{"id":20078,"date":"2018-04-23T11:55:06","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T15:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=20078"},"modified":"2018-04-23T11:55:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T15:55:06","slug":"digital-archaeology-codex-floppy-disk-8-part-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2018\/04\/23\/digital-archaeology-codex-floppy-disk-8-part-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Archaeology: Codex (Floppy Disk) #8 (part 11)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series:<\/p>\n

I found a bunch of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a while back. Since then I have been posting the contents here.<\/p>\n

Based on the contents, at least some of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie A. Buys who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s.<\/p>\n

A specific definition of this SIG was found in a previous document on one of the disks: \u201cThis SIG, known as \u201cClose Encounters\u201d, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything was text based from whatever terminal program you used to dial in to Delphi\u2019s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don\u2019t 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 some of it is quite personal.<\/p>\n

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I’ve been splitting up the contents of this disk (descriptively labeled \u201cFile Disk\u201d) since it contains a number of documents, some of which are pretty long. A 5.25″ floppy disk can still hold an impressive amount of info when it is just text. (see the previous parts here: 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>, 6<\/a>, 7<\/a>, 8<\/a>, 9<\/a>, 10<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The contents of this post includes the contents of a document called NEWFORUM.DOC. It appears to be a message about some new commands available on Delphi when in a Forum. It is dated October 11th and I believe this is from 1985.<\/p>\n

===
\nNEWFORUM.DOC
\n===<\/p>\n

list newforum.doc\r\nFile NEWFORUM.DOC was not found.\r\n\r\nWS> list newforum\r\n \r\n6568 11-OCT 13:22 FLAgShip Archives\r\n     NEW Forum Commands\r\n     From: DEB          To: ALL\r\n \r\n \r\n   Delphi has made some (long requested) changes to the DIRECTORY command in\r\nthe FORUM.  The two new options are a directory of a range of messages\r\n(specified by two numbers separated by a colon) and for messages\r\ncontaining a particular group of characters, word, or phrase in\r\nthe subject.\r\n \r\n   You can also string options together on one command, such as\r\n \r\n   DIRECTORY FROM DEB TO ALL SUBJECT \"new forum commands\"\r\n \r\nwhich should list this message!\r\n \r\nIn short, all the DIRectory options are:\r\n \r\n* FROM \r\n* TO   \r\n* WAITING\r\n* NEW\r\n* SUBJECT  -- this will search for specific strings withing the\r\nmessage header itself.  Those strings with imbedded spaces need to\r\nbe enclosed in quotation marks. Search strings which include one word\r\nwill not need the quotes.\r\n* :  -- will scan a range of lines.  Reasonable abbreviations are\r\nallowed, such as\r\n \r\nDIR 100:200 - scans message headers for numbers 100 to 200.\r\nDIR :200 - lists messages below and including 200\r\nDIR 200  - lists messages starting with 200.\r\nTHREAD - when used with a number or range, lists the thread containing\r\nthe specified message.  When used alone, lists the thread containing\r\nthe current message.  It can also be used with the SUBJECT qualifier.\r\n \r\n \r\n   In addition to these exciting new search parameters within the DIR command\r\non the FORUM, You can now also use WHO and SEND from any FORUM> prompt, just\r\nthe same as it can be used at the *FLAGSHIP* prompt.\r\n\r\n\r\nWS>  \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series: I found a bunch of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquring 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 A. Buys who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s. A specific definition of this SIG was found in a previous document on one of the disks: \u201cThis SIG, known as \u201cClose Encounters\u201d, 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.\u201d Everything was text based from whatever terminal program you used to dial in to Delphi\u2019s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don\u2019t know if there are any archives in existence today of what was on Delphi in the 1980s. In any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2363,2913,2042,2362,2914],"class_list":["post-20078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-arcana","tag-computer-arcana","tag-delphi","tag-digital-archaeology","tag-retrocomputing","tag-telecommunications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}