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@thuntek.net> To: "Fractint and General Fractals Discussion" <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> 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 membersÂ’ Ourworld Web pages, has been shut down. Indeed, the current version of the serviceÂ’s client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999. _______________________________________________ Fractint mailing list Fractint@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fractint