PlayNET
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PlayNet (or 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.
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[edit] History
PlayNet was founded by two former GE Global Research employees, Dave Panzl and Howard Goldberg in 1983. The offices were located in J Building on Peoples Avenue in Troy, NY part of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute incubator program. In 1985 PlayNet licensed their system to Control Video Corporation (CVC, later renamed Quantum Computer Services), which in October 1991 changed its name to America Online. The modified version of the PlayNet software (Quantum Link or Q-Link) was ported by Quantum to the PC to create the first version of the AOL software. As recently as 2005, some aspects of the original PlayNet communication protocols still appeared to be used by AOL.
The maximum number of subscribers was approximately 3000, with up to around 200 logged in at a time. PlayNet declared bankruptcy in February, 1986 and ceased operations in 1988 after Quantum stopped paying royalties.
[edit] Software details
PlayNet was originally designed around online interactive games which allowed chatting while playing. PlayNet also featured electronic mail, online chat, bulletin boards, file sharing libraries, online shopping, and instant messaging (using On Line Messages, or OLMs). Games were mostly 'traditional' games and some well-known boardgames.
Unlike other online systems of the era, PlayNet was highly graphical and required client software, and included error correction in the communication protocols.
[edit] Game list
- Checkers
- Chess
- Backgammon
- Hangman
- Bridge
- Stratego
- Connect 4
- Chinese Chess
- Go
- Several others
Games/features never finished/released:
- Multiplayer Dungeons and Dragons
- Poker
- Various other card games and wargames
- Auditorums and panel discussions
The never-released D&D game was very similar to Neverwinter Nights.
Connections to PlayNet were made by modems at 300 baud via X.25 providers such as Tymnet and Telenet. Pricing was $X per month, with additional fees of $X per hour.
The system competed with many other online services like CompuServe and The Source (service), as well as Bulletin board systems (single or multiuser). PlayNet'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 Commodore 64 could run the software necessary to access PlayNet.
In 2005, hobbyists managed to reverse engineer the communications protocol and allow people running the QuantumLink software on an emulator or original hardware (via a serial cable) to run a reduced version of the service.Quantum Link Reloaded
[edit] Trivia
- The limit of 10 characters for usernames ended up causing AOL to have a 10-character username limit until the late 1990's. The 10-character limit was chosen because of the width of a C64 screen and the number of lines allocated for the room name and names of people in a chat room.
- The server software for PlayNet ran on Stratus fault-tolerant computers and was written in PL/1. AOL continued to use Stratus computers and parts of the PlayNet server software until the late 1990's or later.
- The client software on the Commodore 64 ran a multitasking pseudo-operating system based on a Finite State Machine language.
- Games were programmed in a mixture of BASIC and assembly language.
