A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series:
I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a while back. Since then I have been posting the contents here.
Based on the contents, at least some of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the “Close Encounters” Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s.
A specific definition of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as ‘Close Encounters’, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.”
This service was text based and was accessed via whatever terminal program you used on your computer to dial in to Delphi’s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don’t know if there are any archives in existence today of what was on Delphi in the 1980s. In any case, much of this stuff would have been private at the time and probably wouldn’t be in such archives even if they existed.
This post includes the contents of MENU.DOC which is dated September 24nd, 1985. While perhaps not as interesting as some other files, this one does contain a little insight into how Delphi operated. This is a screen capture of going through and configuring a couple of menus. The more commands you could memorize, the shorter you could make the menus which was a big deal when you were communicating at 2400bps or less.
See the previous post here.
===
MENU.DOC
===
^Z
MAIN> ?
MAIN Menu:
Bulletin Boards News-Weather-Sport
Conference People on DELPHI
DELPHI Mail Travel
Entertainment Workspace
Financial Services Using DELPHI
Groups and Clubs HELP
Library EXIT
Merchants' Row
MAIN>What do you want to do? using
USING-DELPHI> ?
USING-DELPHI Menu:
Advice From DELPHI What's New On DELPHI
Credit Policy Rates and Prices
Feedback Settings (PROFILE)
Guided Tour Telex-Codes
Mail To SERVICE Usage History
Manuals HELP
Network Info EXIT
Premium Services
USING-DELPHI>(Please Select an Item)> settings
SETTINGS> ?
SETTINGS Menu:
WIDTH (Columns) PROMPT Mode
LENGTH (Lines/page) TERMINAL Type
MENU (Default Selection) HELP
PASSWORD (Change) EXIT
SETTINGS>What would you like to set? prompt
Your current prompt mode is: 1 (Brief)
Select type of prompt.
(1, 2 or 3) 1
Your prompt has been set to 1 (Brief)
SETTINGS> menu
Your current default menu item is: MAIN
Default Menu Item: gr clo
You have selected the GR CLO menu.
SETTINGS> ^Z
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Close Encounters - The Intimate Side
of Computer Telecommunications
(c) 1985 SLG Associates
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
ENCOUNTER>
