RIP, CompuServe, although I never loved you!
Connecting via a 300 baud telephone line modem was a tedious process, and my
blazingly fast Tandy 1000 didn't help. A 4 Mhz processor, (NOT Ghz), a
5.25" floppy drive and 128k of memory, I added a clock chip and a
card-mounted 40 Mhz hard drive.
I became re-acquainted with "Fraint" there, my first meeting was in local
Bulletin Boards, which were considerably easier on the pocket than
Compuserve. I remember piling up a monthly cost of US$ 85 in good old
Compuserve, even using the fast-in, fast-out software available to navigate
and snatch information quickly. I even had a Compuserve VISA card to make
losing money easier... until the company dumped the service without warning.
I subsequently found that PCMagNet and ZiffNet could supply most of the
stuff I wanted at that time.
I don't care to remember the days, yes days, this system took to render a
fairly basic fractal.
Farewell Compuserve... I, personally, will not miss you!
John W.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee H. Skinner" <skinner@???>
To: "Fractint and General Fractals Discussion"
<fractint@???>
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 11:26 AM
Subject: [Fractint] CompuServe Requiem
The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down
this past week by its current owner, AOL. The service, which provided
its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major
online service, had seen the number of users dwindle in recent years. At
its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users
simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from
online travel (Eaasy Sabre), online shopping, online stock quotations,
and global weather forecasts, just to name a few, were standard fare on
CompuServe in the 1980s.
CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic
(as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail
system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all
the features supported by that software, from forums for virtually every
topic and profession known to man to members’ Ourworld Web pages, has
been shut down. Indeed, the current version of the service’s client
software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999.
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