
Trying to make sense of CompuServe server hard disk images - harel
https://medium.com/@mpnet/trying-to-make-sense-of-compuserve-server-hard-disk-images-posted-on-archive-org-b1c62ce6012b
======
zepearl
Out of core context:

the article mentions "The Digital Antiquarian" (
[https://www.filfre.net](https://www.filfre.net) ) which in turn has an
article about the game "Wing Commander" (
[https://www.filfre.net/2017/04/from-wingleader-to-wing-
comma...](https://www.filfre.net/2017/04/from-wingleader-to-wing-commander/) )
=> this is funny:

> _At the beginning of August, Snell unceremoniously booted Chris Roberts, the
> project’s founder, from his role as co-producer, leaving him with only the
> title of director. Manifesting a tendency anyone familiar with his more
> recent projects will immediately recognize, Roberts had been causing chaos
> on the team by approving seemingly every suggested addition or enhancement
> that crossed his desk. Snell, the brutal pragmatist in this company full of
> dreamers, appointed himself as Warren Spector’s new co-producer. His first
> action was to place a freeze on new features in favor of getting the game
> that currently existed finished and out the door._

(Chris Roberts is the one creating the game "Star Citizen"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Citizen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Citizen)
\- I was one of the first buying/financing the game in 2012, but I admit of
having lost interest while waiting for the "final" version to be released...)

~~~
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
I too am a founding backer, also totally lost interest.

------
jboy55
I wonder if twenty years from now, someone will be archiving one of the big
email providers.

"In the early 21st century, there existed large cloud 'email' organizations.
Here I found a trove of 'hard disks' images from one of the companies,
HotMail. I've been digging around and look at these email addresses, it
appears this image contains all the 'email' for around 10k users. Here is one
where a couple users with the usernames 'joesmith' and 'andreasanchez',
engaged in playful romantic flirting. Although by digging further in the
emails it appears one of them, 'joesmith' is newly married to 'andreasmith'.
Here is thier wedding invitation. Fascinating digital archeology"

~~~
behringer
Of course that's exactly what will happen. If you put your data in the cloud,
it's one day going to be publicly available. If you don't like that, you
should consider running private servers for your data.

~~~
shawnz
That's assuming they do not properly destroy their data, which they are
legally obligated to do as far as I understand. You could also just encrypt
your data before uploading.

~~~
ForHackernews
> which they are legally obligated to do as far as I understand

Says who? Do their ToS even address what happens if they're bankrupt?

It sounds like Apple can legally do whatever they want if they go bust:
[https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/30810/what-
happens-i...](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/30810/what-happens-if-
apple-goes-bust/30819)

I expect the same is true of all the other major cloud providers.

~~~
kbenson
It would be nice if we ever got any good privacy legislation for it to include
a requirement that a company keep money in a trust to retain services to erase
servers with private information of public citizens. That, along with some
specific rules about what private information can be collected or retained,
might greatly change the economics of the "online free service supported by
massive data mining of customers" space, which IMO would be a very good thing.

------
chx
Wait a minute there's a public archive of Compuserve data noone has any clue
what it is? What if it's PII? It wasn't that long ago to make this a non-
issue.

~~~
shawnz
I wonder, who is responsible in a case like this? Is it the current owners of
CompuServe for not clearing the PII before trashing the machines?

~~~
icedchai
This is very common. I've bought machines at auction with databases on them.

~~~
neilv
Yes, though not as bad as it used to be, IME. It seems a lot of ordinary
people now know to pull or wipe drives before disposing of a computer.

I've acquired over 100 used computers, and, once I saw how common leaving data
on them was, I began always very promptly DBAN-ing any disks, and wiping SSDs.
If it has a non-SATA interface, I destroy the medium. Similar with some kind
of wipe of smartphones.

Besides wiping the disk/device seeming a responsible and considerate thing to
do, it avoids remote yet severe liabilities.

~~~
opless
You know that you can't truly "wipe" SSDs, right?

~~~
detaro
It's not that simple.

A secure erase should wipe all blocks (and since it is done by the firmware,
physical blocks, not logical ones), but there have been instances of buggy
drives that don't actually do it properly.

Some SSDs also transparently encrypt all data written, and the key is replaced
on a wipe command. Even if they don't wipe the data fully, it's now unusable,
if the encryption works correctly.

Quite old SSDs might not support any of this.

~~~
veeti
> Even if they don't wipe the data fully, it's now unusable, if the encryption
> works correctly.

Unfortunately, you can't trust the SSD firmware developers to have their shit
together [1].

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/05/crucial-samsung-solid-
stat...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/05/crucial-samsung-solid-state-drives-
busted-encryption/)

~~~
detaro
Which is why the _if_ is in there :(

------
blattimwind
Imagine trying to find or even implement exploits against such a system:

> The CompuServe system used non-standard PDP-10-based hardware along with a
> custom version of TOPS-10. As a result, booting it in one of the available
> emulators is next to impossible. But I hoped the disk images could be
> attached to a standard TOPS-10 system as secondary disks somehow.

Especially when all those manuals weren't freely available...

------
threeio
I dropped so much cash on compuserve as a kid... ugh the pain and realization
when my folks figured out what it was..

~~~
DanBC
For people who don't know what the costs were like, here's this page from a
1988 Whole Earth catalogue giving some pricing information.

[http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2janfrd&s=7](http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2janfrd&s=7)

Compuserve $11 per hour, had "more than 250,000 subscribers".

The Source $8 per hour.

Delphi $6 per hour had a loyal but small (less than 10,000 users) following.

BIX $9 per hour.

~~~
ceautery
CompuServe charged more if you connected at a higher baud rate, like $12.80
per hour for 14.4k... I think - I haven't worked there for 22 years, so my
memory is hazy.

There was also an ecosystem of apps to script connections to minimize time you
spent online. You'd pick the forums you wanted to scrape new messages from,
fetch them in one session, compose replies offline, and post the replies in a
second session.

~~~
dmix
That's cool. Was there any data caps?

~~~
pavlov
On a 14.4kbps connection it took more than 10 minutes to transfer a megabyte,
so the hourly billing rate was enough of a cap.

------
andrewf
I saw one of the CompuServe PDP-10 clones running at VCF West last year in
Mountain View! It's this one on Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1CvBwt5nfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1CvBwt5nfg)

------
dmix
GEnie seems to be another online service lost to time:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie)

~~~
ghaff
There were a lot of them although Compuserve was at least one of the biggest.
(It's the one I used.) There were also BIX, AOL, DELPHI, and Prodigy, and
others that aren't popping to mind.

There were also a vast number of small BBSs ranging from a system in someone's
bedroom to commercial--though still relatively small--operations, some of
which became early local ISPs. At the time, one mostly preferred to make local
calls because of the expense of long distance.

------
the_fonz
"Digital archeology" isn't the right term, "digital preservation" falls under
archival science, whether formally or informally.

~~~
bahmboo
Except preservation on its own is not very useful. You need some sort of
understanding of the data on many levels hence "archeology" (that may not be
the best term but I think it gets the point across).

------
pronoiac
They find some accounting details, rather than something more interesting.

~~~
bahmboo
I don't understand the downvotes, it's an accurate summation of the [edit
_result_ of his work]. The journey [edit: up to and including that result] was
an interesting read.

