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Quantum Link Reverse Engineered
JeffLedger writes "A group of retro-geeks have rebuilt the old Quantum Link system to allow both emulated and real c64's to sign in over the Internet using the original software. Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."
Apple usesr and Windows users couldn't even communicate at first.
Insert witty sig here.
"Before it was called, America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."
Should be:
"Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."
The nostalgia factor is clearly off the charts. That only should be reason enough.
Impossible! Reverse engineering would destroy the quantum coherance. I just got one and$@^V4545FSBfbffgf+++ATH NO CARRIER
I always wanted to try out Qlink, maybe this is my chance. :)
You think I might catch them on a blue light special?
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
damn it, I have to get this retro computer nerd a girlfriend before I can leap out!
Call me when you reverse engineer Quantum Leap.
Might as well ask, "Why do people go to Renaissance Fairs?" or "Why do people go to see the Rolling Stones in concert?" or even, "Why go look at all those old paintings and stuff in the museum?"
They think its fun... they like the nostalgia of it... they have money and time to waste for a hobby they enjoy... they think that maybe they can learn something from it...
Don't knock going back to something old, because sometimes if you go back to the past, you can gain new insight into the here and now.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
If we reverse engineer the Quantum Link, we might get enough power to emit a tachyon beam to disrupt the neutrino field the Cardassians are emitting.
Oh, oops, thought this sounded like some Star Trek technobabble.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
The internet, in the form we know it didn't really eventuate until 1984 or so.
Arpanet is much older, but Arpanet really was quite different (owing to the fact that it wasn't TCP/IP). It's like Homo neanderthalensis, recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast.
The internet of course didn't really come into being in the popular sense until 1990 or so.
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Back in the day, we complained bitterly about how inadequate Quantum Link was compared to the real Internet. Now, 10 years after the service was discontinued, we are willing to setup emulators to allow us to play with a reconstruction. Lol.
I still have my Qlink coffee mug. Gets a lot of "What's that?" questions.
I certainly hope so. I still have my SuperQ disk around here. I know what I'm doing this weekend :)
I also wonder how many members of the old Q'mmunity will try this out. I'd love to get back in touch with some of my old Q-Link friends.
I'll also note that I submitted a story last year on the 10-year anniversary of the Q-Link shutdown. It was sadly rejected. I'll give a basic rehash here...
After several months of system degradation, overflows which allowed AOL and Q-Link members to converse, complete UNDERhauls of the Q-Link system to be per^H^H^Hconverted for use within AOL, and the incesant "Come to AOL" emails, Q-Link was unceremoniously shut down at the normal off time. Nobody from AOL showed up to say "Thank you for a spectacularly fun and eventful decade." Nothing. At the bottom of the screen:
THE SYSTEM HAS SHUT DOWN
This was the normal message you saw at shut down, but probably most fitting on this particular morning.
I first subscribed to QuantumLink in 1986 when I was 8 years old. Anyhoo, I was asked to join the "User Advisory Board." In exchange for 240 free "plus" minutes per month, I spent about 30 minutes in a People Connection room with several employees of QLink, one of whom had the screen name "SteveCase"
:-)
I wonder if they've reverse engineered Puzzler or Club Caribe...
"Online" used to mean the MODEM had a carrier back in older terminal software
To a certain extent, I mourn the loss of the olden days. No, I don't think that the C64, Atari, TI, Amiga, $FAV_OLD_COMPUTER, should dominate the market. However, I do remember a time when EVERY COMPUTER MADE came with a dialect of BASIC and encouraged users to learn to program. (BASIC is arguably not the best language to learn programming, but I will not argue that now.)
:(
(PS: Let's not forget how printer manuals showed you how to program the printer. Okay, potentially useless in the face of a graphics program, but still taught a basic fundamental of how things work.)
I feel a certain sadness that we don't get a reasonable programming language with new computers. By reasonable I mean one that is easy to learn and well documented with examples INCLUDED WITH the computer (not web-based in a disasterously monstrous layout.)
Or am I missing something?
Let's see, Windows comes with VB Scripting. Most Linux distros come with Perl, Python, PHP, and our beloved sh. Where's the book with the cute computer with legs that shows us how to say "Hello, world" in 16 colors, and how to write a quick game of "Secret Number"? My dad looked through his Dell box and couldn't find it anywhere
Nothing of content to add. I just want to say that this is very, very righteous.
8-bits are still fun to use!
Wicked Friday night in the 8-bit era:
7-8pm Q-Link
8-9pm Play Airborne Ranger
9-10pm break for new Kids in the Hall episode
10-11:50pm Q-Link
11:50pm-12:00am Call local BBSs, make moves in Space Empire to initiate attack another system. Buddy/ally does same. (as do your slave accounts)
12:01am-12:10am Use fresh Space Empire turns for the new day to complete sneak attack. Double fists of fury!
12:10am-1:00am Play Test Drive
1:00am-2:00am Play California Games
2:01 turn on wardialer and go to bed
Any other Canadians use QuantumLink? As a young person without much of a concept of money and how usage fees can multiply, I was blown away by the first month's bill we received for QuantumLink. 20 hours of use -- after some bizarre internal long distance charges, access fees, and currency conversion -- worked out to about $200. Club Caribe was fun, but the bill (and my parents' reaction at the time) made it a service that I disconnected from quickly.
Like another poster above asked, has anyone been able to connect to the server and see if Club Caribe worked?
For some of us "Dork" is a genetic predisposition and we can't do any thing about it.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
All these "pixel art" sites and work you see are nothing more than a rip off of Habitat. AFAIK that's one of the oldest programs/systems using avatars.
Wow, that's what I call a cool hack. C64s used to be the funnest things to play around with. Years ago I built a servo control circuit board for a friend to plug into the back slot of a C64, to control exhibits in a coin-operated art gallery (later known as The Church of Elvis, Portland Oregon). Writing the control software in Commodore Basic and seeing the whole thing work was one of the coolest things I ever did.
So then somewhere along the line, it became AppleLink: Personal Edition, and THEN it became AOL Online later. Oh, I remember those magazine ads of AppleLink vaguely well.
So were Commodores cut out of the network somewhere?
After version 2.0, even the Apple II people that helped maintain, and fund the early years were cut out the network through interface 'updates'.
You mean it doesnt help you to get laid when you whip it out at bars on Friday night?
Or that the printer was ready and waiting for stuff to print.
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Huh? tcpser compiles fine for Linux... That's how I run it, and I wrote it. Of course, Windows users need cygwin, but I can't solve all the world's problems today. Jim
OK, why DO people go to Renaissance fairs?
I've been involved in the beta testing of the server for the past month so I know what kind of questions everybody has (since I've been asking most of them myself already).
Q: Will/Does the implantation support Super-Q, Rabbit Jacks Casino, Club Caribe, etc?
A: Right now, only the basic (Q-link 4.0) games work such as Hangman, Battleship, Chess, etc.. Since the hard part (the q-link & x.25 pad stuff) has been pretty much conquered, the rest of the lot should come with time. The only real exception to that rule is Club Caribe--it's not impossible that it can be supported, but it certainly is the hardest thing to implement and also last on the developers' list. Rabbit Jack Casino is on the top of that list I think. One of the developers has gotten Puzzler to work (part of super Q) but only independently since the server itself doesn't support Super-Q....but progress is being made.
Q: How many users does the system support? (Since the old service ran on a Stratus 200 with 8 12Mhz
68010's)
A: Well, we'll see after the slashdoting I suppose. I should be able to handle much more on modern hardware. Keep in mind when you automatically join the People Connection you are dumped into the lobby--the Lobby supports (as all rooms in the PC) up to 23 users, and when the limit is reached it creates a new lobby and dumps new users into it.
Q: What works so far? What works and what will cause the client to freeze?
A: Pretty much all of the People connection (that includes email, IM's, panels, and games that don't require super-q or cc), The Commodore Connection (only one download is available right now for testing), Customer Service (message boards are at about 90%). Most of the other areas 'work' but haven't been populated with content yet. Any old timer Q-linkers that may have saved stuff from these areas are encouraged to help us out. Oh yah, the "Let Q-Link pick my partners" when starting a game option will most certainly freeze your client.
Q: Does it work under Linux?
A: Sure does, although it's a bit more involved that doing it through Windows with our specially patched Winvice 1.6, or even just running TCPserve and connecting with a real C64/C128 via a RS232 adapter and null-modem cable. If your using Mac OS X (Like I am) your kind of screwed though.. unless you have the genius to compile the latest Vice with RS232 emulation for Mac OS X. Otherwise, the site has all of the tools you'll need, assuming it doesn't get Slashdoted.
Q: Got a mirror? (In case the main site get's slashdotted)
A: Sort of. http://www.circleofthunder.com/downloads.html
I have the Q-link v4 disk up there along with some extra goodies (games discs 1/2 + CC & Super-Q). I don't have the patched version of WinVICE 1.6 though.
Those are the biggies I can think of off the top of my head. If you have anymore questions (not spelling or grammar related), post em here.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
I suddenly feel quite young again. And to think, I saw the 10th Anniversary Edition of Toy Story the other day.
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
Corsets are hot!
Is P3 your baby? Yep, as far as I can recall P3 is still supported for some of those older clients. I remember in the late 90s there was work to talk to some clients via L2TP instead, and of course servers never send the whole input packet around to each other anymore; it gets abstracted much closer to the edge. But at some level, I suspect vestiges of P3 are still in daily use; the two-character routing token the most obvious one.
I am pretty sure I have a file or two around here that uses 0x7F as a line feed (or was it FF?)
Now i can effectively download my linux ISO's with my C64 to save download time! :D
*rubs hands with excitement*
Zork III, for G-d's sake! Am I wrong? Epyx Summer Games... Drol... For cryin' out loud, Choplifter!. Don't you dare forget Choplifter!!!
Oh, my god, I almost forgot Mule and Archon, and that stupid game I typed in from Compute!'s Gazette, "Spike".
There was a typo in that one, I remember. It was all machine language. Pure numbers, six 3-digit numbers and a checksum per line. Terribly boring to type in. One of the lines wouldn't check properly. I looked at the code and saw that there was a combination of 032 211 255, or in hex, $20 $D3 $FF. Since the MC6510 was big-endian, that translated to JSR $FFD3, a bad Kernel jump table address.
Since $FFD2 was a known quantity (the kernel jump table address for printing a character to the text screen at the current cursor point), I figured that must be wrong. Since it was only one byte off, it couldn't be a useful address.
Long story even longer, I changed the address, the checksum worked, and I had a fun game to play after another two hours of 10-key typing.
Ah, to be 13 again...
The CB App. What's your 20?
I always wonder about whose lifetime these lifetime contracts refer to.
Oh well, what the hell...
Oh, and by the way, device 8 was for wussies, too! I much preferred device 1. My mantra is and always will be:
load "*",1,1
Again, I didn't say it was rational, did I?
The CB App. What's your 20?
DMCA is for copy protection. There is none in QLink. I would know :-)
QADMIN jim
Quantum Link was America Online?
Oh god. I feel so dirty now.
First Star Wars and now this. You people just won't be satisfied until my whole childhood is ripped to shreds, will you?
Technoli
It's like Homo neanderthalensis, recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast.
Sorry to be nitpicky, but you chose completely the wrong example to use as an analogy.
Homo Neanderthalensis . . . yeah, they used to be seen as a precursor to "humankind", but that was due in a large part to the fact that scientists, unfortunately for the accuracy of results and theories, are human . . . archaeologists and paleontologists inherited from their cultures a huge burden of preconceptions about what "human" is, and combined with some of the initial findings of the Neanderthals being actually terribly diseased and atypical examples, along with the misclassification of any artifacts left behind as instead being left behind by Homo Sapiens . . . well, it's only recently (relatively speaking) that the scientific community has started to wake up to the rather non-linear relationship of "us to them".
Now, naturally, conclusions are far from certain. At some point the Neanderthals diverged; but it's hard to argue that then the human race continued on and left them behind, the actual demise of the Neanderthals is a trickier business. Arguments range from interbreeding (we're all Neanderthals!) to ourbreeding (as in, humans moved into Neanderthal territory as climates changed, and like rabbits we just outpopulated them, pushing them away), to war (stone age style), combinations of all the above, and more. What is at least certain, though, is that the Neanderthals weren't, uhh, of the nature that you describe them as being.
Some random sources for cross-reference:
Descent of Man - Neanderthal
Even a random religous tract from 1998 notes that Neanderthals are "no longer thought to be lineal ancestors of Homo Sapiens".
There's also some in-depth information here and here, and etc.
Not sure why I spent that brief period of time dredging all that up, I'll probably either be ignored or modded (probably rightfully, though unfortunately it's a policy that squashes interesting tangential discussion) off-topic. Oh well!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
12:33AM Central, and server is handling the load OK. Thanks /. for the stress test. Pics appear to be back up, but they are not on the QLink server anyway, so they are expendable.
I've been so hard at work on the code, I don't have much docs, but you can ask away.
You can also email me (looks pretty easy to Google and find my email, so I'll let that be the test) if you are having connect issues.
Jim
I asked testers to hold on on posting on /. for a few weeks, while the server was in heavy development. Then, when I gave the OK to submit, I knew there would be a post about "Why?" if it made /. It's almost like the poster knows it's a dumb question to ask, but can't keep from doing it anyway...
Jim
1) The Commodore community has always wanted the service back. It was more than a service, it was a community. 2) The exercise was worth more than years of classes in software development and error/runtime diagnosis. In my current vocation, I am often relied on to diagnose issues that are surprisingly like trying to decipher a communication between two parties I have little knowledge of. 3) It was a nice brain (pun not intended, for those who know who this is) exercise, trying to carry on a conversation with a piece of software when you only know one half of the verbs and nouns. At work, I do things in an insulated world of HTTP, SOAP, XML, etc., and one has to have a challenge to keep the brain cells working well. 4) It was there. So be it. 5) I wanted to be on /. (well, not really, but that's what everyone may think...)
Jim
My wife doesn't think I am scrawny, and my two children appears to dispute your other theory. Nice that you have time enough to pity me. I realize I'm feeding the trolls, but I love how cowards only have black and white views of the universe. I assume you pity vintage car owners and those that fix up old homes. Sir/Madam, I pity you for having such a limited view of the world and your life. have fun, though.
Jim
It's not a troll...it's discussion bait...
why? I guess for the sense of achievement, and want to immerse oneself in an exclusive community where people who pursue the obscure, like you, have something in common...to share an smaller internet not full of corporate websites & casual users, who feel no excitement from the internet, or the wonder of international broadcasting, or space exploration, because they're so acclimatized to it...it's rewarding to do hard things with your computer. That's why so many of us waste time configuring/discovering retro unix based operating systems, but consequently get more satisfaction from computer use...
(& that's why it's 7am, and my eyes hurt)
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Is the innocence. :)
:)
The social makeup of the online community 20 years ago was so much different than it is now. Even those of us who are left are 20 years older and different from whom we were then. It's a time and a 'place' that will never again be repeated, although seeing the UI again has sparked some very distant and pleasant memories.
Thanks for bringing it back, and it was interesting to read in the thread what hardware the service originally ran on, I had always wondered. If there are any more details I'd like to know. (how many dial in lines, how were they physically situated...any PHOTOS of the hardware?)
FOr those of you who are wondering about the AOL connection - Quantumlink was run by Quantum Computer Services in Vienna, Virginia. They later started a service for PC and Mac users called America Online, and that later became their entire business and business name. As mentioned earlier, they shut down Qlink and encouraged migration to AOL, and that was the end of that.
This coincided with the general decline of C=64s and 128s in lieu of newer machines. But yes it would have been nice to have Amiga support for it, because for the next 5 or 6 years I owned probably every single model of Amiga ever made at one time or another.
Before getting a shell account with a UUCP newsfeed in '91 or so, I was visiting local multi-line BBSs. (MajorBBS with lots of lines - 16 to 32 lines) and that's where I met pretty much everyone I knew at the time. Local boards are great, because you get to meet everyone eventually at local gatherings. Oh well, that's all gone too. Back to IRC where anyone you don't know is either a pedophile or a cop.
Wish I could find my C64 power supply, though..
Some beautiful person has done some great work putting Jumpman on the modern PC. I love this man. http://www.oldskool.org/pc/jumpman
Part of it is that it's debatable whether they ever entirely diverged; the two "species" might have interbred and reintegrated, thus breaking the definition of species. In that case, certainly not "a completely different beast". And of course there's dozens of different takes on the theories, each of them different but nearly all disagreeing with the "recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast" statement. The specifics of why that statement is wrong, and/or which specific parts are wrong, depends on which hypothesis you follow.
Anyways, to assuage your guilt, I have to note that I honestly wasn't using reverse psychology; I truly believed I'd be modded off-topic, I didn't and don't expect my comment to that effect to change much in that department; indeed, so far I'm somewhat surprised (but things can change). Going off on a tangent can get you punished on Slashdot, indeed it quite regularly does, and I figured if I was already deviating from the original subject matter, I might as well go for the gusto. I would hate myself if I had been trying to trick people into modding me a certain way; moderation is a defence that Slashdot has had to resort to for signal-to-noise reasons and so forth, it's an unfortunate sidenote but one that should be merely the foundation supporting the weight of actual informed discussion. If I was going to play games for points, I might as well just turn to a video game . . .
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
On the contrary, unless it died this morning, it weathered the storm well. I think the 1200 bps thorttle on connections was the reason.
Jim