
The People Connection Lobby


This is what email looked like when it was sent directly
from the Stratus (server) instead of the Q-Link client.


AOL has multiple auditoriums, Q-Link only had one, this is
it. RJScott was the emcee of all Q-Link Auditorium
events. He was also the first Q-Guide on the service. (These
were later on known as PC-Guides on PC-Link, and now Guides
on AOL)


This was the People List, which showed you what users were in
the room with you.


This email makes references to OLMs. IM's (Instant Messages)
used to be called OLMs (OnLine Messages). During the Q-Link era,
there were no privacy options which let you turn off your IM's,
and there were no buddy lists. If you were in the
Auditorium using an Auditorium Disk (emcees), or in RabbitJack's
Casino, or testing Habitat / Club Caribe, your OLM's would be
disabled. There where three types of OLMs. The
regular which you sent to another user, a SYSOLM which is an OLM
generated by a person at the server (usually TOS violation
warnings), and SWOLMs (System Wide OnLine Message) which were
used to advertise events taking place online.
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The People Connection menu. The "Enter Box Office" feature was
intended for users to purchase admission to Auditorium events,
but was never used for that purpose to my knowledge.


Composing an email. The date & time stamp was easily modified.
(See the hacking stories)


This is what the online games menu looked like back in 87, with
the exception of Lucasfilm's Habitat, which was only available
to "pilot testers". Notice the games that were available in the
menu, then look at the screenshot below.


There were other online games which weren't included on the
Q-Link disk since they hadn't been officially tested or rolled
out. A few of us "Q-Linkers" figured out how to access them, and
played them. They worked fine for us. The games were Boxes, Quad
64, and Go. (See the hacking stories)


This is the Q-Link Room List. While there were the occasional
adult rooms, there were nowhere near the number that exist today
on AOL. There was also never SPAM (unsolicited email) as it was
against the TOS (Terms Of Service), and never any unsolicited
OLMs. Imagine a era where you could go online and not have
to deal with some automated script IMing you about adult
websites, or trying to get you to send them your password!
I miss those days. Q-Link was a totally different world.
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