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 (sometime in the late 1990s to the best of my recollection). I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a several years back. Since then, I have been occasionally posting the content here.
Based on the contents, most or all 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.
The following description 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 a modem and whatever terminal program you had available for your computer to dial in with. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I am not aware of any archives in existence today that contain what was on Delphi in the 1980s.
This post includes the contents of NOV84.DOC. Similar to the last few posts in this series, this appears to be a report that gives details on the usage of the SIG (how many hours each user spent in the SIG, etc.). This is in the from of an e-mail from someone named KELLY who was presumably an employee of Delphi. The e-mail is dated December 6th, 1984.
There are two SIGs (Special Interest Groups) that have been mentioned repeatedly in these files. One is the “Close Encounters” SIG and the other is the “Friendship Circle” SIG though I’m not entirely sure they were different. “Close Encounters” may have evolved from “Friendship Circle”. In any case “Closed Circle” is mentioned in this report but maybe this is an alias or the name changed again at some point.
This report includes username, sessions (number of times the user called), prime minutes (this was probably online time during peak hours when a more expensive per minute charge was applied), and offprime minutes probably online time during off peak hours that were either “free” with your monthly subscription, or at least much cheaper).
This file is dated September 2nd, 1985 and was in a subdirectory titled “SIGUSAGE”.
=-=
OCT84.DOC
=-=
—
From: KELLY 6-DEC-1984 14:54
To: CABUYS
Subj: Usage Report
Usage report, by time, for Closed Circle Sig
============================================
PRIME OFFPRIME
USERNAME SESSIONS Minutes Minutes
-------- -------- ------- --------
ACE 3 5 15
ALESSAN 5 0 101
ATLAS 1 0 32
AVENUES 1 0 1
BAT 1 0 15
BGS 8 0 281
BIALI1 3 78 30
BIRDMAN 2 0 32
BITSLICE 3 0 59
BLT 1 0 15
BOSE 1 1 0
BOSTONROCK 2 65 28
BOUCHIE 1 0 9
BRIGHT 1 0 6
BUSSIGMGR 2 0 27
BZ 2 0 99
BZIMMERMAN 1 0 3
CABUYS 206 84 5940
CBS 1 0 37
CDSVP 1 0 14
CHARQ 1 0 10
CJ 1 0 1
DARKSTAR 1 0 9
DEOGBURN 1 0 1
DJR 4 0 27
DMANDELL 1 1 0
DOUGLEVY 2 0 27
DPEYTON 2 0 20
DRJAZZ 1 0 1
ELT 1 0 5
FRIED 4 0 24
GCCS 1 0 75
GES 1 0 4
GORE 1 0 13
GRENDEL 1 0 8
HAL9000 12 0 105
HANSOLO 45 10 1055
HICK 2 0 26
HYPR0N 1 0 2
INTER 1 0 14
IVY 2 0 245
JCG 1 0 11
JESMITH 1 0 2
JMEL 50 110 655
JOHNMYSELF 37 0 551
JOHNP 2 0 26
JOSEPH 1 0 7
JS 4 0 33
KB5Y 1 0 46
KBS 1 0 11
KINGST 1 0 28
KJF 1 0 12
LADYLOVE 5 4 8
MARTI 26 42 553
MAVEN 2 0 73
MDPARKER 1 0 3
MEC 5 8 34
MICROMD 1 0 7
MIKE 5 0 55
MORGAN 1 0 4
NAGMAN 1 0 23
NFSA 3 31 0
NINJA 1 0 13
NYCSHRINK 1 0 25
PENTEX 1 6 0
PEPPERS 13 2 83
PRINCESS 57 14 1241
PRINCESSLEIA 1 0 1
QUICKRODNEY 13 10 138
RABBI 1 0 32
RDM 3 0 40
RM 2 0 9
RODM 6 0 205
ROSSKING 1 0 3
SGRANT 1 0 29
SMILE 23 0 406
SNOWFIRE 2 0 22
SPARKY 1 0 8
SUMMER 1 0 14
SUZIE 1 0 34
THESTRANGER 118 152 2546
THORKILDSEN 1 0 4
TREBOR 1 6 0
TREK 2 0 93
TROPICAL 5 0 50
WULFE 1 0 26
WZ 1 0 5
YOSHI 20 10 442
------------------------------------------------------------
Totals in Minutes 760 639 16027
10.65 267.12 hours
