Compuserve TI catalog files?

[gameguy1957]

I'm going through a bunch of my old disks and found what looks like an archive of all of the download files from the TI forum on Compuserve from about 1996. I might not ever find the catalog files for these files, so does anyone out there possibly have a list of files that were hosted on Compuserve from around that time?

 

It's 1,100+ files so I don't think I'd ever make it through one at a time figuring out what they are and how to extract, load, etc. to get them working.

 

I can remember having printed everything out on paper, punching holes in it, and putting it into a binder, but I can't find that either. Last time I remember seeing the stuff was back when I still had a Geneve, so it was probably 10 or more years ago. I've also moved twice since then, so it's also possible that they were tossed a long time ago.

 

Anyhow, if anyone has got something on it then let me know.

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

-JM

[Omega-TI]

It's 1,100+ files so I don't think I'd ever make it through one at a time figuring out what they are and how to extract, load, etc. to get them working.

 

Wow, what a SCORE! I know going through them one at a time would be a total drag, but why should you do all the work? If you have the ability to just copy one or two disks each night and make .dsk image or a .ZIP of them in a FIAD folder, we could download the file, check them out, make a directory and send the information back to you. Sometimes a team effort is a win win for both sides. We might find some lost treasures, and you would get the directories listings you want. It might take a few weeks, but we could all enjoy ourselves in the mean time!

[gameguy1957]

Okay, making some progress on it. I'm just kind of rusty on the old Compuserve stuff since it's been a few years.

 

It looks like each forum has a zip file with the long description of each file, file size, date loaded, etc.

 

So the next question is - what to do with it? Any way to figure out if this stuff is already on the Internet for folks to grab as needed or should I put it up somewhere. If so, where should I post it?

 

Now that I've got a file listing I can at least go through and get the stuff I can use and ignore files I'll never use.

 

-JM

[+Allan]

Please don't delete any of it. You might have the only remaining copy of many of the programs.

 

Allan

[gameguy1957]

Please don't delete any of it. You might have the only remaining copy of many of the programs.

 

Allan

I've still got the original Zip-100 disk and now a copy on the laptop. I'm going to make a few extra copies tomorrow, so that there will be an off-site backup at work. It doesn't look like the whole forum's set of files. No game stuff that I can tell, just mainly applications and utilities. But I've still got a lot of stuff to go through, so there may be more of it eventually.

 

I actually found out how to figure out the cat zip files by finding a partial listing as a text file on another disk. At the top was the name of the file's original name, which I remembered seeing in one of the directories. So the lists I've been looking for over several days was hiding in plain sight, I just didn't know what I was looking at until then.

 

-JM

Edited January 14, 2014 by gameguy1957

[Omega-TI]

 

So the next question is - what to do with it? Any way to figure out if this stuff is already on the Internet for folks to grab as needed or should I put it up somewhere. If so, where should I post it?

 

 

There is some Compuserve stuff here: ftp://whtech.com/compuserve/

but their listing may be incomplete compared to yours. You just might have the "Mother Load"

[gameguy1957]

 

There is some Compuserve stuff here: ftp://whtech.com/compuserve/ but it might be incomplete. You might just have the "Motherload".

It's that and a lot more. I think the two folders that are on that site has a couple of hundred files. The stuff I've found so far is over 1,100. I'm still looking for the games and other fun stuff, but I have a ton of media to go though. The Zip disks are the first thing I went through, which is where this batch came from.

 

Next batch is CD's. I've had a burner of one type or another since the early 90's , so I've probably got discs going back to 92 or 93. The only problem is that they've not held up well. I can rember Kodak advertising a 400 year archival date on their discs back then. It eventually changed to about 100 years, but we started noticing problems at about ten years. These things are over 20 years old now and may no longer work, so I'll be surprised if I get anything usefull off of them.

 

Floppies will be last, as time allows, but there are hundreds of them. Fortunately, I have a handful of 3.5" that are marked as TI stuff and can start there.

 

-JM

[Omega-TI]

The Zip disks are the first thing I went through, which is where this batch came from.

 

Next batch is CD's.

 

Floppies will be last, as time allows, but there are hundreds of them. Fortunately, I have a handful of 3.5" that are marked as TI stuff and can start there.

 

 

When you finally get to the floppies, please make sure you have a diskette drive cleaning kit handy. Some of those old diskettes may flake off some of their magnetic media. In some cases you may only get one attempt to read an old disk before it's toast. If you do not clean the drive after a disk malfunctions, you'll insure all subsequent attempts of the other disks will fail as well. Like Allan said, you may have the only remaining copies of some of these old treasures.