/Still gets no love.

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* If you need dial-up Internet access, there are two options you may wish
to consider.

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+ Includes 1 month FREE trial!
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+ 24/7 tech support
+ McAfee security software
+ Unlimited email storage
http://free.aol.com/tryaolfree/index3.adp?promo=804302&service=aol


If you feel the need to subscribe to AOL, please do the world a favor and go play in traffic.

I was an Apple II and Mac Sysop on CompuServe from '84 until AOL bought them out and took away my free account and offered to let me pay them to work for them. F_ that. Never again was I known as good old 76703,1031. Good times.

74461.1708 ;/

I'm actually still good friends with a lot of people I met from compuserve chat...

room 13 biatches!

Ahh, CompuServe and Prodigy bring back memories of the good ol' days of waiting 20 minutes for one po.. nature picture to load.

105124,2063


/been ages

what? no popnetters here?

Prodigy is still alive and well as an ISP in mexico! I saw advertisements all over the place for Prodigy there

Delphi FTW

I played Adventure for the first time on CompuServe waaaaay back in the day.

73777,705 (Only had 3 digits right of the comma when I signed on)

I finally killed my account last year after several years of it being largely unused. As many others have noted, after AOL purchased CIS, both access and quality of the online offerings was deliberatley degraded. Even when I cancelled, they kept billing me for six months after the effective date. I finally had to tell my credit card company that CIS was putting fraudulent charges on my card and to not accept any from them in the future to get it to stop.

The only part I missed was the ability to access technical publication databases for a per minute fee that otherwise take annual subscriptions or being a faculty memeber at a participating research University.

I quit compuserve in 1988 when I started beta testing a new service from Quantum for the Mac which was later renamed American Online. Until they released a Windows version of it - it wasn't a bad place to be. Dumped that account in 1995.

Have fond memories of Compuserve and the BBSs of the day - its how I discovered what being gay meant.

So, now I really have NO USE WHATSOEVER for the TRS-80 Model 100s built-in modem.

/goodbye 300 baud

Includes 1 month FREE trial!

They chose to use capital letters to write "free," and they put an exclamation point at the end.

Clearly, if they hadn't done that, the announcement wouldn't have been as effective.

And another little part of me dies...

The lesson I'm getting out of this is 98% of what I've learned is now useless, or soon will be. I think I was 76017,1033 or something like that.

Jeebus.

The good news is I can finally delete WinCIM or whatever it was and reclaim probably tens of megabytes of valuable hard disk space.

72122,3060. I can't remember where I left me keys, but my defunct email address from 15 years ago, no problem.

My mother owns an H&R Block franchise and back in the day Block owned Compuserve. They gave out boxes with 1,000 floppy disks with CS software on it to each franchise location to hand out to people.

My mom, being the smart woman she is, knew that CS sucked and just let me have the entire box of them. Way back then having over a gigabyte of storage available was a big deal. I think I filled a lot of them up with stuff mooched off of the Apogee BBS.

/The rest of the disks were most likely full of EGA-colored porn.
//My yawn, get off it (I'm 28)

72406,3340 and 76710,51 here.

I was a Sysop and later the Wizop for the Investors Forum (est. 1982 - first online investing forum on the planet, biatches) and the MONEY Magazine Personal Finance Forum. In '99 CompuServe recruited me to work full time for them, and I joined a group of very smart, very experienced and very dedicated people.

Sadly, I was in the building one last time last week when they invited many of us alumni back before they closed the building forever.

AOL never really knew what to do with CServe or Netscape--or what they had. Netscape lives on in Mozilla while CompuServe lives on in fond memories.

good riddance

most trouble that me and my brother ever got in was because of a 2000 buck phone bill due to hidden fees in the old compuserve dial up. probably why they ever picked up in remote markets we would call the local number and then it would charge us for a long distance call from that number to a place half way across the country.

Hey, I'm on Compus

what's the reasoning for all the free hours back in the dial up days? was internet easy and super cheap to provide? what's the story there?

102412,471 Those were the days. I remember it was an amazing thing when we switched from numerical to alphanumerical emails in like '95. I ran over the minutes so many times using that as a kid, I started using local BBSes...until earthlink and monthly unlimited internet came along, that is.


/lamers

111111,1205...

Worked for CompuServe in the UK for 4 years. Left not long after AOL bought the company

I wasn't around for CompuServe, but I did buy prepaid 20-hour dial-up internet card when I grew up. I assumed I'm to blame them for this?

The folks behind me still have an AOL dialup account. Why? She's afraid that her father - who has been on cable for years - won't be able to email her. "Daddy will probably use AOL still for our email". Yeah, your dad buys a new machine yearly and you are still using a PC that I gave you in 1998.

Wish I still remembered either my Prodigy or Compuserve IDs. Technically, we've come a long way since then. Socially, I think we've backpedaled in a lot of ways. Because of the per minute pricing structure that Compuserve had, people tended to be direct and polite. I never encountered any trolls back then and I remember precious few flame wars.

ftfy, sort of

Architecture Of Aggression: what's the reasoning for all the free hours back in the dial up days? was internet easy and super cheap to provide? what's the story there?

It's just like a cable company offering the first month free... just a promotion to get you to sign up.

ohhh. I never used a free xxxx hours disc/diskette so I wasn't quite sure.

used Erol's back then. yeesh

Architecture Of Aggression: what's the reasoning for all the free hours back in the dial up days? was internet easy and super cheap to provide? what's the story there?

It's not that it was cheap, but it was a way to one-up your competition.

Early on, it was a bit like long distance. You call in, you get charged for the time you used it. Since charging by the hour/minute makes people balk as it sound expensive (or potentially expensive) they switched over to a system that was "$10/month 30 hours free"

Financially, it made sense. Someone who used 20 hours in the old system would be paying less, but under the new system, they would have pre-purchased those extra 10 hours. Free money to the service provider.

That's why a lot of us who remember the old system, are pissed off at the new attempts to bring back the 'pre-purchase' concept of the internet. Technologically, it isn't necessary. A company could easily charge you on a per bit basis. But they want to scare you with massive overage charges, to scare you into purchasing the next higher tier. By scaring people into purchasing more than they actually will use, it becomes extra money to the service provider.


But yea, 28.8k with 30 free hours was the equivalent to today's '6Mbits with a 5Gb limit'

Let me add one caveat.

In the past, they actually had a reason for limiting your time, as you were actually tying up a limited resource (phone lines).

72157,2277. Wow, I feel sorry for the neurons that got stuck with remembering that.

NuclearPenguins:
EGA-colored porn

Embarrassingly, I too know this thing.

No Such Agency: NuclearPenguins:
EGA-colored porn

Embarrassingly, I too know this thing.

...and waiting for the pic to display one slow line at a time...

I still have a client who uses compuserve for email. Of course, she still has a laptop that runs 98 and farked up Gateway that runs 2000. She is batshiat insane and can't understand why nobody returns her calls.

71524,3132 ... if I'm remembering it right.

/It could be dimensions for playmate of the month

Donnchadha: 71524,3132 ... if I'm remembering it right.

/It could be dimensions for playmate of the month

Thanks for that, Commander Mancuso.

GEnie!

*picture unavailable*

I can't believe CompuServe was around for this long!

I want to dial up one more time to download all the messages from the Flight Simulation forum!

Hagbardr: /Still gets no love.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH Getitawaygetitawaygetitawaygetitaway

7Mary3and4: Donnchadha: 71524,3132 ... if I'm remembering it right.

/It could be dimensions for playmate of the month

Thanks for that, Commander Mancuso.

Including one WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY out at Pearl!

/never had CS, had Erols before they were RCN.

Flatulent_Flea: ffsieggeniecom

evilmousse: GEnie!

*picture unavailable*

Aladdin was IMO the finest BB-reading software ever written.

And in the day, Air Warrior on GEnie was the coolest game in existence. Not to mention that Scorpia's games BB was for several years THE place to find out anything and everything going on in the games world.

Pyynk: Because of the per minute pricing structure that Compuserve had, people tended to be direct and polite. I never encountered any trolls back then and I remember precious few flame wars.

That may have had less to do with the pricing structure and more to do with the fact that people hadn't realized exactly how free of repercussions the web really is. As soon as the realization kicked in, the Internet tough guy was born.

I remember connecting to CompuServe with my cousins Vic20 the night right after having seen the movie Wargames thinking we would somehow be able to change our grades.

Now I think its obvious by the fact that I actully thought that I could somehow be able to break into my schools mainframe over CompuServe means I'm an idiot and explains more about why I had the bad grades that I wanted to change to begin with.

erikike: I remember connecting to CompuServe with my cousins Vic20 the night right after having seen the movie Wargames thinking we would somehow be able to change our grades.

Now I think its obvious by the fact that I actully thought that I could somehow be able to break into my schools mainframe over CompuServe means I'm an idiot and explains more about why I had the bad grades that I wanted to change to begin with.

I think most kids thought something similar.

Also on GEnie.. and Applelink and PCLink, and QuantumLink.

all you had to do back then was make a fake website and host it on your campus server. that way it wasn't a federal offense and all you had to do was fool your parents instead of the school's computer system.

If you need dial-up Internet access, there are two options you may wish to consider.

1. Buy a farking cable modem

2. See Option 1.

Bondith: If you need dial-up Internet access, there are two options you may wish to consider.

1. Buy a farking cable modem

2. See Option 1.


Some people don't have cable internet service. We used to live in the middle of the woods nowhere and my parents just got broadband available in 2008!

And even then, they just put a humongous antenna on top of the water tower. If it's windy or something, the internet may go out.

70045,156

300 baud was actually pretty good speed. You could read it in real time as it was received.

We didn't need no stinkin' data buffers! And we liked it that way...

I was never on Compuserve, just had AOL and eWorld.

/probably the only person here who was on eWorld.

were there ever any pieces of software that displayed text as it was recieved/typed? letter by letter style

I remember ICQ doing this but I haven't used that in at least ten years. the feature was awful because of course when you jokingly type "yeah who cares" as a little joke to yourself before deleting and sending a real response, it doesn't work if they see it.

atouk: 70045,156

300 baud was actually pretty good speed. You could read it in real time as it was received.

We didn't need no stinkin' data buffers! And we liked it that way...

I remember even in the later days of compuserve we'd log in at 300 baud just cause it was cheaper than the blazingly fast 9600. Based on our local phone lines, 9600 wasn't that much better.

Wow. I just did a Google search on my old CI$ e-mail and found some posts from WAAAAAYYYYY beyond Pearl to a listserv I used to subscribe to.

Mrs. Unobtanium went with Mindspring and I dumped my CI$ account when we went from dial-up to DSL. Plus my employer finally get with the 20th century and we all go internet e-mail addresses. Which led to EVERYONE at work forwarding all the original hoaxes we had been seeing for many years on CI$. :-(

I made some good friends on Compuserve and have actually knowingly met them in person.

And back in the days, we didn't call them trolls, we called them ad hominem attacks.

/G,D&R.
//My God, I feel old now.

Oh, yeah. TAPCIS actually made CompuServe affordable.

One of my Apple II and Mac sysops jobs was looking at user uploaded EGA-colored porn to make sure it met the standards.

I also got to deal with people like David Sternlight if anyone remembers him from back then. Who said no flame wars then? They did't call him Sterno for nothing. Actually met him at a MacWorld and in person he was pretty likable.

76216,3306

Damn, I made some good friends in some of the forums there.

72760,600

I have no idea what my number was, but I had one up until 10 years or so ago.

I'm trying to remember the pron path in compuserve...I was entirely too young to have great porn access and man it was great. My old man's friend was like, yo...kid...wanna see some titties. "yes please"


I bet there are some 3.5"s lying around with the results of that endeavor. Good times.

I lost my patience with them when they couldn't even get account numbers a standard TCP/IP email address.

77021.1131

AOL, CompuServe, GEnie, eWorld, in that order.

74224,1647

300 Baud Atari 800XL

I still remember the feeling when I made that first connection and knew that my computer was actually talking to other computers!

I supported Compuserve years ago. That was quite interesting, especially when you consider Compuserve marketed toward the more intelligent class of citizen...

That's what they told me in the interview that it was marketed towards the business person, and the investor, etc.

Boy were they wrong. But the company that I worked for at the time did outsourced support. It was all fine and dandy, until AOL bought them out. I had a free account, so I couldn't complain.

But I went to broadband as soon as it was available in my area.

If you had one of these, you were old school:

US Videotel (new window)

I still remember the old b&w ASCII texts.

bingethinker: AOL, CompuServe, GEnie, eWorld, in that order.

whoa, so I'm not the only person on Fark who used to be on eWorld? Awesome!

CompuServe was my first service.
Then Delphi.
Then AOL.
Then Erol's (my first pure ISP).
Then Earthlink.
Then Cox (my first broadband ISP).
Comcast, Charter, etc.

CompuServe served the purpose for me back in the late 80's. I had no idea they were still around.

I wonder if the atari 8bit game I wrote and uploaded to compuserve back in the 80s is still there....

Could you play the original Neverwinter Nights on Compuserve? I could have sworn I bought several Dragon Magazines for several free hours.

Has a sad. No more wife-hunting.

Third Marriage -- Marta Maranda Fitzgerald:
Marta was a married aerobics instructor from Titusville, Florida, who Rush met on the Internet via Compuserve in 1990. According to the PalmBeachPost.com Marta was "married three times and had a son and daughter before hooking up with Rush."

71033.38

Just for grins, I looked up my old Compuserve account. Still there, just bought by AOL. I can't access it for some reason- I can log in, but can't download my email.