On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Roger Turk wrote:
> Compuserve started out as a bulletin board service (BBS) which
> was accessible using *any* communications program as everything on Compuserve
> was pure text and *fast*. . It developed into the most diverse BBS of all of
> its competitors with a multitude of fora.
Er... I was on Prodigy, AOL and Delphi in those days,
and while Compuserve was deservedly known as C$, being
the most expensive service you could subscribe to, I
don't know that it necessarily had so many more fora than
all the others.
Of the three I was on, only Delphi was accessible
using strictly text. I mostly used Telix to access.
> E-mail could be exchanged only
> between Compuserve subscribers and there was no access to the Internet.
Same with AOL and Prodigy. Delphi was, of course,
the first service to enable its members to access the
internet. First was e-mail, then the rest of the
TCP/IP suite. Gopher was REAL big on Delphi. They
also had a text web browser predating lynx, but I can't
recall its name.
> As windoze entered the scene, Compuserve started going to a graphical
> interface called HMI.
AOL had a graphical interface for Tandy... don't
recall its name either, and then went to GeoWorks for
its main PC/DOS platform.
I was only a member of Prodigy for some 6 months or
so. I didn't follow their development after I quit.
> You could still use a communication program to access
> Compuserve, but the fora that went to (were pressured to change to) the
> graphical HMI interface were no longer accessible to communication programs.
Delphi added web access to all its textside forums,
but new forums were web-only... about '97 or so.
> Compuserve brought out a couple of programs, DOSCIM and WINCIM (DOS/Windows
> Compuserve Information Manager) which could be used to access the fora with
> HMI graphics. The last version of DOSCIM was, 2.6 (which, I think is still
> available). From then on, Compuserve programs were strictly windoze
> programs. You still could/can access Compuserve using any communications
> program, however, forum access was/is very limited.
Delphi did away with web-text sync around April,
(so textside fora were accessible ONLY through textside)
and then killed textside access all together on May 1st.
They're now in the unenviable position of trying to
recover from their position of relying on ads for all
their operating revenue.
They FINALLY realized this isn't viable, and are now
trying to sell "plus" membership packages very similar
to the "premium" packages they did away with not too
long ago! Of course the new subscriptions won't
include any kind of text access at all.
On the brighter side, you can still access Delphi
with pretty much any web browser that supports
cookies and referer, though they have a bunch of
javascript stuff too. I just failed at trying to
create a new user at Delphi with Arachne, but then I
remembered I had referer disabled. Didn't go back
and try it with referer.
> At the present time, I can still access Compuserve by using ProComm, but
> there are very few fora available.
That was the situation 6 months ago at Delphi.
There were still about 200 fora available on textside,
but almost all the traffic on them was generated by
people accessing from webside.
> Billing information is available, as well
> as dial-up access numbers, but most of the fora have changed to a relay to
> the internet.
Hmm... I wonder what's still at Delphi...
Logon at : 18-JUL-2001 11:59:12
Last Logon : 1-JUN-2001 10:41:56
**********************************************************************
* *
* Beginning May 1, 2001, Delphi Text Access is being discontinued. *
* *
* During Phase One, e-mail continues to work. *
* *
* No new Forum message may be posted and no changes may be made *
* to the Databases. Please feel free to retrieve any messages or *
* database files you didn't have time to get prior to May 1. *
* *
* Conferencing (Chat) from the Text side is no longer available. *
* *
**********************************************************************
One of the things I really used to like about Delphi
e-mail was the spam filters they had in place. Once
they started migrating seriously to webside, that fell
out of maintenance, and now the ONLY thing I get in my
Delphi mailbox is spam. Of course, they told us to
migrate to other e-mail quite a while back.
> AOL, which was a very poor, distant cousin of Compuserve in the BBS area
> started flooding the country with floppies that had programs that would
> permit easy access to AOL and people started loading these and subscribing to
> AOL ala the Gilette Safety Razor technique --- give away the razor and make
> money selling the blades. Compuserve ignored this activity by AOL as
> Compuserve *was* the premier BBS with more fora and subscribers than all the
> other BBSes combined. When Compuserve finally realized what was happening,
> it was too late.
Compuserve simply over-valued its service. It was
always the most expensive one on the block, and once
competition started popping up, management believed
they could continue charging outrageous prices
based on reputation alone.
> Before I went to the flat rate plan
> (unlimited hours) and was just getting onto the internet, I had a couple of
> months when my Compuserve bill was in excess of $150.
Yikes! The absolute highest month I EVER had on
Delphi was around $26. Let's see... taxing the
memory here... $20 for the first 20 hours, $3 for
internet access, and then $2 for each additional
hour. With an offline reader, you could get on,
grab 100K worth of messages and be back offline
practically before your online ticker could
register anything.
Of course once I graduated from "user to "forum
assistant," access was free and when I had my own
forum, I started getting a paycheck. Ah, for the
good ol' days when I could justify spending as much
time online as I wanted. ;-)
- Steve
