11 ms·
Compuserve
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoSometime around 1992, I was at a conference with booths from Compuserve and AOL and all the rest. I marched right up to the Compuserve lady, never having used the service, and I inquired "so when are you gonna get a clue and connect to the Internet?" Of course she answered with something rather clueless and diplomatic, but I got a thrill out of being right when all those walled-gardens hooked up to the walled garden to end all walled gardens.
- jimmytucson 3y agoDoesn’t look like it’s changed much in 20+ years, though I did find this quaint snapshot from 1996 of a team of engineers I presume with the caption “See you in the Spring!”: https://web.archive.org/web/19961220045225/https://www.compuserve.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961220045225/https://www.compu...
- anonu 3y agoI think it was 1992 when my dad showed me how to dial into Compuserve. We might have had a 9600 baud modem that tied up the phone line and cost an astronomical amount per minute. I recall bringing up a weather map of the US. I had no clue what to do with that information. But I was hooked.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m4jor 3y agoI used to live in Germany (dad was a military contractor). We had a computer with dialup but it was insanely expensive to use there at the time and only my parents could use it. Well one day they left me home alone and I got curious so I connected and stayed online for probably 8-9 hours before they got home. It was a blast. I too was also hooked immediately. I sure got a shock when my parents came into my room a month later to ask if I had been on the computer without them because we had a huge bill haha.
- chrisco255 3y agoYeah I ran up a multi hundred dollar internet bill when I was 9 and my parents cancelled AOL for a couple years until they came out with unlimited plans.
- sneak 3y agoThey had free trial offers for 10 hours (at first) so I was sneak, then sneak{1,..,14} or something on there. Eventually I managed to shoulder surf the login for the PPP connection to a local ISP used at my school, then I had unlimited. Thankfully I had enough sense at 13 or 14 to ATDT*67,,1xxxxxxxxxx so that they couldn't identify who it was without actually sending a subpoena/warrant to the telco (which they didn't do). In any case the school paid a flat rate for unlimited usage, so my being connected all night didn't cost anyone anything. They yelled at me a lot though because it was pretty obvious who was using dozens of hours of dialin every month, given that the school's list of suspects was one item long.
- brewtide 3y agoI took borrowed a school account to a local ISP. Saving the setting file onto a disk and rummaging through it with ResEdit to my young surprise brought me the text I was looking for! Unlike you, I didn't have enough foresight to attempt to block the dialing in number .. at all. But I had internet for most of the school year until, as per your story, it relatively came crashing down one day. Same justifications of "borrowing" the account as well -- I wasn't using it during the school day itself, I was at school -- and it seemed so silly to waste such services for 2/3rd's of a day! A Stern talking to and that was that... Imaging what would happen now!
- yomlica8 3y ago> They yelled at me a lot though because it was pretty obvious who was using dozens of hours of dialin every month, given that the school's list of suspects was one item long. Not sure why they didn't change the password. I was assuming they just never noticed the usage.
- kmoser 3y agoI remember getting trial accounts that had a limited number of hours, but if they ran out while you were still connected you didn't get booted off; you just couldn't connect the next time you dialed in. So I would log on near the end of my time limit and spend all night downloading files, well past what would have been the normal account expiration time.
- rojeee 3y agoOh gosh. I remember my parents hiding my keyboard and mouse after my Dad received a £500 phone bill one month. This was in 1999. We were on pay per minute dial-up in the UK and I was obsessed with playing a game called Team Fortress Classic, a mod for Half-Life. Even with ping times of 200ms it was still really playable! We only had one phone line and the downside of this for my parents was that no-one could call the house phone - engaged tone. Remember, this is before widespread mobile phones. The downside for me was that any time someone picked up a phone in the house - like my sister to call her stupid boyfriend - all they heard was modem noise and it sometimes ended up in the modem hanging up the connection mid game... Infuriating! Luckily I had a spare keyboard and mouse in my cupboard, which I promptly set up to the bemusement of my parents. They were very patient...
- yomlica8 3y ago> We only had one phone line and the downside of this for my parents was that no-one could call the house phone - engaged tone. I bought this little box on ebay that monitored for the call waiting signal while dialup was connected and then let the call ring through. If I was quick I could get starcraft to reconnect when a telemarketer interrupted. It was a lot cheaper than a second phone line!
- McGlockenshire 3y agoWhat a delightful web design throwback. I hit the zoom a few notches so I could actually read it, and then felt right at home reading the news like I used to do decades ago. I don't like this whole "getting old" thing.
- lproven 3y agoMe neither... but it's better than the alternative.
- FFP999 3y ago[dead]
- jonnycomputer 3y agoaside from all the nostalgia, what a nice clean no-bs news site.
- DrThunder 3y agoYeah it's actually refreshing.
- DrawTR 3y agoA little jarring how clicking on any of the hyperlinked 'channels' on the left navigation bar will send you 20 years into the future in terms of web design. Quite a stark contrast.
- ethbr1 3y agoWhat framework are they using for the base pages? It's amazing how fast they load! /s
- grav 3y agoPrevJS
- _joel 3y agoProtoJS (although that is actually a thing)
- broodbucket 3y agohttp://vanilla-js.com/ http://vanilla-js.com/
- whoopdedo 3y agoPerhaps a larger legacy than being a communications platform is that Compuserve is the reason we have GIF. And fittingly, many of the graphics on that page are GIF. I presume Compuserve never had to worry about Unisys litigation.
- jghn 3y agoAnd how we know that it is pronounced like the peanut butter! As a kid in the 80s on compuserve o still remember coming across that document explaining GIF, including the pronunciation
- prometheus76 3y agoSorry, but you'll never convert me to that pronunciation, even if that's what the founder wants. "G" stands for "graphics", not "jraphics".
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoPerhaps for English, but for Romance languages such as Italian and Latin, the "gi" digram means that the hard g softens to a /dz/ sound, so I'm perfectly comfortable with applying that rule here, and I think it sounds nicer.
- 0x0000000 3y agoI imagine you apply this rule equally to "j-ph-eg" images?
- sandyarmstrong 3y agop for picture ;-)
- jghn 3y agoI know there's a smiley here but for others coming across it who may not know, it's "photographic", not "picture"
- itsagavin 3y agoAs a young man I spent lots of energy collecting and trading stolen credit cards on IRC. A large amount of what I was doing with them was carding local shell accounts so that I could avoid long distance charges by telnetting in to Compuserve and Genie. I of course carded my accounts there as well. I was hooked on an online airplane game and mechwarrior type arena game and still fondly look back on both those experiences. As you can imagine someone on that path without guidance life didn't go so hot and I still every now and then wish I could man a turret in a b17 on an airfield run and enjoy the simpler times.
- pram 3y agoI remember a lot of (porn) sites early on would accept credit card numbers from a generator. Didn’t even need a real one! Of course they’d later close the account for fraud when it wouldn’t bill but it was a surprising amount of places that didn’t actually validate anything beyond the digits being Visa or Mastercard etc.
- cobertos 3y agoHow interesting! I wonder what happened behind the scene to require this. Companies in spaces like that usually require specific merchant banks that are willing to deal with "high risk" (or so seemed to be the search term). I wonder if this had advantages in bank selection or how it looked to the banks? Or perhaps a technical limitation?
- wukerplank 3y agoI think there was no realtime CC processing back then. In my last job I found artefacts like fax forms where they would write down collected credit card data (from online subscriptions) to be sent to their processor. To have at least _some_ safety they would just check [1] if the CC number is sound. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
- icedchai 3y agoCompuserve was the first thing I dialed with my 1200 baud modem, back in 1988. I still have one of the original "sign up kits" at my parents' house!
- rmason 3y agoI literally added a 1200 baud modem to my first computer purchase so that I could dial in to CompuServe. Living in the countryside it was an expensive long distance call just to connect and that cost limited my usage but I sure enjoyed it.
- DonHopkins 3y agoModems used to cost a dollar a baud! Introduction To Time Shared Systems (June 1972): https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2020/isde-ised/Co22/Co22-315-1972-1-eng.pdf https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2020/isde-... >Apparently, there's a rough rule-of-thumb formula that the cost of a modem is about a dollar per baud. This estimate accounts for the extras that are usually added as rated speed is increased to give the device its 1-m1*in-turn utility.
- sokoloff 3y agoMy cable modem (which actually cost $120) is capable of 1.4Gbps downstream and so should cost $1.4B (or $700M and change if you give only $0.50 per baud per direction). $1.2 * 10^2 vs $1.4 * 10^9.
- 300bps 3y agoI called almost exclusively local BBSes with my 300 bps modem starting in 1985. There was no local Compuserve dial-in number for me. Between the long distance and the per minute charges, Compuserve was out of reach. By the way, your 1200 bps modem was actually 600 baud! People often use baud and bps interchangeably but they're different. The most common 1200 bps standard was v.22 which used 600 baud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ITU-T_V-series_recommendations#V.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ITU-T_V-series_recomme...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 6stringmerc 3y agoAhhh GIF trading and the first time I met a skinhead. Still use my old handle. For DJ work now…charming_weasel
- wlonkly 3y agoGood skinhead or bad skinhead?
- gharman 3y agoMy elderly father still uses this as his primary gateway to the internet and email. For all intents and purposes, this is the internet to him.
- exogeny 3y agoMy compliments on one of the few times I've actually seen that phrase used and spelled correctly.
- bombcar 3y agoMissed the chance to go with “for all internets and purposes” though.
- stock_toaster 3y agoCould use some porpoises too.
- lproven 3y agoSo long, and thanks for all the numeric user IDs.
- Nursie 3y agoMy mother and her husband still use AOL email, which I thought was bad enough, I managed to persuade them some years ago that they didn't need to use the AOL portal to get at the internet. I still haven't managed to persuade them to change ISP though, even though AOL removed themselves from the broadband ISP business in the UK, what, 20 years ago? And their connection had been bought and sold by different providers multiple times over those years, my stepfather is concerned that if he changes ISP then the email will no longer know how to find his house. In the face of this sort of argument, I crumble. They could be paying less for a faster service with better support than they get now, but I guess that's never going to happen.
- 3y ago
- ApolIllo 3y agoDamn i thought this was Compuware. Loved the Compuware Corvette C5-R
- tech234a 3y agoSee also https://isp.netscape.com/ https://isp.netscape.com/, which appears to be the same site but with a different logo and colors.
- taftster 3y agoHuh? You're right. Why is this the same site? What's going on here? Is there a relationship between these two (defunct) sites?
- agildehaus 3y agoBoth CIS (CompuServe Information Service) and Netscape were purchased by AOL.
- rob74 3y ago...which was then purchased by Yahoo, which also owns the altavista.com domain - so almost all early Internet brands are under one roof now.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoBut did it have to be Verizon's roof?
- DavidSJ 3y agoIndeed, netscape.com has been running a variant of this software for a long time: http://web.archive.org/web/20090604104519/http://netscape.aol.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20090604104519/http://netscape.ao...
- joezydeco 3y agoNow I kind of want a CIS email address just to be ironic, but it needs to be in the original PDP/TOPS format 12345,123. Am I remembering it correctly? It was TOPS, right?
- jghn 3y agoI’m now questioning how well I remember my id but but yes am pretty sure it was 5,4 structure
- lproven 3y agoIt is more specific than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#User_IDs_and_e-mail_addresses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#User_IDs_and_e-mail... Octal digits, starting with a 7: `7xxxx,xxx`. My work address was 70006,101.
- jghn 3y agoAh right. I had seen that PDP legacy aspect before but totally forgot. I had a 75300 series account via my dad's work which for the most part was amazing as it was a sysop level account (and free!). The one downside to teenage me was that you couldn't access any of the extra cost bits, like most of the games.
- StanislavPetrov 3y agoI spent an absolute fortune playing British Legends in the mid 1980s on Compuserve. It was $6.25 an hour at 300 baud to watch the text slowly crawl across the screen - and that was dial up, when telephone charges were expensive even for local calls. You can still play if you are interested! (for free and at a much higher speed) http://www.british-legends.com/CMS/ http://www.british-legends.com/CMS/
- VectorLock 3y agoCompuserve was too hard to get into, but Prodigy... that was my jam.
- ilaksh 3y agoYeah we had Prodigy also. Accessed via 2400 baud modem if I recall. CompuServe had its heyday much earlier I believe. I think I was on dialup to BBSs before Prodigy. And then EarthLink.
- VectorLock 3y agoI think I was on Prodigy a little bit before BBS' then after the BBS era began to wain it was dialup PPP (then a hacked PPP server at MIT), and shell systems.
- fractallyte 3y agoMy CompuServe email address is still active! It's hosted by AOL now, but the actual email address is the same as it was in 1997.
- TMWNN 3y agoI have a valid AOL email address despite never having subscribed to AOL. Did the same thing happen to your CompuServe address; that is, transition to the free email model?
- fractallyte 3y agoYes! It was free for a long time with CompuServe, and since the transition to AOL, it's remained free.
- kristopolous 3y agoI get the strong feeling that Netscape 4 wouldn't have any issue with this page
- gunapologist99 3y agoWho knows how old this code is, but this page was developed with div's+css, which 4 didn't support (fully or not at all). It wasn't until later versions that divs replaced tables for layout.[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator#Decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator#Decline
- kristopolous 3y agoNetscape had support for both of those. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/old-software/web-browsers/netscape-communicator-4-01 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/old-software/web-browsers/ne... It was lousy but your timeline is a little off. Divs not only go back further than that but in those days you could just invent tags and Netscape 4 would treat it like some container <Xyz> </xyz> would just default to some block of unknown type or purpose. Regardless divs are from html 3.2 https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/SPSD-html32-20180315/#div https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/SPSD-html32-20180315/#div Let me be clear on the CSS support here, It was buggy partial and lousy. I was stuck on that browser for 5 years at the time on Linux before Mozilla became good enough
- winrid 3y agoWonder how many servers somewhere are up just to run this :)
- dtjohnnymonkey 3y agoOne of my first moments on the internet was chatting on Compuserve using the DOS client. Chats were sent character-by-character so everyone’s text was constantly stomping over everyone else’s. But it was amazing that those were people from all over the country you could chat with.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWhen I was first introduced to Unix (SVR3) all the students used 'write' to chit-chat, and somehow we adopted conventions so that our text would not stomp (it was line-by-line, though) so we would write something like "-o" for "over" when we were finished typing, and "-oo" or "o&o" when we wanted to end the convo. When MUDs became a thing, it was soon a stigma to be "on raw telnet" as we'd say, because a client could easily handle incoming text while you're typing a line at the same time. And so I became utterly addicted to full-duplex conversations, hardly even caring if I stayed on topic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- swozey 3y agoThey put their news articles dates in tiny little text at the bottom of most articles.. interesting design choice. I didn't even see them until I looked at a few.
- thepostman0 3y agohttps://isp.netscape.com/?guccounter=1 https://isp.netscape.com/?guccounter=1
- prozaix 3y agoI like how upbeat and politically neutral the news headlines are. That's what truly makes it nostalgic, not the old css.
- DonHopkins 3y agoWhen Kaleida Labs was shutting down in the mid 90's, somebody put a bunch of big labeled recycling bins out in the hall, for soon-to-be-ex-employees to throw different types of office junk into to be recycled. But there were just so many AOL and Compuserve signup floppies and cds that I labeled two separate recycling bins AOL and Compuserve, one for each brand!
- Angostura 3y agoThat's sad. Just visited the 'About us' page: "Support for the latest Windows operating system, Windows XP, for greater compatibility,"
- bradley13 3y agoTIL: Compuserve still exists. I haven't thought about them since dial-up days. Do these shells never die?
- imchillyb 3y agoCompuserve was my gateway to: The Well. The Well was my Internet before the Internet. What a fond trip down memory lane.
- justin66 3y ago"Copyright © 2023 Yahoo Inc. All rights reserved."
- rbanffy 3y agoShould use green monospaced type on a black background.
- jamesgill 3y agoCompuserve was where I had my first email account in the early/mid 80s, dialing in on a C64 and a 300 baud modem. God, the amount of time I spent playing Megawars and cursing my slow modem.
- LanceH 3y agoMegawars and cursing the bill that just arrived.
- taylodl 3y agoCompuServe was pretty awesome back in the 80's! It was essentially email and Reddit, all in one service. You had scripts that would run to send/receive mail, download thread updates and upload responses - all batch, because you were charged by the minute for connect time. There are some aspects of that environment I like better than what we have today.
- icedchai 3y agoThe online chat ("CB simulator") was neat, too. That was the first time I had seen something like that.
- mattw2121 3y agoI began my addiction to a particular game, Island of Kesmai, on Compuserve back in the 80's. It later became Legends of Kesmai (on Gamestorm and AOL) and has since been reborn with several remakes. The current, and best, is Stormhalter (http://www.stormhalter.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.stormhalter.com/wiki/Main_Page).
- Lucent 3y agoCurious if these old email addresses that became a tech embarrassment will see a rebound in cachet. "Ooh, a résumé with @compuserve.com. This guy was there at the beginning."
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoI doubt many people under 40 know what Compuserve is/was.
- loneboat 3y agoMy initial reaction to your comment was a smug "Hah! I know what CompuServe was!" followed by the realization that I'v been over 40 for a couple of years now.
- FabHK 3y agoI’d love to have my short compuserve.com email back. I’d even be prepared to pay a modest amount for it. Nothing embarrassing about it, if you wanted to be online (particularly on the road internationally) that was the way. Compuserve had dial-up modems everywhere :-)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- irongeek 3y agoThe site does not look fancy but it delivers. Everyone complaining about someone using that page, why? I have adblock on so maybe it looks far worse for others. But I just see straight up headlines for each topic and it looks current. I did not know this page still existed either, but honestly I like the simple look.
- ngcazz 3y agoFirst time a cookie modal actually enhanced my browsing experience. The background blur hid the retro design, making for a very nice surprise when I dismissed it!
- glonq 3y agoI missed the boat on those paid online services because my family was not in a position to pay $X per month for such a thing. Even scrounging up for my 8-bit Atari and 300bps modem was tough. So I cut my teeth on people's little basement-hosted BBS's first, and didn't experience anything multi-user until some of the big multi-line BBS's popped up.
- Thoreandan 3y agoSame, MPP Express, and the 313 area code BBS Listing. ;)
- carimura 3y agoI recall getting hooked on some turn-based war simulator and played for days resulting in some crazy high bill that my parents had to pay. Anyone remember that game?
- ralphc 3y agoWhere can one download the improved Compuserve 7, compatible with XP? I'd like to try it.
- DougN7 3y agoIt wasn’t all that great - too glitzy :)
- lolive 3y agoFunnily, I am in the middle of season 2 of Halt And Catch Fire. And beyond the references to AWS, Wolf3D and IRC/Usenet, I wonder which other parts are direct references to Compuserve. [i have never been on Compuserve]