are wanting to learn right? I had a spectrum and an amiga in the olden days (even though i didnt have a chance to use the amiga much back then).. now i have the cloanto amiga emulator. And im trying to find software for the emulated amiga. i downloaded this TOSEC Release download unzipped it and found a bunch of dat files. some have amiga stuff on it but i dont know what to do with the dat files. Is this software really or some kind of catalog ? i guess most users of these sites are seasoned retro gamers. lol...  I dont want to play games though.. im more interested in some retro productivity software and just to learn a bit on how to do all this stuff.
So to make the questions simple? what are the dat files really?
where on earth can i find a simple guide on how to download software for the amiga
and any good sites?
thanks

[tomse]

Lack of knowledge isn't ignorance (imo ignorance is when actively ignore something) :-D

With that said.
TOSEC is a database of registered software only. In daily speak it can mean both the database and the collection.
The collection (images in shape of software disks/cd's/roms, i.e. ADF and ISO's) itself isn't part of what we distribute, we just catalog and distribute this database.

Archive.org has the TOSEC collection (though somewhat older) on their website.
https://archive.org/details/tosec

more specific for your amiga question
https://archive.org/details/Commodore_Amiga_TOSEC_2012_04_10
They also have some online way of playing Amiga games, though they are not perfect yet. I don't remember the URL atm.

While distributing this is a grayzone, I may believe that archive.org is the only place I legally can link to.

Since you've gotten your interest in the Amiga back, I can recommend that you take a look at English Amiga Board forum.

if you lookup Romvault on youtube there are some videos on how to maintain TOSEC database/collection. Clrmame is also a tool you can use for that, I prefer RomVault though.