[ Retro Scan of the Week ] My CompuServe Password
June 17th, 2014 by Benj Edwards
I still love my dad’s handwriting.
Here it is, folks: My CompuServe Information Service password that I used from 1993 until the late 1990s: “Needy-Sacred”.
Feel free to log in as me the next time you get a chance. (I kid.)
“Needy-Sacred” is an almost magical combination of words for me — probably because it bounced around my mind so often in the 1990s. It has a tension to it; a phrase at odds with itself.
I didn’t make it up, though. CompuServe assigned random combinations of two words (with a dash in the middle) as user passwords, and this is the hand I was dealt.
Well, “we were dealt” would be more accurate. This is the original note paper my dad used on February 21st, 1993 to write down the password to our new CompuServe account, which he set up for use with his business.
Heavily into BBSes at the time, I became the primary user of the account (surprise surprise). Soon his company often asked me — even as a young teenager — to relay international emails to and from Germany for them since I knew how to use it. Ah, those were the days.
The Encounters Forum was my favorite place to hang out. That, and the Atari Forum. GO ATARI.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Tell us your best CompuServe stories.
June 21st, 2014 at 6:05 pm
I was only on CompuServe for a very short time in the mid-80s. I think I had 2 free hours or something, and logged in with my PCjr and 300 baud modem. Being the 12 to 13 year old boy that I was, it didn’t take long before I found myself in the ‘adult’ section, where I promptly tried to print out the adult dictionary. I think it was something like a very early “urban dictionary”. Since the connection was so slow, my free time was up before I was able to get too far…I did save the printout for many years though! However, I think it was much more innocuous than what you would find today….
October 25th, 2014 at 10:31 am
I can’t divulge my old Compuserve password from circa 1985, because I still use various iterations of it for most of my modern site access. A lot more symbols, numbers, and caps, but the root is still always buried in there somewhere. I hadn’t considered how strange that may be, until reading this post.