On September 24, 1979, CompuServe launched its online service for consumers. The connection speed was notably slow--around 30 to 40 million times slower than today's standards. However, it marked the first time users could access the news online. "Interestingly, the biggest draw wasn't reading credible news, but rather chatting with friends or debating politics with strangers," recalled early user Dylan Tweney.
Anyone else use CompuServe back in the day, paying those hellacious hourly charges?
... Anyone else use CompuServe back in the day, paying those hellacious hourly charges? ...
[waving arms] me ... me .. me...
But, I would object to the hellacious hourly charges comment.
Back then, those charges were quite the norm. Yeah, if you dared to go online, it would cost you, by the minute.
But some folk went online.
I was one of those intrepid folk. :)
At a whopping 300 cps.
(yes, that is characters per second)
And I will also state that it was on the CIS forums that I learned about participating in discussions.
For me, I used a program called OzCIS that allowed me to log in to CIS (CompuServe Information Service) download all the comments in the forums in wanted to read, and then log off. I would then reply and comment on the messages that were downloaded. After i commented on those messages, I would then prompt OzCIS to upload my comments. So, my online time on CIS (and the cost) was limited.
When Wndows was released, OzCIS became OzWin.
Yeah, the online message forum world was quite different back then.
And, fwiw. CIS used the X.25 protocol, not Ethernet. At one point in my career, I was a system engineering in a company that provided a world-wide X.25 service. But i digress.
X.25
en.wikipedia.org
... X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts and finalized in a publication known as The Orange Book in 1976.[1][2]
The protocol suite is designed as three conceptual layers, which correspond closely to the lower three layers of the seven-layer OSI Reference Model, although it was developed several years before the OSI model (1984).[3][4] It also supports functionality not found in the OSI network layer.[5][6] An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange (PSE) nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, plain old telephone service connections, or ISDN connections as physical links.
X.25 was popular with telecommunications companies for their public data networks from the late 1970s to 1990s, which provided worldwide coverage. It was also used in financial transaction systems, such as automated teller machines, and by the credit card payment industry.[7] However, most users have since moved to the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). X.25 is still used, for example by the aviation industry.[citation needed] ...
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