6 Jul
2009
6 Jul
'09
9:14 a.m.
Ray Arachelian wrote:
I only got to use this service a few times back in my
younger days, and
even then, only with the demo accounts, and that at 300 baud (yes, baud,
not just BPS.)
I really couldn't afford their insane prices, but from what I saw back
in the day, it was a huge, vast place with lots of goodies.
I discovered compuserve from a flyer that was included with my Radio
Shack direct connect 300 baud modem. It was "in-line", no acoustic
coupler required. :) Set the switch to answer/originate, and then press
the big red button on the right to connect. Literally turned the
carrier on and off. The only phone that my parents could spare was a
pulse-only phone. Thank god for the redial button. Made he** for
trying to get into busy BBS's.
I used endless numbers of CIS demo accounts to get access. The price
was absurd, even at 300 baud. As others mentioned, the price scaled
with the baud rate. Want 1200 baud, or 9600 baud? You'd pay through
the nose. I always wondered who actually paid those prices.
Good stuff though. I downloaded Pittsburgh BBS lists from there which
really put me in contact with other TRS-80 COCO users (I had a CoCo II)
and as they say, the rest is history. They had download sections. And
was it access to usenet? and/or fidonet? Wasn't the form "GO _____?" I
think they had online whitepages, and reverse phone number lookup.
Once I discovered the internet, I completely forgot about CIS. I
accessed CIS through the telenet dialups (as I assume everyone did?) As
a kid, I wondered what other systems I could connect to using similar
numbers. The numbers (did someone else call them PPNs?) were so dense,
and security almost nonexistent for many of the systems, that I had a
lot of fun times poking around.
Keith