Comments on The Paper PC: CompuServe Classic: So Long, Old Friend

AOL put QuantumLink to sleep under the same circum...

2009-11-26T20:56:45.811-05:00

AOL put QuantumLink to sleep under the same circumstances: no fanfare, just a whimper.

CompuServe, GEnie, Delphi, and Prodigy -- what fun those days held!

Jim Cameron >> who were willing to pay $25 an hour...

2009-11-26T10:16:18.798-05:00

Jim Cameron
>> who were willing to pay $25 an hour to post messages.

Yup! Had my wife ever seen the bill, she would have shot me!

>>The AOL acquisition was the beginning of the end

No kidding. Once pseudonyms were allowed, decorum flew out the window.

I was 73507,1747 and for a time one of Shel Hall's asst. sysops at HOM-62 better known as the CARS Forum.

AOL tossed Shel under a bus and sold the forum to some nut-case.

One by one the better forums fell, massive libraries, some still irreplaceable elsewhere (LAWSIG) are all gone.

Ah yes, the memories. I first signed up when I bo...

2009-09-26T01:03:08.199-05:00

Ah yes, the memories. I first signed up when I bought my first "real" computer around '86 or '87. A 8 MHz XT with 30MB hard drive, CGA and color monitor all for $1100 - a great deal at the time. That and a 1200bps modem from DAK got me on-line.

Navigating the text command lines and later DOSCIM.

CompuServe should go down as a monumental case of mis-management by neglect. How else do you explain going from leader to nothing in a industry that changed America?

Of course, AOL itself is largely a relic now, so I guess they got their reward.

Hi! 75253,1747 here. I can't believe it's the end...

2009-08-12T19:53:33.105-05:00

Hi! 75253,1747 here. I can't believe it's the end of CompuServe. Wow! I was first exposed to a computer in the fifth grade, in 1980. They let us play a simple number guessing game called pico-fermi-bagel. When I realized it was actually reacting to my choices, I was hooked! Early CS was the same type of amazing thing. Using the forums, trying out this thing called "Mosaic", and later laughing at the new upstart, AOL! Good times indeed!

My first venture into the realm of part-time trave...

2009-08-05T08:15:04.696-05:00

My first venture into the realm of part-time travel agent was via CompuServe. I booked travel reservations on airlines, at a couple of nice B&B's (one in Edinburgh and one in London) and BritRail tickets for 6 of us traveling for 10 days in the UK. I am now an IATA card carrying, part-time travel agent and having fun at it.

My CompuServe ID dates to the early '80's and I shall miss the old CompuServe . . . although, I have to confess that I thought it had passed on shortly after AOL took it over (mostly because I had more and more trouble getting connected to it ;-).

I must go visit the new version!

Although I was a Compuserve member until the end, ...

2009-07-22T12:58:29.203-05:00

Although I was a Compuserve member until the end, I haven't used the Classic software in years. I've been logging on using OE and my internet provider. But just knowing that Classic will no longer be around makes me very sad.

Here is the final farewell from 102421,1641. Good-bye Compuserve Classic, my old and trusted friend.

71635,1544 Didn't have to look it up my userid, t...

2009-07-21T15:45:31.209-05:00

71635,1544

Didn't have to look it up my userid, though I hadn't logged in for >10 years. Thanks for the memories!

Lots of good user fora and financial data, pre-Web.

73447,3667 Since 1986. RIP CServe, Mike Hollande...

2009-07-21T09:16:30.228-05:00

73447,3667

Since 1986.

RIP CServe, Mike Hollander and the Motorsports Forum.

I used the Dos version of compuserve on a green sc...

2009-07-10T11:30:08.023-05:00

I used the Dos version of compuserve on a green screen 80286 machine as late as 1997!

Stupid AOL, they killed off such an asset. They should have binned the AOL brand and relaunched themselves as CompuServe.

RIP Compuserve, I loved ya.

Rebecca MacGregor
Birmingham, England.

I remember beta-testing the offline read-and-post ...

2009-07-09T20:32:37.181-05:00

I remember beta-testing the offline read-and-post program, Compuserve Navigator for Mac... great program... made one's $12.50/hour go a lot further. "Met" lots of good people there, and read lots of good posts which, I imagine, aren't archived anywhere (though I have an awful lot of them on an old drive somewhere). Goodbye from 73717,1162.

74405,1527 says thank you and goodbye for all the ...

2009-07-09T03:23:13.202-05:00

74405,1527 says thank you and goodbye for all the wonderful hours.

73476,1725 bids a fond adieu. I was a doctoral can...

2009-07-07T17:54:51.241-05:00

73476,1725 bids a fond adieu. I was a doctoral candidate at Stanford when I first accessed CS from my Menlo Park, CA garage with 2400 dialup and an Atari 400. Met Tom Jones (yes, THE transplanted son of Wales) in a US-UK Forum - which resulted in my wife's initial enchantment with online svcs (LOL). Wonderful memories.

100022,662 says Good Bye too

2009-07-07T01:18:45.777-05:00

100022,662 says Good Bye too

106115.3662 says farewell. It was an amazing intro...

2009-07-06T17:28:24.445-05:00

106115.3662 says farewell. It was an amazing introduction to the online world.

70257,2427 says goodbye

2009-07-06T17:13:37.343-05:00

70257,2427 says goodbye

Thanks for the obit Bob. My first "grown-up" job ...

2009-07-06T16:40:56.412-05:00

Thanks for the obit Bob.

My first "grown-up" job was as a computer operator at CompuServe in 1973 when we had 3 PDP-10 computers in a converted hardware store in Columbus, and sold timesharing services.

Twenty-seven years, thousands of friends, and innumerable war stories later, I retired as CTO/VP Technology of our Network Services Division.

It was the ride of a lifetime. Thanks to all of you who were CIS members and commercial customers during those golden years. The opportunity to serve all of you made for a dream career for those of us on the other end of the modem.

Paul Lambert

Nice job, Bob and nice to see some old names here....

2009-07-06T14:34:25.966-05:00

Nice job, Bob and nice to see some old names here. (Hello Jim Cameron!)

I joined Compuserve in 1983 and JForum was my first forum. (AVSIG was my second.)

While I enjoy having ultraportable high resolution lightweight gear like my Sony TT series instead of my Commodore 64, I will always miss the camaraderie of CIS.

I was 72727,46 Goodbye old friend. Thanks

2009-07-06T11:03:49.456-05:00

I was 72727,46

Goodbye old friend. Thanks

Thank you for your post, Robert. lots of fond memo...

2009-07-05T18:09:07.586-05:00

Thank you for your post, Robert. lots of fond memories about CompuServe. I joined in 1980 when connecting from Italy meant connecting through Infonet at a rate of $48/hour at 2400bps.

I'd been with CompuServe for 12 years, first as a member and then as sysop of the European Forum, and later on as the founder and wizop of the Italian Forum.

CompuServe forums were the top of online communities back in the '80s, with a very dedicated user base. We had people coming from North America to attend our "cisnicks" in Italy, as we used to call our meetings back then.

So long, CompuServe.

Just read about this at [H]ardForum and made this ...

2009-07-05T15:38:34.701-05:00

Just read about this at [H]ardForum and made this post, so I thought I'd share it here also:

Oh the fun times those were when CIS first went online. I was one of the first 1000 subscribers back around ~1979 (I'm old, specific dates don't matter to me anymore), and my original account ID was 71000,992 so I just got in under that cutoff...

I actually had some CIS engineers in 1984 contact me and ask how I was connecting at 450 baud - and I honestly told them I was using a 300 baud modem with some alterations to the timing (because it was somewhat software controlled, an original Commodore 300 baud modem attached to my beloved C64...). Seems something alerted them because one particular connection node kept showing "higher than normal" connection bandwidth - that's because I showed several friends how to make the mods with the VIDTEX software we were using to connect to CIS and we were all connecting at 450 baud... but I was the first... in the whole damned world, apparently. My "first" claim to notoriety I guess, but not the last.

Now, to everyone that today has multi-megabit connections (and some Gigabit, lucky folks they are), while going from 300 to 450 baud might not seem like much, but that's a 50% speed difference, across the board. And because the entire service was text-based, with some of the compression available in those days (MNP levels, typically with 2:1 so it worked well), it was most definitely noticeable.

Overclocking a modem... in 1984... who woulda thunk it. And because it was still "connecting" at sub-1200 baud speeds, I only got charged the at-the-time price of $.10 a minute, aka $6 an hour for access during primetime evening hours. 1200 baud for those incredibly lucky bastards that could afford the modems (they were like 6x more expensive than a 300 baud) was double that, at $12/hour. During the daytime both doubled...

But those were the days, most definitely. The CB Simulator, the original form of instant messaging, even predating IRC by almost 11 years, was a blast in those days, and where I got my start with "chatting online." The CIS forums predate "Internet forums" by almost 15...

Geez I'm old.

While the Classic addresses are kaput, the Forums ...

2009-07-05T13:07:35.069-05:00

While the Classic addresses are kaput, the Forums live on at CompuServe, under the Netscape umbrella.

Most of them are shadows of their former glorious selves, but one of the liveliest and most interesting is the Books & Writers Forum, which has been around since the early 1980s.

I was 70375,350. I first used an OSI Challenger 1P...

2009-07-04T23:03:07.163-05:00

I was 70375,350. I first used an OSI Challenger 1P (with a terminal program I wrote myself), later an Apple II, and finally a Mac. I used to check MAUG (the Mac forum) several times a day.

Not offline at all, at least the time I am writtin...

2009-07-04T22:51:48.835-05:00

Not offline at all, at least the time I am writting now.

Just telnet to:

gateway.compuserve.com

And will get the famous login process that amazed us for many years.

User ID:

Hope they will throw it as Open Source as the guys from Guelph University did with BIX (CoSy)

Regards,

Amando
Spain

I got onto CompuServe because when I got a new com...

2009-07-04T20:17:07.982-05:00

I got onto CompuServe because when I got a new computer in the spring of 1986 I got an expansion card that promoted using CompuServe for tech support.I was active to various degrees over the years,and from the end of 1990 to the middle of 1993 was the day-to-day manager of the Showbiz Forum.After I started my own ISP in late 1995 I only reached CompuServe by Telnet,which now generates "System BHC is temporarily unavailable" messages.So anyone who reached me at 73167,2506 or 76702,1562 can say hi at le@put.com.

@BillF, you probably mean http://rr-vs.informatik....

2009-07-04T15:25:08.372-05:00

@BillF, you probably mean http://rr-vs.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ (no longer active resp. a redirect to its new home) later relocated to http://rr.informatik.tu-freiberg.de/ and finally shut down not too long ago, see http://rr.informatik.tu-freiberg.de/index.php?con=home&sel=&lang=eng&js=0&

Well, at least they still show some pictures in their gallery...