Once upon a time in the early 80's a man named Bill von Meister started a company called Control Video Corporation. (Bill von Meister had been one of the founders of The Source which was bought by Readers Digest) CVC started a service for Atari 2600 users called GameLine. Users would plug a large modem cartridge into their 2600 and could download a game and play it until they turned their 2600 off. This service was kill by the Video game crash of '83. Next they developed proprietary modems for the C64 and the Apple II and started a service called MasterLine. Same thing, you could download and try software before buying it. This is when I started with CVC (about the end of 1983 I think) MasterLine lasted 3 months. Next they acquired the software from a small on-line service called Playnet and in 6 months launched QuantumLink (Q-Link for short). At some point in here they also changed their name to Quantum Computer Services. Q-Link was a C64 only service. About 1987 they started AppleLink: Personal Edition (not to be confused with Apple's tech support service AppleLink) for Apple II, and IIgs. And about the same time they also started PCLink running under Tandy's DeskMate GUI. This is also the point where I left the company and moved to California. In California I ported Q-Link's Rabbit Jack's Casino Games to run on AppleLink but other than that I lost track of the company. I believe they changed their name and the service's name to America On Line in 1989. ========================================= Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com Senior Software Engineer Press Start Inc. Sunnyvale,CA Curator Museum of Personal Computing Machinery http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum =========================================