OT: Tapcis publisher?

[Paul Keating]

I looked at the Wikipedia article on offline readers today, and I noticed that it credits CIS as the publisher of Tapcis. That is of course nonsense. CIS did eventually produce WinCIM as a sort of competitor, but in Tapcis’s heyday H & R Block was ambivalent about offline readers. On the one hand, they reduced power users’ connect time and so cost the company money. On the other hand, CIS relied on those power users to run its forums as volunteers.

I would like to fix the Wikipedia article, but I need some documentary support. My manuals for Tapcis 5 and 6 did not survive the ruthless downsizing occasioned by moving from Holland (212m²) to France (79m²). 

I do remember being told that Howard Benner came up with the idea and the first working prototype for Tapcis, and by the time it had become Tapcis 5, the publisher was Richard Wilkes, who was still around at the switch to Tapcis 6. I seem to recall there was a company name too, which was, I think I vaguely remember, a toponym. 

Tapcis 6.1 came with documentation by Loren Jenkins, headed “Support Group, Inc.” and that name also appears in the Tapcis 6 executable, so there was a change of some sort between 6.0 and 6.1, and little was said about that at the time.

Can any old hands help me out?

--

Paul Keating

Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

[Judy Madnick]

This is what Copilot said and it offered this: "If you need a tighter version, a version tailored for a Wikipedia talk‑page correction, or something that lays out the evidence in a more argumentative way, just say the word — I can shape it however you need."

TAPCIS was not a CompuServe product. It was published and distributed by Support Group, Inc. of McHenry, Maryland. This is confirmed in preserved TAPCIS documentation, which explicitly lists Support Group, Inc. as the publisher and distributor:

https://www.nfbnet.org/ftp/pc/offline/tapcis/tapcis.txt

 

The U.S. trademark registration for TAPCIS also identifies Support Group, Inc. as the owner and applicant:

https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74000392&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

 

Additional historical context and file-format information appear in the TAPCIS entry on Filext, which likewise attributes the software to Support Group, Inc.:

https://filext.com/file-extension/TAP

 

A preserved distribution package (TAPCIS 5.42) is available on the Internet Archive, and its internal documentation also credits Support Group, Inc.:

https://archive.org/details/tapcis542

 

Judy  

---

Original Message

From: "Paul Keating" <dixo...@boargules.com>

To: dixo...@googlegroups.com;

Date: 3/30/2026 6:40:46 AM

Subject: [Dixonary] OT: Tapcis publisher?

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[Paul Keating]

Well, that seems comprehensive, but—

• The link to the National Federation of the Blind gives an error 404, which means page not there; and I could not find it on Wayback Machine either.
• The link to the US Patent and Trademark Office works, but gives details of a different lapsed trademark: “Filmages”, owned by David Treiber and Jerald D. Fox. 
• The link to filext.com lists six applications that were known to use the .tap extension: SheetCam (CAM) , Commodore 64 (image of a cassette tape), Embird (embroidery CAD), Geopath (CAM) , Oric (image of a cassette tape), ZX Spectrum Emulator (image of a cassette tape). The page does not mention Tapcis at all. Tapcis did in fact use the extension .tap for configuration files, that can be read with a text editor, but this was not really a filetype indicator, simply a sort of mark of affiliation: the file readme.tap is documentation.
• The link to Internet Archive returns this message: “The item you have requested had an error: Item cannot be found, which prevents us from displaying this page. Items may be taken down for various reasons, including by decision of the uploader or due to a violation of our Terms of Use.”

Still, the link to the USPTO was a useful pointer, and I did indeed find the correct trademark information by searching there for Tapcis myself. That also confirmed the vague memory I had about an  address that was a toponym: Lake Technology Park. 

--

Paul Keating

Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

On 2026-03-30 15:35:41, Judy Madnick <jmad...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is what Copilot said and it offered this: "If you need a tighter version, a version tailored for a Wikipedia talk‑page correction, or something that lays out the evidence in a more argumentative way, just say the word — I can shape it however you need."

TAPCIS was not a CompuServe product. It was published and distributed by Support Group, Inc. of McHenry, Maryland. This is confirmed in preserved TAPCIS documentation, which explicitly lists Support Group, Inc. as the publisher and distributor:

https://www.nfbnet.org/ftp/pc/offline/tapcis/tapcis.txt

 

The U.S. trademark registration for TAPCIS also identifies Support Group, Inc. as the owner and  applicant: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74000392&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

Additional historical context and file-format information appear in the TAPCIS entry on Filext, which likewise attributes the software to Support Group, Inc.:

https://filext.com/file-extension/TAP

A preserved distribution package (TAPCIS 5.42) is available on the Internet Archive, and its internal documentation also credits Support Group, Inc.:https://archive.org/details/tapcis542

[Judy Madnick]

I hope you received my follow-up message regarding bad links but I'm glad you were able to find what you needed.

 

Judy

---

Original Message

From: "Paul Keating" <dixo...@boargules.com>

To: dixo...@googlegroups.com;

Date: 3/30/2026 10:58:33 AM

Subject: RE: [Dixonary] OT: Tapcis publisher?

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[Paul Keating]

No, when did you send it?

--

Paul Keating

Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

On 2026-03-30 17:21:47, Judy Madnick <jmad...@gmail.com> wrote:

I hope you received my follow-up message regarding bad links but I'm glad you were able to find what you needed.

 

Judy

[Judy Madnick]

9:55 a.m.

This was the message:

Looks like some or all of the links failed. I'll try for more. I remember Tapcis and how much I enjoyed it.

 

Update: 

 

Try this: https://search.worldcat.org/title/27310615 

 

TAP CIS : the access program for the CompuServe information service

Author:Support Group, Inc

Summary:Computer program that automates the process of communication with the CompuServe Information Service

Computer File, English, ©1992

Edition:Feb. 1992 ed View all formats and editions

Publisher: Support Group, McHenry, MD, ©1992

 

---

Original Message

From: "Paul Keating" <dixo...@boargules.com>

To: dixo...@googlegroups.com;

Date: 3/30/2026 11:30:41 AM

Subject: RE: [Dixonary] OT: Tapcis publisher?

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[Stephen Dixon]

Steve Dixon

     “Wherever you are is the entry point”  ~Kabir Das

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 1:27 PM Stephen Dixon <steved...@gmail.com> wrote:

Howard Benner was the creator of Tapcis.

In my early days of online computing, the only thing available, outside of university or government networks, was CompuServe. That is what served businesses and ordinary citizens, like me.

I wandered in as an inexperienced, idle user looking for news, amisuement, and whatever else I could find. Much of what was available on CServe, at that time, was organized into Forums. Users could create their own topical forums and submit them approval to CompuServe.

LitForum was one of the first that I joined. It seemed to be populated by people who had a deep interest in writing. Technical writing, news writing, but mostly fiction and humor.

In one section of the LitForum, Diana Gabaldon was posting chapters of a novel she was working on. It ended up becoming Outlander.

There was also a word game going on where the ‘dealer’ would offer up an obscure word and other players would submit fake definitions to him/her via private email. You all know what happened in the game, after that

I started watching it somewhere in the first ten rounds, or so. Intrigued, I posted a note to all saying that they seemed to be playing a word game and asking for some explanation. Bunches of people helped explain the game they called Fictionary, and invited me to join in. I did, and rolled along for a few rounds, not being very successful but having fun, and learning. 

CompuServe was expensive, back in those days. You paid by the minute, like on a taxi ride. As my number of forums grew, it got to be pretty steep. One day, I posted a note on LiForum, that I thought I was going to have to give it up.

A couple of people told me to go find the TapCis Forum, which offered a program that would enable you to do all of your reading and writing offline. You marked the forums, or sections thereof, that you wanted to visit, signed on, and watched Tapcis go into each, download all the updates you requested and upload any new posts you had to offer. Then it would go offline and let you work through things at your leisure, with no meter ticking.

As I discovered quite quickly, there was, on the TapCis Forum, a sizable group of people operating way over my head. Neil Rubenking, who was an editor of PC Magazine. Several engineering and computer academics (Theresa Carey, et al) in the programs that had developed the original internet.

They had collected around Howard Benner, a brilliant, and hilarious, guy who had helped develop CompuServe and other parts of the burgeoning online world.

With TapCis, my CServe usage ballooned, and my costs dropped to nearly nothing.

After playing several rounds, I finally scored a win on round 27. Which meant of course, that I became the dealer for Round 28. It was awful. Infamously awful.

Missed defs, computer delays, an awful word (Chamfer) which, it turned out, quite a few people already knew. By the time that became obvious, we were two or three days into it, so we plugged on.Round 28 was, and still is, I’m sure, universally acknowledged as the most flawed round ever dealt. Many of the rules of the game grew out of that tragedy.

Shortly thereafter, Howard Benner addressed the group, as a whole, saying that the publishers of the game Fictionary had served him with a cease and desist order for violating their trademark.

Howard said that we either had to stop playing the game online, or find another name for what we were doing. He offered up a new name, “in honor of the worst round ever dealt…” Dixonary.

TapCis and CompuServe, of course, both got replaced by faster cheaper, more comprehensive versions of online communication. But our version of the creative word game lives on as the acknowledged longest surviving online game.

Steve Dixon

     “Wherever you are is the entry point”  ~Kabir Das

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[Stephen Dixon]

Howard Benner was the creator of Tapcis.

In my early days of online computing, the only thing available, outside of university or government networks, was CompuServe. That is what served businesses and ordinary citizens, like me.

I wandered in as an inexperienced, idle user looking for news, amisuement, and whatever else I could find. Much of what was available on CServe, at that time, was organized into Forums. Users could create their own topical forums and submit them approval to CompuServe.

LitForum was one of the first that I joined. It seemed to be populated by people who had a deep interest in writing. Technical writing, news writing, but mostly fiction and humor.

In one section of the LitForum, Diana Gabaldon was posting chapters of a novel she was working on. It ended up becoming Outlander.

There was also a word game going on where the ‘dealer’ would offer up an obscure word and other players would submit fake definitions to him/her via private email. You all know what happened in the game, after that

I started watching it somewhere in the first ten rounds, or so. Intrigued, I posted a note to all saying that they seemed to be playing a word game and asking for some explanation. Bunches of people helped explain the game they called Fictionary, and invited me to join in. I did, and rolled along for a few rounds, not being very successful but having fun, and learning. 

CompuServe was expensive, back in those days. You paid by the minute, like on a taxi ride. As my number of forums grew, it got to be pretty steep. One day, I posted a note on LiForum, that I thought I was going to have to give it up.

A couple of people told me to go find the TapCis Forum, which offered a program that would enable you to do all of your reading and writing offline. You marked the forums, or sections thereof, that you wanted to visit, signed on, and watched Tapcis go into each, download all the updates you requested and upload any new posts you had to offer. Then it would go offline and let you work through things at your leisure, with no meter ticking.

As I discovered quite quickly, there was, on the TapCis Forum, a sizable group of people operating way over my head. Neil Rubenking, who was an editor of PC Magazine. Several engineering and computer academics (Theresa Carey, et al) in the programs that had developed the original internet.

They had collected around Howard Benner, a brilliant, and hilarious, guy who had helped develop CompuServe and other parts of the burgeoning online world.

With TapCis, my CServe usage ballooned, and my costs dropped to nearly nothing.

After playing several rounds, I finally scored a win on round 27. Which meant of course, that I became the dealer for Round 28. It was awful. Infamously awful.

Missed defs, computer delays, an awful word (Chamfer) which, it turned out, quite a few people already knew. By the time that became obvious, we were two or three days into it, so we plugged on.Round 28 was, and still is, I’m sure, universally acknowledged as the most flawed round ever dealt. Many of the rules of the game grew out of that tragedy.

Shortly thereafter, Howard Benner addressed the group, as a whole, saying that the publishers of the game Fictionary had served him with a cease and desist order for violating their trademark.

Howard said that we either had to stop playing the game online, or find another name for what we were doing. He offered up a new name, “in honor of the worst round ever dealt…” Dixonary.

TapCis and CompuServe, of course, both got replaced by faster cheaper, more comprehensive versions of online communication. But our version of the creative word game lives on as the acknowledged longest surviving online game.

Steve Dixon

     “Wherever you are is the entry point”  ~Kabir Das

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 6:41 AM Paul Keating <dixo...@boargules.com> wrote:

--

[Shani Naylor]

Stephen, you should be very proud of how you dealt round 28. Look where it led!

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dixonary/CAFkjdZMVHUNruYM2fn2EGQgYShi%3DHUY7GUJn54OhhGmPq3fqbA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Tim Bourne]

Thanks for that fascinating account, Stephen.

Judy and I date back to CompuServe, too. Before joining here we were both Sysops on the Working From
Home forum; I think it was Dodi who suggested we should try Dixonary. At that time I was using an
offline reader called Virtual Access. I remember when travelling on business in the States it was
handy to be able to dial up a local CompuServe node wherever I was, at a reasonable cost.

Best wishes,
Tim B.

[Judy Madnick]

Quote:

Judy and I date back to CompuServe, too. Before joining here we were both Sysops on the Working From Home forum; I think it was Dodi who suggested we should try Dixonary.

Ah, Tim, the "good old days" with Paul and Sarah Edwards heading up the Working From Home forum! I don't recall whether it was Dodi who recommended Dixonary, but my guess is that it probably was. It appears that I joined in Round 1312 and you joined 23 rounds later, in Round 1335. What took you so long? LOL! 

 

Judy

---

Original Message

From: "Tim Bourne" <timbo...@gmail.com>

To: dixo...@googlegroups.com;

Date: 3/31/2026 5:55:47 AM

Subject: Re: [Dixonary] OT: Tapcis publisher?

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[Tim Lodge]

I joined Compuserve around 1994, delighted and amazed to have my own 9,600 baud dial-up connection. I joined a few forums, including Sailing and UK, but didn't discover Tapcis at first.  In those days, Compuserve forums flashed up a message whenver people signed in to or left the forum.  I was spending 10 or 15 minutes, or even longer, reading messages in each forum (paying my phone company by the minute for the privilege), and couldn't understand how people could sign into a forum and then leave again seconds later.  Then I discovered Tapcis and all was revealed!  I founf this odd section in the Tapcis  forum called 'The Parlor' which was full of these strange messages headed with Round numbers (around 580 at eh time,IIRC).  I joined the game (one round after Dodi, I think) and have never looked back.  By that time, of course, Tapcis and Dixonary were well established, so while names like Howard Benner and Neil Rubenking are familiar to me, I never interacted with them.

--  Tim L

[Stephen Dixon]

The game had been started by a handful of techies (Rubenking, T. Carey, I think Anders Sterner, and a few others) over one 4th of July weekend when they all got bored of cookouts and such.

Howard Benner played regularly, but never took the competition seriously. Every fake def he submitted had something to do with horses or horse-racing. 

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 11:33 AM 'Tim Lodge' via Dixonary <dixo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I joined Compuserve around 1994, delighted and amazed to have my own 9,600 baud dial-up connection. I joined a few forums, including Sailing and UK, but didn't discover Tapcis at first.  In those days, Compuserve forums flashed up a message whenver people signed in to or left the forum.  I was spending 10 or 15 minutes, or even longer, reading messages in each forum (paying my phone company by the minute for the privilege), and couldn't understand how people could sign into a forum and then leave again seconds later.  Then I discovered Tapcis and all was revealed!  I founf this odd section in the Tapcis  forum called 'The Parlor' which was full of these strange messages headed with Round numbers (around 580 at eh time,IIRC).  I joined the game (one round after Dodi, I think) and have never looked back.  By that time, of course, Tapcis and Dixonary were well established, so while names like Howard Benner and Neil Rubenking are familiar to me, I never interacted with them.

--  Tim L

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[Judy Madnick]

Thanks for all the posts regarding the "birth" of Dixonary. Even though I've been playing Dixonary for many years, I never knew so much about its origins.

 

Judy

---

Original Message

From: "Stephen Dixon" <steved...@gmail.com>

To: dixo...@googlegroups.com;

Date: 3/31/2026 12:49:33 PM

Subject: Re: [Dixonary] OT: Tapcis publisher?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dixonary/CAFkjdZMKCiUueMEtVfszAhFtXN9jG0_yA%2B4W69aRgjBjzx2GXA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Daniel B. Widdis]

May as well chime in with my own recollections.

I bought my first modem sometime in 1990 or 1991 and then had the realization, "what the heck do I do with this?"  

Unlike all you professional types doing "work" forum stuff, I only used CompuServe for fun.

I started paying for CompuServe when they had the "Basic Plan" which was something around $9/month ($22+ in today's money) that let me spend unlimited time in a small subset of "entertainment" areas.  This included the Entertainment Center (ECenter) and CB Simulator (Chat rooms).   I spent a lot of time in the ECenter, helping out other players and even contributing some custom designs for its SpaceWar program.  Eventually my helpfulness (or boredom = improving fun games = helping others) I apparently caught the eye of the Sysops of the MPGames (MultiPlayer Games) forum, where I was given some sort of assistant Sysop bit which allowed me to browse/post that forum for free (but not others).    (Eventually my participation on the CB Simulator helping people out led to an invite to be a "Helper" there and free access all the time.  I recall in 1992 writing software to run some of the regular trivia games there (basically a text-only version of Kahoot!)).  I actually published it as "shareware" and made a few hundred bucks.  (And then realized I had to pay taxes on it.)

Anyway, MPGAMES had a version of the game going (in its own section) keeping the Fictionary name (nobody ever gave us a cease and desist, so perhaps being obscure helped us).  The rules were the same except you got 2 points for a D0 (thus the alternate scoring option in AutoDealer, for those who remember it!).   Other players there included Dave Cunningham (as Roncesval the Wizard in BL), and Froma Bessel (aka Typo). I think there may have been a few others.    Froma was the one who told me about the Dixonary game but by the time I found the TAPCIS forum I already had a free bit... still, these were the days when you couldn't use a modem or make phone calls at the same time so I appreciated its offline capabilities a lot!

When everything was closing down later with the AOL acquisition, MPGAMES (focused more on online CompuServe games) was absorbed into the GAMERS forum (supporting a broad range of RPGs like D&D, etc.). FIctionary moved there too.   When *that* forum shut down, we all moved to a new website (DreamLyrics) using PhpBB.  FIctionary moved there as well, and survived for probably a decade until interest dwindled.  I'm still a member there and play a related game where we make up fake acronyms (but nobody has to guess the real one).  ALthough I'm spending more time in Roll-and-write dice games and co-DM''ing a D&D game there...

There's much more to the story... Compuserve MPGames -> CB -> free account -> British Legends (MUD1) which led me to the online D&D community where, after a few games, I met a fellow player who started an email conversation with me which eventually led to our marriage, still going strong 27 years later.   I still can't get her to join Dixonary but she enthusiastically supports my decades-old addiction.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane with this thread.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dixonary/0E2F60EF031F0F361A37002004%40JudyMadnick2023.

[Judy Madnick]

Great story, Dan...especially the "marriage" part!

 

Judy

---

Original Message

From: "Daniel B. Widdis" <wid...@dixonary.net>

To: dixo...@googlegroups.com;

Date: 4/1/2026 12:44:45 AM

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dixonary/CAAbgggqY5YxHCuDGzpgUAkLeHaPEwDJ5H5msMjHgOy7s0mGcGw%40mail.gmail.com.