Digital Archaeology: Codex (Floppy Disk) #8 (part 11)

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 “Close Encounters” 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: “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.”

Everything was text based from whatever terminal program you used 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 some of it is quite personal.

I've been splitting up the contents of this disk (descriptively labeled “File Disk”) 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, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

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.

===
NEWFORUM.DOC
===

list newforum.doc
File NEWFORUM.DOC was not found.

WS> list newforum

6568 11-OCT 13:22 FLAgShip Archives
NEW Forum Commands
From: DEB To: ALL

Delphi has made some (long requested) changes to the DIRECTORY command in
the FORUM. The two new options are a directory of a range of messages
(specified by two numbers separated by a colon) and for messages
containing a particular group of characters, word, or phrase in
the subject.

You can also string options together on one command, such as

DIRECTORY FROM DEB TO ALL SUBJECT "new forum commands"

which should list this message!

In short, all the DIRectory options are:

• FROM [username]
• TO [username]
• WAITING
• NEW
• SUBJECT <search-string> -- this will search for specific strings withing the
  message header itself. Those strings with imbedded spaces need to
  be enclosed in quotation marks. Search strings which include one word
  will not need the quotes.
• [low]:[high] -- will scan a range of lines. Reasonable abbreviations are
  allowed, such as

DIR 100:200 - scans message headers for numbers 100 to 200.
DIR :200 - lists messages below and including 200
DIR 200 - lists messages starting with 200.
THREAD - when used with a number or range, lists the thread containing
the specified message. When used alone, lists the thread containing
the current message. It can also be used with the SUBJECT qualifier.

In addition to these exciting new search parameters within the DIR command
on the FORUM, You can now also use WHO and SEND from any FORUM> prompt, just
the same as it can be used at the FLAGSHIP prompt.

WS>

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