It was so expensive to use it that I was barred from even touching it. The only time I used it was many many years later, to check the result of the ceremonious baccalaureat high school exam.
It was slow and had ugly graphics compared to the VGA of my 386 but it still felt magical.
But the less known nerd services were found on much less expensive 3614 access code such as RTEL, Privilege, QBBS, ...
Even some hackish servers where on the super cheap 3613 or free 3605s.
I note that the anglophone vorticist magazine Blast[1], No 1 (1914) p.27, blesses france for its mastery of "rose" services.
An irony of the Minitel:
> "... à l’époque, les femmes à qui je racontais que j’étais donc payé pour faire fantasmer des hommes ... étaient plutôt séduites par ma façon de le faire ... paradoxalement, parler de mon boulot d’animatrice minitel rose était une super technique de drague."[2]
[1] https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1143209523824858.pdf
[2] http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2...
There were a couple, a university AIX, a CDC NOS/VE with IP connectivity, etc...
Basically, free international comms back in the 90s!
this century's quest