QuantumLink update

[Jim Brain]

Just a quick update for those interested:

People Connection is mostly implemented, lacking only LOCATE and ID 
commands. 

Auditorium mode is working as well.  The original service had a special 
version of the SW (called the emcee disk) that had extra code to do the 
moderation for the auditorium, but I figured out a way to support 
auditorium with just the std disk. 

I implemented a few IRCisms (/me and /msg) to add some value.

Along the way, a QLinker posted that he had written a sniffer while on 
QLink and had saved a complete Q-Link session.  After he found the 
binary logs, I wrote a util to condense them into a single file, traced 
the commands, and then modified the utility to actually parse each 
command.  I was thus able to extract 105 text files that the user had 
viewed that day, and 200 menu items they viewed.  I then inserted those 
into the database, so you can now visit all the areas that user visited 
that day.

Along the way, I found out a few more things:

How to send multiple lines of bulletin text to cut down on packets 
(concat lines with 0xff, upto 127 chars)
How to send a System IM (SYSOLM) The command is OT.
How to convince the client that there is a next/previous article in a 
set (parms to KC command)
How the file system handed sending data (39 byte chunks for 1st 18 
lines, then 117 byte chunks.
How to turn on the (+) time indicator on the client

A user also found out how to run QLink off of an emulator (VICE) and 
connect to the server.  So, a number of folks are connecting that way.

online message and email works, not sure if I stated that in my last 
note.  The server is pretty robust.  A user can corrupt their session, 
but logging out will clean up that session.

Jim

-- 
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations
brain at jbrain.com                                http://www.jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!