A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series:
I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquiring 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 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 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.”
This service was text based and was accessed via whatever terminal program you used on your computer 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 probably wouldn’t be in such archives even if they existed.
This post includes the contents of MEMAGREE.DOC which is dated September 24th, 1985. This is a member agreement for those wanting to join the Close Encounters Special Interest Group (SIG). Since this was an adult oriented group, an “interview” of sorts was required to validate your age. Basically, this means that you had to chat with one of the admins of the group and I guess from that point they would determine whether they felt they needed more proof of age or not.
See the previous post here.
===
MEMAGREE.DOC
===
Due to the necessary age restriction, membership in Close Encounters is not automatic. If you wish to join, and meet the age requirement (over 18), please indicate a day (or days) and time(s) when you can be available for a pre-admission conference. During this conference we will try to answer any other questions you may have and, at the same time, get to know a bit more about you so that we may help you get the most out of this sig. When asked if you would like to join the sig, a 'yes' answer will send dmail to us. We will get in touch upon receipt of your application. Whether or not you choose to join at this time, feel free to check out the material in the general data base and the forum, as well as the hints in the help section. Thank you for your interest in 'Close Encounters'.
