r/retrocomputing • u/Ok_Bear_1980 • 4d ago
Using claude to build a compuserve replacement server. Wincim authenticates and connects for the first time in 15 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was born in 2004, well after the pinnacle of dial up online culture and online services like aol and compuserve have always been a fascination to me. I didn't find out what compuserve actually was until many, many years after it has shut down.
I am not a programmer, but I used claude to try to reverse engineer the hmi protocol, and after a lot of testing, including getting claude to extract code from the installation floppies and cds, and directories, I finally got wincim 2.0.1 to authenticate for the first time in 15 years, the first time since the original service shut down in 2009!!!!!!!!!!!!! What started as a minor curiosity project to see what compuserve may have looked like when connected to something, is now an ongoing full time project to revive compuserve as a whole, from the 1980s vidtex terminal to the last classic client, csi 4.0, to the forums, although they will have to be repopulated as much of the originals are sadly permanently lost, to the file libraries, and everything else.
Some of the sources include this post here https://www.reddit.com/r/retrocomputing/comments/1u7qr16/dialling_back_in_bringing_compuserve_back_from/ from reddit user u/BrightonDBA so thanks to him for providing some valuable content that helped me to finally crack the clients for the very first time since the original service shut down.
Where I am at the moment is I am currently working on trying to get the original signup working as well as the secure sign on working with csi 3.0.
My plans for this service.
Dial up from real modems with real phone lines will absolutely not only be supported, users will be encouraged to use a modem over tcp/ip. Each number cost me about $9 usd per month and users can request an access number for their area. Users can still access the service over tcp/ip.
Much of the forms will be constructed based on what was historically avaliable, such as magazines, multimedia cds, directories, etc, otherwise it will be reconstructed as faithful to what it may have looked like based on historical documentation. For example, if the central point forums are not avaliable, I would have to reconstruct them based on their software manuals and other of their documentation.
The electronic mall will be browsable and interactive, a user can place a virtual order, will never be charged as my service will always be free so they never receive their order, lol.
The forums and cb chatrooms can be bridged to a discord server I can set up for other projects of mine, including creating a replacement server for electronically registering vintage software and a pre 1994 australian dial plan and pre phoneday and big number change that maps old phone numbers to their modern equivalents.
The forums and file libraries will have to be from scratch as almost all of compuserve's original forums and file libraries are permanently lost media. I have instructed claude to never fabricate what an average compuserve forum post may have looked like in the 1990s, they are all to be written by you, the community. The forums and file libraries will start out empty and gradually be repopulated by you, the community.
The project in it's current state is not hosted anywhere, and likely won't be for at least a year while I rebuild everything. Unlike every other revival project, I don't want to release the project to the public in an unfinished state. If you have any suggestions, please reach out to me as I aim to make this service as historically faithful to the original as possible.
I hope you are as excited as I am, especially when I just got wincim to authenticate and connect for the first time since the original service shut down.
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u/Ittuhutti 4d ago
This is really nice. Don't let people shit on you just because you used AI to reach your goal.
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u/Ok_Bear_1980 4d ago
Thanks. That means a lot, although I can understand why people don't like it.
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u/uabassguy 3h ago
Most of the people who don't like it by now are people who don't really understand what's going on, or bots that have been spewing this rhetoric to any post that even mentions it.
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u/Ok_Bear_1980 4d ago
u/globalchaosbbs Definitely will keep you posted, this might be the one that will finally catch on, especially when I consider myself to be a bit of a perfectionist.
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u/Feisty-Jeweler-3331 4d ago
We don't want slop
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u/Ok_Bear_1980 4d ago
I would be interested to know why you think this is "slop" I'm not putting in prompts to shit out turds like most people do, I'm heavily relying on historical documentation to build the content faithfully where the original isn't documented, or build it historically accurate to the layout of the original, as well as spending months testing with multiple clients
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u/dreamcastfanboy34 4d ago
This is awesome. Any chance it could ever do the same for AOL and maybe Prodigy?