Needed

These are things needed, or in general just desired, to help the various sub-projects for the overall NINA project. If you can help, please let us know. If you have some documentation to contribute, please see the Not Currently Documented page.

Overall

• Any live protocol captures for OSCAR, P3, TIH, etc from WireShark, tcpdump, etc in any format, though I prefer .pcap, that isn't required. These help fill in gaps such as hacky things in the OSCAR protocol and live artwork and FDO from the AOL protocol.
• Any of the old tricks and exploits for AIM and AOL, so that in certain special chat rooms or other places, they can be re-implemented for fun re-enactment of what used to work.
• We want to build a list of what clients, AIM, AOL, or ICQ work best with which operating systems, due to users having issues with certain versions on Windows 10 or OS X, it'll be nice to have a list of recommended clients for a given operating system version. So if you have used, at great length, a certain version with a certain OS without issues, please let us know. Also please let us know which cause severe issues as well. You can find a list of available clients for download here.

OSCAR

Clients

We are currently looking for these versions of AIM.

32bit

• AIM 1.0B2
• AIM 1.0B3
• AIM 1.0B5
• AIM 1.0B7
• AIM 1.0B8
• AIM 1.0.141
• AIM 1.0.152
• AIM 1.0.163
• AIM 1.0.175
• AIM 1.0.184
• AIM 1.0.208
• AIM 1.8.1064 CIC
• AIM 4.1.2010 TV Guide
• AIM 4.4.2241
• AIM 4.1.2057
• AIM 4.8.2540

16bit

• AIM 1.0B7
• AIM 1.0B8
• AIM 1.0.141
• AIM 1.0.152
• AIM 1.0.163
• AIM 1.0.175
• AIM 1.0.184
• AIM 1.0.208
• AIM 1.75.563 (currently have the 32bit version)

AOL

Clients

• master.aol and star tools for AOL 7.0 and higher.

MSN

Clients

Efforts have been made to collect and preserve as many known versions of the MSN/WLM clients as possible, however there are many versions which are known to have escaped collection so far (and versions not catalogued that may exist). This list contains a number of versions which are known or suspected to exist but have not been collected. It primarily focuses on English versions, but if you have or can find other languages then those are welcome too.

Currently the following MSN/WLM versions for Windows are not known to have been collected:

Note: Some versions have been referenced online but may have been only briefly available and/or withdrawn, possible hoaxes, or simply typographical errors of version numbers.

MSN Messenger 1.x:

• 1.0.0867
• 1.0.0870
• 1.0.0874
• 1.0.0881
• 1.0.0885
• 1.0.0886
• 1.0.0892

Note: Many more versions of MSN Messenger 1.x may exist. During this period of development, Microsoft and AOL could not agree that MSN Messenger should be able to access the AIM network. As a result it appears many updates to MSN Messenger were provided to ensure continued compatibility, despite AOL's attempts to block it.

MSN Messenger 3.x:

• 3.0.0080
• 3.0.0285
• 3.6.0028

MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger 4.x:

• 4.5.0118
• 4.5.0120
• 4.5.0125
• 4.5.0128 (Only French known to be collected, all others missing)

MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger 5.x:

• 5.0.0017 (Fake); installer was not signed by Microsoft and contains files copied from version 4.7.0034 among other things)
• 5.0.0132 (Possible fake)
• 5.0.0332
• 5.0.0360
• 5.0.0381
• 5.0.0468
• 5.0.0543
• 5.1.0639
• 5.1.0680
• 5.1.0700
• 5.1.0706 (Only Spanish known to be collected, all others missing)

MSN Messenger 6.x:

• 6.0.0263
• 6.0.0503
• 6.1.0155
• 6.1.0202
• 6.1.0203
• 6.1.0207

Windows Live Messenger 9.x/14.x (2009):

• 14.0.8050 (RTW; Only German and French known to be collected, all others missing)
• 14.0.8064 (Only English, Spanish, and French known to be collected, all others missing)
• 14.0.8089 (Only English, Spanish, and Arabic known to be collected)

Some languages are currently collected only with the 14.0.8089 Contacts Platform bug fix, or vice versa:

• Known collected **only** w/ bug fix: Arabic
• Known collected **only** w/o bug fix: Spanish

All other languages are missing both vanilla and bugfix releases.

Windows Live Messenger 15.x (2011):

• 15.4.3508

Documentation

• Captures of any sort of Microsoft ABCH (Address Book Clearing House) services. This falls into the category of protocol documentation, and we specifically focus on ABCH as WLM 8 and above heavily use those services for core functions such as contact lists, roaming services, and Groups (also known as Circles). While we have most of these services covered and working on our implementation, we're unclear on certain parts of services we already implement and it doesn't help WLM behaves weirdly when it comes to edge cases with said services (i.e., when you add a contact that doesn't exist on our network). Having clear documentation on ABCH services would help a ton in that regard.

• Any sort of extensive documentation on MSNP18, MSNP21, and beta MSNP protocols (MSNP13, MSNP16, MSNP17, etc.). We focus on these protocols specifically as MSNP18 and MSNP21 had a competent amount of documentation behind them, but sadly it isn't enough that we can have services working 100%. This is especially the case with MSNP21 as by then it heavily relies on XML payload commands to operate and the documentation on them isn't exactly reliable. MSNP13 and MSNP16 have a bare minimum of information floating around, and protocols like MSNP17 have next to no documentation, if any.

• Any downloadable Messenger content. This includes but isn't limited to winks, custom emoticons, dynamic or static backgrounds, and profile pictures. While most of these are obtainable and archived already there are still many that haven't been and it'd be nice to have those available in some form again. A good place to start looking if you don't have any on hand is to find any old machine that had Messenger installed back when the service was still up, get a backup tool designed for Messenger installed on it (like MSNBackup) and use it on any account in hopes it'll have downloadable content on it. Note that because you'll be dealing with real Microsoft accounts that you'll have to get the PUID from their site if the backup tool you use requires it.

• Third party MSN programs. We're mainly referring to utilities and extensions that we don't already have available for download on our site).

• Offline installers for Messenger Plus! 5 or 6. Installers for these versions do exist, but they're stub installers that refer to files that we haven't been lucky to obtain yet.

• Any assets pertaining to the original lineup of Messenger games/activities (e.g., Tic Tac Toe, Decision Wheel, any MSN Instant Games game, etc.). You'll have the most luck finding them on an old machine that had Messenger installed on it and looking through its Internet Explorer cache for anything that could be related. For MSN Instant Games, look for anything like msngame.aspx, and CAB or Flash files that reference anything pertaining to the games in the filename or when opening it.