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posted by Wordshore at 11:03 PM on August 11 [5 favorites]

Long ago, before the disastrous Time-Warner merger (great idea Warner Bros! I see you're still making incredibly stupid decisions today!) DVDs, CDs and floppy disks, before AIM and AOL Keywords, before the jokes, before everything, AOL was a company called Quantum Computer Services, and they first hit it big, for some values of big, providing an online service for Commodore 64 users called QuantumLink.

QuantumLink, in its heyday, was excellent, an amazing service that helped extend the life and popularity of the C64. I didn't get to use it at that time, though. I managed to subscribe for a few months as part of a trial, but by that time it was already being heavily neglected. Forums went unmoderated, file uploads weren't being published, and behind the scenes they were already gearing up to become America On-Line. (They may actually have started AOL by that point?)

What did QLink offer? Forums and file downloads of course. Unlike Compuservem the heavyweight service back then, you could count on software you got from QLink on working on your computer, because it was platform-specific. But they could also offer other services that used bespoke client software. Foremost among those was unquestionably Club Caribe, possibly the first graphical virtual world available to the general public. It had been preceded by Habitat, which never left beta. It was designed by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar, who are still kicking today I believe, and was essentially a MMORPG set in a Maniac Mansion kind of game world. Later on PC, and on Compuserve, they revamped and turned it into WorldsAway, which offered much better graphics, around the era of Win3.1 and Windows 95. I spent a lot of time on WA, and its flagship world Dreamscape, in my teens. It's still floating around out there, now in the hands of one of its longtime members. See the notes, below.

I still remember how QLink was left to languish when AOL management got those dollar signs in their eyes. I've mentioned that I've been put in charge of the archives of Loadstar, a long-lived disk magazine for C64 and 128 computers. Well, there is at least one complete copy of the QuantumLink client software on its many disks, awaiting the day when it'll once more have some service to connect to. It seems there is at least one project that seeks to revive QLink, called QuantumLink Reloaded.

Notes:

1. There is also a project to revive Club Caribe, renoproject.com. WorldsAway is now called VZones, and it still has the 256-color-palette look it had way way back in 1993 or so on release. It got a Japanese version called Habitat II that, no lie, got a port to the Sega Saturn. I don't know if I can suggest trying out VZones now, I hear new user signups have been broken since forever. (Another once-promising virtual world that is still hanging in there, somehow, is There. Virtual world fans tend to die hard, I suppose.

2. Compuserve, of course, got bought out by AOL and soon after shut down, an ignominious end for a service dating back to the 60s. But in one sense Compuserve still exists: to this day, the Compuserve homepage portal still works. Presumably it's all automated now, just a consumer and republisher of feeds from other sites. The "About CompuServe" link still works too, and it still sticks to the CamelCase stylization the company used for its branding in life. That About page mentions the, um, recent acquisition of CompuServe by AOL in 1998, and announces the "newest" version of the Compuserve client software, 7.0, with its integration of channels and "exclusive Time Warner content from great brands such as CNN, CNNSI, People, Fortune, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, and more." In 1998, even Windows ME wasn't out yet. It was truly a different world then.
posted by JHarris at 11:53 PM on August 11 [28 favorites]

posted by Wordshore at 4:03 PM.

...the sound of hope, anticipation, expectation, joy, relief ... a cascading memory movie of home office and bedroom interiors, desk chairs, wall posters, windows, the lights - the blinking lights... I once spent over $400 in one month on local call fees while having an international affair via email because the phone connection to the university server kept dropping out if more than 500 students were online at the same time and I was on heat.
posted by Thella at 12:22 AM on August 12 [6 favorites]

You forgot something
posted by growabrain at 12:33 AM on August 12 [2 favorites]

.
posted by onehalfjunco at 2:24 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

All the free CDs led to interesting art.
posted by funkaspuck at 2:29 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

I don't yet believe MeFi is dying, and I've been around here for some years.

But let some of this wonder from the mid-90s that it was born from be passed on to our children, either way.
posted by chmmr at 2:54 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

That jump from 14.4 to 56K modem really felt like entering the future. Eventually, home from college in the late 90s, I was using AOL to get online in order to fire up BlitzMail, the best little email client developed at Dartmouth, to check my email.
posted by emelenjr at 3:59 AM on August 12 [6 favorites]

it will ¡°discontinue dial-up internet¡± at the end of September

Wake me up when September ends...
posted by mmoncur at 5:38 AM on August 12 [13 favorites]

Be right back, need to update the Wikipedia article on Eternal September to add an end date
posted by caution live frogs at 6:09 AM on August 12 [7 favorites]

Aww, I was about to say that Toronto Free-Net still offered dialup, but it's no longer offered on their web page. I suspect they may still have a couple of legacy customers. I knew of one user within the last five years who was still militantly on dialup.

Bell Canada no longer does POTS copper connections here. Your "landline" will be a VoIP thing into your router. For the ultimate in futility,you can do modem over VoIP, but you need a premium VoIP provider.
posted by scruss at 6:10 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

emelenjr: "That jump from 14.4 to 56K modem really felt like entering the future. Eventually, home from college in the late 90s, I was using AOL to get online in order to fire up BlitzMail, the best little email client developed at Dartmouth, to check my email."

We went from 9600 to 56k and good gawd, we were blazing. That really opened up the world wide web, mind you, this was Prodigy, not AOL. We had to use AOL eventually, which lacked the community that I had found on Prodigy for the most part, where I had dived into forums and then later, the chat rooms (mainly of people from the forums).

That dial up modem sound is just going to be one of those generational hallmarks that younger folks will just shrug over, and that's okay.
posted by Atreides at 6:52 AM on August 12 [2 favorites]

A 2016 FPP, How to use a modem, with mostly working links to things such as modem sounds. And a bloke revealing on TV that his password is "1234".
posted by Wordshore at 7:48 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

Finally an end to the yearly deluge of Christmas Modem Kiddies.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:22 AM on August 12

Bell Canada no longer does POTS copper connections here. Your "landline" will be a VoIP thing into your router.

We still have an old fashioned land line (and still have a rotary phone connected, because why the hell not!) but that is only because we tell Bell Canada where to go whenever they try to get us to upgrade. We are starting to doubt the wisdom of continuing to pay $45 a month for a POTS landline, which doesn't even include services like call display or call answer, though.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:27 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

We had a 56k modem and got that speed for a while. Then the local telephone company did something to the line to where we couldn't get above 14k despite having the modem. Their solution? Pay us more for DSL! My dad refused to do that on principle for a long time because why reward the telecom for their screw up? So I suffered with low speeds even though I had better equipment.

The real change though was AOL dropping the whole "you have X amount of hours" and going to unlimited. I remember it was a nightmare for a while because people just stayed online and you couldn't get through on the numbers. I'd have to redial over and over before it'd work. And then when it finally connected I'd do the same thing and leave it on because who knows how long it'd take to reconnect.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:30 AM on August 12 [2 favorites]

a part of me believes that if the internet had stayed at dial up speed forever, maybe the world would be a little bit nicer.
posted by numaner at 10:07 AM on August 12 [7 favorites]

.

Met the Late Mr. Nerd on AOL on 3/1/1996. A few months later, he helped me upgrade my 2800 baud modem to a 28.8 for $150! I felt so fancy. :)
posted by luckynerd at 10:16 AM on August 12 [2 favorites]

The reasons the internet got wrecked have to do with corporate profit-seeking, and if AOL were still as big today they'd absolutely be throwing their weight around just like Amazon and Facebook. Make no mistake, AOL wasn't a benign steward. They destroyed Compuserve, filled the world with their various disks, used the walled garden approach to services and only switched to unlimited pricing when it became evident its lack was losing them business. For a while they took the tack that it was their communities and areas that were the real pull of their service, and acted like it.

At that virtual world I mentioned above, there was a user called Marianne G who had been an enthusiastic user of Club Caribe, and she bore a mighty grudge against Steve Case of AOL for killing Club Caribe and QuantumLink. I hope she's still around, still cursing Case's name.
posted by JHarris at 10:19 AM on August 12 [5 favorites]

I love shooting black and white film through my old film cameras, and also love listening to my old vinyl albums through tube amplification. I do not pine for my old 300 baud acoustical coupler modem. Wonder how I would fit an iPhone into those cups......?
posted by caddis at 10:39 AM on August 12

a part of me believes that if the internet had stayed at dial up speed forever, maybe the world would be a little bit nicer.

Can't tell of course, but I do know that in those AOL days I was excited about technology; today, not so much.
posted by JanetLand at 10:59 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

rant: the speaker on the modem was there so that if you were calling a part-time BBS you could tell if a person answered or a machine, so that you would not disturb them. This was how hobby BBSes worked in the 80s and 90s, i.e. some people only had one phone line and ran the BBS at night only. If you're dialing a commercial ISP, there is *no need* for the speaker, and it can easily be turned off in your modem's initialization string. You don't have to get a stupid pillow to stick next to the computer or whatever! The sound was not an essential part of the process, and was supposed to be turned off, but apparently no one got that memo and have this weird association with the necessity of these loud annoying sounds for going online. That's my rant, apologies if you've already read it before.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:27 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

As president of my local Commodore computer club, I had five free hours on QLink every month. I¡¯m pretty sure I went over that every month, downloading software (for the club¡¯s software library, of course), but I don¡¯t remember ever getting charged.

I also got a QLink coffee mug, which I still have, though the logo finally smeared a year or so ago. I still use it, though.
posted by lhauser at 11:29 AM on August 12 [2 favorites]

I'm curious how many of those 175.000 AOL dialup customers actually know they're still signed up for dial-up. What's the usage rate vs subscription rate? Because I bet a whole bunch of them just never bothered to unsubscribe for whatever reason and AOL has been happy to keep billing them.
posted by thecjm at 11:33 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

Rhomboid: " If you're dialing a commercial ISP, there is *no need* for the speaker, and it can easily be turned off in your modem's initialization string. You don't have to get a stupid pillow to stick next to the computer or whatever! The sound was not an essential part of the process, and was supposed to be turned off, but apparently no one got that memo and have this weird association with the necessity of these loud annoying sounds for going online. "

[grabs hammer and flare gun] Right, I think I have the tools to do that.

But seriously, I think especially in the 90s, the majority of users probably had no idea how to do this. As someone who had to share their phone line with people who wanted to use it for...well, their phone, the speaker let me know to cancel my connection attempt because someone was already on the phone. So it was helpful on the user side, regardless of where the call was going.
posted by Atreides at 11:34 AM on August 12

I'm curious how many of those 175.000 AOL dialup customers actually know they're still signed up for dial-up. What's the usage rate vs subscription rate? Because I bet a whole bunch of them just never bothered to unsubscribe for whatever reason and AOL has been happy to keep billing them.

I'd guess at least a few of them had died, the next-of-kin kept their bank account open for convenience, and AOL just kept billing them month after month, no one the wiser.
posted by JHarris at 12:22 PM on August 12 [1 favorite]

The real question should be how many people are/were using dialup because they are not serviced by cable/fiber/DSL and not using cellular/satellite/Starlink due to cost. Not that they were having a good time on 56k in 2025 or whatever, but we should really figure out how to get everyone affordable high speed internet as just kind of like a baseline of society. (haha hilarious, not happening any time soon.)
posted by Rhomboid at 12:58 PM on August 12 [4 favorites]

Rhomboid: yup. All the AOL jokes to the side, how many people just got cut off? I note the article doesn't say how many dial up connections AOL was averaging per month/week/day/whatever.

And sure, maybe some lived in places where broadband is available. but they may not have been able to afford it.

And I know there's plenty of people out in the true rural parts of the country who don't have access to anything but a phone line.
posted by sotonohito at 2:18 PM on August 12

I kept paying for Mindspring/Earthlink dialup into the Twenty-Teens because I was responsible for client systems. If I needed a connection to the Internet, I needed one.

Also, pour one out for Mindspring. If memory serves me correctly I was user 272. That was a heady time to be a nerd in the 404.

I was also a big Quantum Link user but maybe I stopped and switched to BIX before Club Caribe ever got off the ground. I remember… Jazz Jackrabbit? Like card games and chess and stuff like that?
posted by ob1quixote at 3:28 PM on August 12 [2 favorites]

That was RabbitJack's Casino, Jazz Jackrabbit was a DOS shareware game inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog. I think RabbitJack was contemporary with Club Caribe?
posted by JHarris at 3:52 PM on August 12 [2 favorites]

BTW, you aren't going to believe this, but you know what still exists and provides dialup service? Juno!
posted by JHarris at 3:54 PM on August 12 [3 favorites]

I'm curious how many of those 175.000 AOL dialup customers actually know they're still signed up for dial-up.

I can ask my mom, if you want a data point.... I mean, for sure she still uses her AOHell email, and may well have not cancelled the monthly dial-up account also.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:52 PM on August 12 [1 favorite]

In memoriam ?
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:12 PM on August 12 [1 favorite]

It's not quite the same, but I was curious about other bits of internet history and while I was delighted to learn that penisland.net (Pen Island not Penis Land) still exists as a silly lesson in why picking a domain name isn't as simple as you'd hope, the site beastiality.com has sadly vanished and now just redirects to some random porn site.

For those who missed it in the day, the original beastiality.com site was plain black text on a plain white background that said something along the lines of "it's spelled bestiality you sick fucks" but unfortunately I can't find any archived snapshots of the original gag site so unless someone here remembers the exact wording may be lost to entropy.

Bit by bit the old internet vanishes, and while I think back in the day we'd definitely have classified AOL as enshitification, in a way it seems almost quaint compared to the modern high speed AI tuned enshitification.
posted by sotonohito at 10:49 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]

Rhomboid: "we should really figure out how to get everyone affordable high speed internet"

That is supposed to be one of the things funded by the Universal Service Fund. It hasn't worked as well as it should, basically due to capitalism
posted by soelo at 10:54 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]