13 Jan
2014
13 Jan
'14
12:15 p.m.
At 09:21 AM 1/8/2014, geneb wrote:
Rich, I know this is a long shot, but is there ANY
possibility that the CompuServe SIG areas got saved some place? I'm especially
intersted in the CP/M and Commodore SIG file and message data.
Certainly many people have wondered. Maybe it was just too much data
for any one person to have kept. Maybe their backups were in a format
that wasn't easily used outside of CIS's own systems. Maybe a few forum
operators kept their own stuff, but certainly many didn't.
From '86 until '94 or so, in all my CIS and BBSing, I set my telecom
program (Pro-YAM) to automatically save the ASCII transcript of what
I did online. I was free-flagged on several forums. Out of concerns
for file space, I did bother to edit out the parts I didn't find relevant
at the time.
I've often thought I could write a parser to convert all those transcripts
into at least a slice of forum message traffic on the ones I visited, and
load the messages into a database and web interface for perusal. It would
take time to refine the parsing, and I'd want to review the results to
insure nothing personal escaped. It could separate messages from the
file area descriptions, and rebuild the file archives. In theory, it
could be loaded with the public messages from anyone else who kept
transcripts, too.
- John