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AOL Shuts Down CompuServe
Oracle Goddess writes "After 30 years, CompuServe is all but dead, as AOL has pulled the plug on the once-great company. The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service. 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 has been shut down. Tellingly, the current version of the service's client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999."
I still remember my compuserve address... 70324,1777...
I can't for the live of me remember my pins, or phone numbers, but this ancient email address I have remembered to this day...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Yet the internet will be littered with dancing Jesus for years to come.
AOL shut down Compuserv LONG ago, when they bought it. The only thing that remained was the name. The techy goodness that differentiated CS from the mass appeal of AOL was gone.
They even dialed into the same modem bank, with exactly the same phone numbers.
[hanging head] Yes, I had an AOL acct and a CS acct at the same time.
I don't remember my Account Number, but I signed up in 1987, shortly after I bought my Atari 1040ST and a 2400-baud modem. I got hooked on the CB Simulator, and spent myself into severe debt. Good times.
Does anyone remember playing the game "The PITS" on CompuServe? Or, even better, know if thesource survived?
http://games.wwco.com/pits/
I kept one just for this day
Goodbye to what was once an incredibly innovative service...
For any Slashdot readers who need to get a friend or relative off of CompuServe:
Users who are running CompuServe 3 or 4 can export the address book using:
http://www.connectedsw.com/Overview/57262
Users who are running CompuServe 2000, 6 or 7 can export the address book and email using:
http://www.connectedsw.com/Overview/57267
compuserve was the first thing i ever dialed with my first real computer, as it was the first actual service provider to have a local phone number in my area when i was a kid
i was completely in awe of it when i first used it, it cost me a good chunk of my allowance, but i remember it made the local BBS systems, as well as some other service providers that eventually crept into my area seem like toys
i used it for quite a long time even after everyone else had proper internet service (the internet took quite a while to get here)
i'll always have fond memories of it
suprised it took this long to die, but RIP anyways
Compuserve might've been great at one time, but it hasn't been for a much longer period. I used to do customer service for them back when they were offering a $400 rebate on new computers... as long as people signed up for a 2 year service agreement with them. I felt dirty every time I had to take a call from someone that had one of those rebates. Half the time the callers wanted to cancel their service because of how piss poor their dial-up connection was and it was my job to "remind" them about the terms which stated that they had to pay back the rebate PLUS a cancellation fee. I put remind in quotes because it was often the customer's first time hearing about the terms in the first place (Admittedly this was usually the sales person's fault, and usually not Compuserve's.). I remember one call in particular when a customer in Pennsylvania had purchased a computer with the rebate only to find out that they only had TWO dial-up numbers in the whole state available to them, neither of which was a local call for them. I had to tell this poor soul that they had accepted the terms of the rebate, received the $400, and if they cancelled they would owe Compuserve all that back, etc even though they couldn't even use the service. Now Compuserve was obviously not the only ISP that played the rebate game, but their participation left a bad taste in mouth and lowered my opinion of them greatly.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
The case of Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. was one of the first of it kind and set an important precedent for online BBS. In that case CompuServe was sued because they hosted a BBS where defamatory content was posted. The court rules that although CompuServe provided the medium they were not responsible for the content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby_v._CompuServe).
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
I chose it because you could get connected anywhere on your travels, including countries that had not yet discovered the internet or dial-up connectivity. There was always a node to dial, usually local if you were in a city. Now there's friendly people all over the planet who know my old Compuserve address, but I don't know their current email address. So I kept that old address long past its close-down-by date, just in case some old friend came out of the mist looking for me. Worked quite a few times, too. I'm glad AOL are allowing the addresses to continue.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Oddly ironic that Compuserve was around before AOL. Gah, I still remember the days when AOL users first flooded the net. They were rude, they were shrill and they were legion.
The days you would actually still use a gopher server.
We got our first internet connection from the local library.
Some admins would actually block AOL users from their web servers.
Exciting times.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I canceled my CS account after they overreacted to Bavarian censorship demands. See Risks issues 17.61, 17.62 and other sources
What's the "get off my lawn" equivalent for young->old
Allow me to be the first to say... Compuserve still existed?
Property is theft.
Compuserve was shut down? It was still up!?
Those of us who live outside of the US are vaguely aware of its existance...
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
I remember in mid 80's paying alaskanet? $6 an hour to get connected from Naknek AK instead of long distance charge & then paying another like $6 an hour for the compuserve, plus a monthly $25 or such to compuserve....
all for 300 baud ... watching those characters come in..... just about as fast as you could read...
locked out of this slashdot account for 10+ years... Im back
So any old timers remember, "The Source"? I used that until its subscriber base got so low you could hear the crickets chirping when you logged on and then switched to CompuServe.
I remember being on "The Source" around 1984 and chatting with someone in the Middle East. Really quite "cool" at the time.
Oh yeah, and my CompuServe ID was 73707,3450 (must have typed that thousands of times until I got TAPCIS to automate downloading). Out of nolstagia I checked my CompuServe mail once every 6 months for years after I gave up on CompuServe.
Good memories...
Of course, now you've got easily accessible on-line porn. Things are MUCH better now!
Once great AOL, not an intelligent idea or product in sight for years, is finally put out of its misery by Time Warner.
Whatever happened to Prodigy? That was my first internet service. I remember my excitement at finding their ST:TNG message board... and chagrin at discovering that it was mostly full of middle-aged women having fantasies about Brent Spiner. I mean, I had a crush on Data and all, but at 14 I was definitely not interested in a 45-year-old actor in the same way these ladies were.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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
That'll never catch on.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Before all the tubes got connected business cards were full of email addresses. One had at least a Compuserve address, a Prodigy address, an AOL address, a company VAXMail address, a company VM/VMS address and perhaps a DARPA/ARPA address.
All that is changed now.
Now we list Company main telephone number, Company direct dial number, Company fax number, Home number, Company cell number and perhaps a Skype id.
For any Slashdot readers who need to get a friend or relative off...
Yeah... I've known her for seven years and loved her madly for six. She considers me a very close friend and someone whose shoulder to cry upon, even calls me cute occasionally... But that's just a friendly, nothing meaning compliment. And I can't say anything because it could ruin our friendship.
I wouldn't even need to "get her off"... Hell, if I could just once tell her "You are more than a friend to me"...
76244,210
Atari 400 at 300 baud... Used CB Simulator, wanted to start a number of forums that foreshadowed very successful web sites...
Later, I wrote Buddylist at AOL.
I still have printouts of the service somewhere in my records.
Stephen
Stephen D. Williams
I remember the very very early days of the internet paying for HOURS online...boy that was fun! But then again it definitely wasn't today's internet!
I used to spend a fortune with them. I also used to go into Worlds Away through compuserve.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Back in the days before the Internet, CI$ (Compuserve Information Service) was one of the first nation wide BBS type systems. It was the place where nationwide online tech support started to become somewhat useful. I used to logon for Novell downloads and Atari support. Of course I also pirated the heck out of everything back then. And I loved their freebie $15 credit thingy they'd include with new modems. Use that code to start an account, randomly pick name/addr/phone number out of phone book, get a bank routing number, then randomly pick account number. Tada free Compuserve until they shut it down. If you did it on a Friday it'd usually last until Monday or tuesday of the following week... Of course this was pre-18 yrs old for me, and I stopped doing it about that time. I remember the adult areas on Compuserve. 320x200x256 GIF files! wohoo! :)
A couple years ago I was working at Dell and got a call from an old lady whose CS client broke. Seems it would eat half the CPU time instead of shutting down. She paid us $99 to fix it because she liked it that much. Solution was to patch the client from something like 7.xya to 7.xyb. Changing only from an a to b version in so much time didn't seem very encouraging since I couldn't find any kind of changelog. The thing worked and good thing too. Googling the issue wasn't getting me anywhere that day.
The funny part came when an L2 wandered by and asked what I was doing. I think he just about died when I told him I was fixing CompuServe. That's when the guy two seats down, a former ISP guy, piped up and told us it's had that bug since 1995 and her issue will likely return in a few months.
I understand people wanting to keep their old e-mail addresses but honestly I find it weird when they want to keep their 1990s method of browsing the web. I certainly don't have any attachment to whatever version of Netscape I was using back when she signed up for CS. The days of the pages with the default gray backgrounds are finally gone!
Gee, if you go to cs.com you can sign up to Compuserve with unlimited Internet access for the discounted rate of $17.95/month. Does not look like a dead company to me; it looks like a company requiring their clients to migrate to newer software (CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2 to Compuserve 7.0, which BTW is only 8 years old!). This sounds like such complete non-news...
I'm no English major or anything, but shouldn't it be "all but alive?"
I loved CompuServe back in its peak. Pre-Internet, everyone was there. I wrote an app called CompuServe Navigator as shareware and they picked it up as a commercial product, and for a time it was the best way to surf the forums with your Mac and a 2400 baud modem. It was sort of a terminal emulator and looked to CompuServe as though a very, very fast typist was giving all the commands to read their favorite forums. It saved all this and hung up the phone, then you could read it all offline and queue up replies to be sent the next time you kicked it off. Yeah, I had the name before those browser people had it, but I didn't have it registered and who wants to fight over a stupid word so I just renamed it MacNav.
I wasn't an employee, but I could see CompuServe falling apart. From where I sat, they were just not listening to the customers any more. Membership fell and AOL got more popular. I sold MacNav to them and watched them evaporate soon after. It was kind of sad cause they didn't have to go - at least until the free, enormous Internet enveloped everything.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
Compuserve was my first real foray into an online community and all the good and bad that comes with it. I was 16 and in High School when the Computer Programming teacher (BASIC on Apple II+ computers) signed up for a school account on Compuserve. This was years before I had even heard of the Internet. Since nobody in the school had the first clue what to do with this "Information Superhighway" thing, and I was the only geek around, the teacher just gave me the login info and let me do whatever I wanted on it.
It didn't take me long to gravitate towards the various chat rooms. Those of you who grew up with the availability of the Internet and the like probably take it for granted that you can communicate with people all over the world (or nation, at least). Back when my only communication with the world at large was my pen pal, these simple chat rooms were mind-blowing!
There was one little hitch. See, my nickname back then was "Granny" (play on my last name) and so I naturally used it as my handle in the chat room. I forget which room I joined but I hadn't been in there but a few seconds when I started getting a lot of people saying "hi" and asking where I was located and the like. Then somebody asked how old I was and I mentioned that I was 16.
Well, right after I wrote that, I started getting a stream of Private Chat requests. We're talking a couple dozen requests in about 10 seconds. "Everybody is so friendly," I thought.
But their questions were odd and very personal. "What do you look like?" "What color are your eyes?" "What are you wearing?" Eh? What am I wearing? What kind of weird question is that to ask.
And then: "How big are your boobs?" "Do you have a boyfriend?" It went off the deep end after that.
They thought I was a 16 year old girl! I thought that was so funny and told them so. And just like that, all of the Private Chats closed and all I was left with were a scattering of "Well why would you call yourself Granny if you weren't a girl?" messages.
I signed on a few more times as Granny after that but found that I really couldn't go anywhere without a stream of sexual comments following me. I eventually had to change my nick just to be able to chat with people without them staring at my virtual chest.
That was an eye-opener. Let me tell you, though, when the Internet happened years later and I heard women complaining about being effectively harassed online by a bunch of horny nerds... well, I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Heh.
I was 71541,3346.... then I got 3 other accounts. Was seriously into multiplayer gaming, specifically MegaWars III and Island of Kesmai. Most of my college money went to pay the +CI$ bills...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Compuserve, I think,, would have survived much better in the Internet age than AOL, if AOL hadn't have bought them. AOL was more a forerunner of the advertising laden shlock that we have today, but Compuserve was a much more serious minded product and tended to have good information products and good forums. IF AOL would have kept up with Compuserve, investing millions into a computerserve web site, rather than -cough-, Time Warner, they could have been way out in front with the social stuff that was in Compuservers forums, the software stores could have been expanded to sell other stuff... the news was always good. It was just that AOL ruined them.
This is my sig.
That's pretty much what happened. But, to some extent, Prodigy's protocol was ahead of its time.
This is my sig.
"I might have killed 2/3 of you people!"
Since you just posted AC, this could be interesting.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
But yes, I do remember well: using Red Ryder terminal software on my Mac Plus, 1985, to connect to CompuServe. Would work great until someone picked up an extension line, then...
^&($*$%&
NO CARRIER
Eventually they had a graphical front-end, which was faster, but not as pretty as their arch-rival, America Online.
Ahh, such simpler times...
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Ah, the bad old days of having to pay long-distance to connect, and premium hourly rates on top of that to access the interesting part of Compu$serve (in my case, the file downloads). 14.4 Kbps was king, and I could only be on the service for 30 minutes a week.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Compuserve, we barely knew thee...Cuz like, I could get offers to enlarge that certain part of the male body from the rest of teh webs since the early 90's.
So I guess you were better than AOL, who funny enough just put you out of your misery even though you were around longer. And I was never really into you, even more so once I found local BBS'. Especially ones with pirate software and Trade Wars. To be honest I was only fascinated by what was possible with you, not what you actually offered. I should have been more open with you and told you.
But you were great fun while you lasted, which in the eyes of most people who knew about you probably ended somewhere around 1985. I hope you weren't lonely in the end, because I had no idea you were on that respirator and life support. I TOTALLY would have come to see you if I knew...I mean, me and the free shell accounts at Arbornet have been getting it on all kindsa nasty style for years now, so I hope you don't curse me from intarwebs hell. I just found a part of teh 'tubes that, you know, I clicked with. It was never you, Compuserve. It was totally me.
Rest In Peace, old friend.
No, really. Back then you got a "free" subscription to the service's print magazine with your membership, and one issue had information and comparisons for various free Unix-likes, and why the article's author thought you would like them.
It had (IIRC) information about Linux 1.2 (then-new), either 386BSD or FreeBSD, and Mark Williams' Coherence. I thought the whole thing sounded really neat.
Another issue had information about the Society for Creative Anachronism, which I also thought was pretty neat. Tells you a bit about the service's users back then.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Requiescat in Pace, CompuServe. AOL was a cruel suitor and an abusive partner. You deserved better. 76702,2040
76334,2421 here... remember it fondly. RIP
Was never a Compuserve guy.... but was a member of Q-Link for a while... I know Q-Link pre-dated AOL, but it probably pre-dated Compuserve also?
Oh Dear Lord, nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
I'm amazed they hadn't already pulled the plug... now it's time to pull the plug on aol.
My first computer was a Radio Shack/Tandy Color Computer II, around 1980-81.
My Second computer was a Commodore Vic 20, wich I used to connect to compuserve with a 300 baud modem around 1981-82. The one thing I remember most is that Compuserve modelled thier chat rooms after the CB Radio Scene. When AOL came around the chat rooms were much easier to navigate then Compuserve and they never recovered. I didnt spend much time on Compuserve in the '80s because they charged by the hour and being a young teen, I didnt have the money. Trying to explain to my parents that I was using the phone to connect to other computers was a lost cause. After that, the C-64 BBS scene took off and life was never the same. Great Memories.
What do you look like? What color are your eyes? What are you wearing? [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Hi! A/S/L? :p
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
is the $300-$400 monthly bills for all the time spent using the CB Simulator. That was addictive, but man those bills hurt.
If, despite your name, you weren't remotely grandmother-aged, why would they still assume that you were female?!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
GO HSX was always good for an interesting read.
73657,3626
Because horny teenagers can be stupid? :)
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
....it was taped to a label on the back of my social security card, which I kept laminated (oh the horror) in my wallet. I haven't even heard anyone mention compuserve in longer than it's been since I would dare keep my social security card in my wallet. Times do change.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
He/ho/bi?
Compuserve was the highest circle. The most clueful of the CompuServe users might one day escape to the Internet. The rest were doomed to pay by the hour.
AOL was the middle circle. The most clueful might one day escape to CompuServe. The rest were doomed to the short bus.
Prodigy was the lowest level of Internet Hell. The most clueful Prodigy users... well it's not entirely clear that anyone ever actually used prodigy. Someone must have because IBM did support on their forums and I drew the short straw the week the usual guy who did it went on vacation. The other services, IBM automatically pulled down and converted to their internal forum format but they couldn't do that with Prodigy, so we had to connect to Prodigy via their big play-doh client and pathetic speeds (Even for the time) and ridiculous character limits to messages. The truly damned resided in Prodigy, and I bear witness to those events like some sort of Internet Dante.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
AOL still exists?
103102,1434 here - signed up in Canada (in 1987 I think.) Had a good long run in the forums, particularly gaming and 3d art. The e-mail was also very useful as I traveled on business a bunch and while it was dial-up, I used it everywhere from Texas to the UK (handy). Finally closed out the e-mail last year as it was finally getting spammed stupid, sorry to see it go though.
Yes, but what are you wearing?
There must be a reason that Compuserve's home page looks a lot like those AOL disks I used to get in the mail.
The disks got to be to expensive? Or the postage?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Compuserve accounts was the best way to access the internet for a few years in the beginning...
They thought anything which looked like a valid CC was a valid CC until they actually tried to charge it after a month..
Good times.
Nowdays when the internet actually is accessable this kind of suspect behaviour is ofcourse frowned upon ;)
After reading the thread, I am actually kind of surprised that nobody has mentioned Delphi --- I had them for internet access until a local BBS started offering it --- Also had prodigy, but that was a family thing (they also had horrible user names (BMTF00A), and I never used Prodigy when they actually had internet, it was just Prodigy and that was it.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
Up until they did this, I was still paying a legacy $2.50/mth fee for Compuserve and my old account could still log in to the service at gateway.compuserve.com via telnet. You could not do much in there of course anymore, but I was also once a sysop, and I still knew how to get into the PRO area, do directory listings of their hard drives (and see files with dates dating back to the 70â(TM)s), and with that knowledge run some of the old apps from the command line (like biorythms, and some adventure games), and even things like TE2TRN.EXE (the program that allowed the TI-99/4A TE2 cartridge to transfer files from Compuserve. And of course who could forget the Filge editor? I used to log in every few months for a little nostalgia, as well as amazement that the old systems were still up this long
What I remember about the compuserve era was 28.8 modems and serious delays when downloading. Nowdays my Internet connection is 1000 times faster.
I was a member since 1984, for about 15 years or so. And I so clearly remember my number as well!!
75056,3611
Fond memories of an age that really pre-dated the Internet by so long.
z.
August 24, 1995, the day that Windows 95 became a retail product.
Why? Because it incorporated a built-in SLIP/PPP networking client that could connect to the Internet either by a network card that connected to a local area network with a gateway to the Internet or through a dial-up connection. Once that happened, people no longer needed proprietary online services such as CompuServe and America Online to access the Internet, and because of the sheer number of users switching to Window 95 by 1996, many users started to access through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Indeed, that's how I got onto the Internet--I signed up for an local ISP account and they sent me the Windows 95 version of Netscape 2.0 customized for the ISP.
Don't laugh at my suggestion. Before Windows 95, if you wanted Internet access Microsoft DOS/Windows users needed to install a separate program called Winsock that provided the SLIP/PPP client to access the Internet--but given the penchant of new computer users most of them never did install Winsock and went the proprietary online service route instead. Windows 95 eliminated that problem, and it even opened the door for today's broadband access to the Internet, since most computer access the Internet through the RJ-45 network connection jack at download speeds as high as 100 megabits per second in a few countries like South Korea or parts of Japan.
With people migrating en masse to ISP's, both CompuServe and AOL declined, and by 2000 both were overtaken by ISP's, with names we recognize today: Comcast, EarthLink, Verizon, plus a host of smaller, more regional ISP's.
I will miss CompuServe. It served it purpose for its time, but it has become a relic of the old, pre-public Internet days of online access.
I was 72638,1421, but that was the second time around. I initially had an account sometime account 82/83 with my Vic-20. Racked up a HUGE bill, and got the plug pulled by my folks after a single month. I wish I knew what that original ID was. It took a long time to convince them to allow me to use the phone to call local BBSs after that.
I don't care about your karma, I don't care about what's hip. --Weird Al
70277,2502 here. RIP Cserve; we hardly knew you...
75176,1350
The exciting day came when email could be sent to non-CS addresses by prefixing INTERNET: to the address. Web access was initially provided on a different phone number to the standard CS one, so if you got sick of web browsing at 9600 baud, you could hang up, redial and cruise round the CS forums instead.
I had frequented some BBSes before, but CompuServe was my first connection service, circa 1988.
One of the more memorable things about that time was using a paper clip to toggle dip switches on a 300 baud modem to set the port.
Another thing was seeing commercials on TV for it, and Prodigy. My, how things have changed over the years.
Online services started to go downhill when Delphi closed up shop. I remember seeing the Vaxen in a house-turned-into-company in Cambridge, MA, wondering how all those people I talked to fit inside those boxes.
1. SSST was written by members of the Compuserve Science Fiction and Fantasy forum from July 23 1989 through August 21 1989.
2. The "DSPSG" mentioned in the story was the "Disgusting Slobbering Patrick Stewart Groupies," a loose confederation of female Trek fans on Compuserve who swooned over the actor.
3. The "Picard Maneuver" or "PM" was the periodic adjustment Captain Picard made to his uniform. It consists of grasping the coverall on both sides at the waist and jerking it downward.
4. The "EG" was the Enigmatic Gesture. It's described in the official printout as "a gesture resembling shooting an imaginary rubber band. Usually accompanies the command 'Engage'."
5. "SIG" stands for "Special Interest Group." Star Trek discussions were held in the Star Trek SIG of the CompuServe SciFi Forum.
6. The "humanoid male in a wheelchair with a rabbit, a gopher, and a penguin shouting, 'AHEAD WARP ZILLION!!!!!!!!!!!'" refers to a wheelchair-bound Trekkie who was in the comic strip "Bloom County."
http://www.allspark.net/ssst1.htm
Remember David Gerrold telling his "penguin joke" in about six different installments? Remember Ron Moore and Michael Okuda hanging out with us? Ah yes, those were the days...