QuantumLink pics

Philip Pemberton wrote: short answer: yes long answer: The disk was reverse engineered by Keith Henricksen in 2001, by using the C64 emulator VICE and it's ability to pipe user port RS232 to STDIO of any application. He wrote a stub app to give to VICE that converted STDIO into TCP traffic, and then write a TCP/IP server. Through a combination of looking at what the client initially sends and how it was constructed, Keith determined the packet format. Via stepping through the VICE monitor, he determined the CRC checksum and found what response the initial packet needed. He then modified his C application to send said response. As we went along this way, he documented it sparsely in a text file. After a while, Keith set the work aside. He picked it up again and wrote a new server in C++, but shelved it while it was less functional than his C effort. In 2004, I disassembled the code via VICE and determined the CRC and packet format, but could not get much farther because WinVICE doesn't have the same functionality as UNIX VICE does, and Keith seems better able to reverse engineer the QLink code. Thus, I shelved my effort in late 2004. In June 2005, Keith found the forum we use to discuss the idea, and shared some information. After that, he offered up his 2 server attempts, from which I grabbed his text documentation. I then restarted my implementation, which went very quickly. Along the way, I found some new keywords, and determined how to do some stuff not in Keith's code. Some of the development required seeing the service as it was (for example, the server sends the first and second email lines to the client, but we had no idea of the format), so I went looking for screen shots. I found a few at http://www.dsgames.net/qlink/, Keith Elkin's site. After using the information found there, I emailed Keith about the project, and asked if there were any more shots. He replied that he had hours of videotape of the sessions, which he would convert to video files. I just received those, and they may hold the keys to how the Auditorium worked. This past Tuesday, we were finally able to do a cross country test of the server code, after which the tester, Jeff Ledger posted about it in several places. Those posts brought more emails, some from Raymond Day with old saved QLink messages. As the messages were from the end, when people were posting what file areas they had downloaded, the postings provide deiscriptions of the file base heirarchy. I also trolled USENET and Google to find other sites emailing them the project progress. Keith Elkin is also a great resource, as he was remote staff for quite a while of QLink's existence, so he knows more of the system minutuae. The video feeds he provided include Habitat and Club Caribe sessions, which will make re-introducing those easier. I'd love to have a PC running some form of RS232->TCP/IP bridge, then have Well, I can help you with getting rs232 to TCP/IP (tcpser and tcpser4j both work, as might other bridges), but I don't know how to merge QLink chat and IRC into one. Most of it I have mapped out, but QLink only allows 23 users per room. I have no idea how to guard against an IRC room getting more than 23 users in it. Thanks. I hope to have enough of the system operational by the 20th Anniversay of QLink, Nov 1, 2005. I gotta hurry, tho. JIm -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations brain at jbrain.com http://www.jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!