Quantum Link

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Quantum Link

Quantum Link (or Q-Link) was a U.S. and Canadian online service for Commodore 64

Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of United States dollar595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of Random-access memory with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of tha...
and 128

Commodore 128

The Commodore 128 home computer/personal computer was the last 8-bit machine commercially released by Commodore International . Introduced in January of 1985 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas metropolitan area, it appeared three years after its predecessor, the bestselling Commodore 64....
personal computers that operated from November 5, 1985 to November 1, 1994. It was operated by Quantum Computer Services of Vienna, Virginia

Vienna, Virginia

Vienna is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, Virginia, United States. The population was 14,453 at the 2000 census and it has grown by about 3% since....
, which in October 1991 changed its name to America Online, and continues to operate its AOL service for the IBM PC

IBM PC

The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform ....
and Apple Macintosh today.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Quantum Link'

Start a new discussion about 'Quantum Link'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Quantum Link (or Q-Link) was a U.S. and Canadian online service for Commodore 64

Commodore 64

Commodore 128

Vienna, Virginia

IBM PC

The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform ....
and Apple Macintosh today. Q-Link was a modified version of the PlayNET

PlayNET

PlayNet was a U.S. online service for Commodore 64 personal computers that operated from 1984 to 1987. It was operated by the PlayNet, Inc of Troy, New York....
system, which Control Video Corporation (CVC, later renamed Quantum Computer Services) licensed.

Just as later services would, Q-Link featured electronic mail, online chat

Online chat

Online chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct one-on-one chat or text-based chat room , using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat, talkers and possibly MUDs....
(in its People Connection department), public domain

Public domain

File:PD-icon.svgThe public domain is a range of abstract materials?commonly referred to as intellectual property?which are not owned or controlled by anyone....
file sharing

File sharing

File sharing is a method of distributing electronically stored information such as computer programs and digital media. File sharing can be implemented in a variety of storage and distribution models....
libraries, online news

NeWS

NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S....
, and instant messaging

Instant messaging

Instant messaging is a form of Real-time computing communication between two or more people based on typed text. The Written language is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet....
(using On Line Messages, or OLMs). Other noteworthy features included online multiplayer games like checkers, chess

Chess

Chess is a recreational and competitive game played between two Player . Sometimes called Western chess or international chess to distinguish it from History of chess and other chess variants, the current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from similar, much older...
, backgammon

Backgammon

Backgammon is a board game for two players in which the playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice. A player wins by removing all of his pieces from the board....
, and hangman

Hangman (game)

Hangman is a paper and pencil game guessing game for two or more players. One player thinks of a word and the other tries to guess it by suggesting Letter s....
; casino

Casino

A casino is, in the modern sense of the word, a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships and other tourist attractions....
games such as bingo

Bingo (US)

Bingo is a game of chance played with randomly drawn numbers which players match against numbers that have been pre-printed on 5x5 matrices. The matrices may be printed on paper, card stock or electronically represented and are referred to as "cards." Many versions conclude the game when the first person to achieve a specified pattern fro...
, slot machine

Slot machine

A slot machine , fruit machine , or poker machine is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed....
s, blackjack

Blackjack

Blackjack is the most widely played casino game banking game in the world. Much of blackjack's popularity is due to the mix of chance with elements of skill, and the publicity that surrounds card counting ....
and poker

Poker

Poker is a family of card game that share betting rules and usually List of poker hands. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed....
in RabbitJack's Casino; and an interactive graphical resort island called Habitat

Habitat (video game)

Lucasfilm's Habitat was an early and technologically influential MMORPG developed by LucasArts and made available as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64 computer and the corporate progenitor to America Online....
while in beta-testing and later renamed to Club Caribe

Club Caribe

Club Caribe was one of the first virtual world. It was available in the 1980s on the exclusively Commodore 64 online service Quantum Link. Originally available in limited release as Habitat , Club Caribe was eventually released to the public as an extension of Q-Link's "People Connection"....
.

Club Caribe was developed with Lucasfilm Games and was designed using software that would later form the basis of Lucasfilm's Maniac Mansion

Maniac Mansion

Maniac Mansion is a graphical adventure game originally released in 1987 by Lucasfilm Games . Maniac Mansion has become known among video game players and programmers for its highly-acclaimed gameplay and its introduction of new ideas into gaming, including multiple possible endings, multiple user-selectable characters with significan...
SCUMM

SCUMM

SCUMM is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical LucasArts adventure games Maniac Mansion.It is somewhere between a game engine and a programming language, allowing designers to create locations, items and dialogue sequences without writing code in the actual language the game source code wo...
story system. Users controlled on-screen avatars

Avatar (virtual reality)

An avatar is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs....
that could chat with other users, carry and use objects and money (called tokens), and travel around the island one screenful at a time. It was a predecessor to today's MMOGs.

Connections to Q-Link were typically made by modem

Modem

Modem is a peripheral device that modulation an analog carrier wave Signal to encode digital information, and also demodulation such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information....
s with speeds from 300-2400 bit/s, with 1200 bit/s being the most common. The service was normally open weekday evenings and all day on weekends. Pricing was $9.95 per month, with additional fees of six cents per minute (later raised to eight) for so-called "plus" areas, which included most of the aforementioned services. Users were given one free hour of "plus" usage per month.

The system competed with many other online services like CompuServe

CompuServe

CompuServe, , was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of information services such as AOL that charged monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates....
and The Source

The Source (service)

The Source was an early online service, one of the first such services to be oriented toward and available to the general public. The Source described itself as follows: "It's not hardware....
, as well as Bulletin board system

Bulletin board system

File:Monochrome-bbs.pngA Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running list of BBS software that allows User to Telecommunication circuit and Logging to the system using a terminal program....
s (single or multiuser), including gaming systems such as Scepter of Goth

Scepter of Goth

Scepter of Goth, also spelled Sceptre of Goth, was an early multi-user text-based adventure game, a genre now typically called a "multi-user dungeon" or MUD....
and Swords of Chaos

Swords of Chaos

Swords of Chaos is a computer game made by Mark Peterson, it is a MUD type game for the Major BBS and Worldgroup Bulletin board system software, meaning it can be played over a dial-up connection with a modem or more commonly with telnet since the advent of the internet, one can use special telnet program like PuTTY or simple their operating...
. Quantum Link's graphical display was better than many of these competing systems because it used specialized client software with a nonstandard protocol. However, this specialized software and nonstandard protocol also limited its market, because only the Commdore 64 or 128 could run the software necessary to access Quantum Link.

In the summer of 2005, Commodore hobbyists reverse engineered the service allowing them to create a Q-Link protocol compatible clone called Quantum Link Reloaded

Quantum Link Reloaded

Quantum Link Reloaded is a re-implementation of the original Quantum Link online service for the Commodore 64 home computer system. The formal introduction of Quantum Link Reloaded was held on the 20th Anniversary of the introduction of Quantum Link, November 5, 2005, at the Vintage Computer Festival....
which runs via the Internet as opposed to using telephone lines. Using the original Q-Link software as a D-64 file, it can be accessed using either the Commodore 64 emulator (available on multiple platforms, including Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
and Linux

Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
), or by using authentic Commodore hardware connected to the Internet by way of a serial cable connected to a PC with internet access.

Quantum Link

See also

External links