Main Page

Welcome to the best place on Earth. You have reached the NINA Wiki for protocols, client information, and APIs that were formerly parts of AOL, ICQ, QuantumLink, CompuServe, and so on. At one time these protocols were used by AOL's AIM and ICQ products, and later discontinued, it now has had a rebirth of sorts here.

We not only will fully document the protocols, but will maintain and update it.

Special thanks also goes to Zip of P3OL for his insight during our investigation the more nuanced and oddball parts of chat rooms in early versions of AOL. While not sister projects, we do have overlapping communities and discussions/testing have benefitted us both.

NINA & Escargot

NINA's AIM service is currently up and running for everyone in Beta! ICQ is also now in a free open alpha. If you want to experience the AIM and ICQ servers and all its protocols, please consider donating as it helps us host this wiki, the servers, etc. Free to use doesn't mean free to run, especially when we aren't selling any of your data.

Escargot is up and running for everyone!

You can also join our Discord to talk about everything, keep up with the news, and have fun. We're nice!

Want to Help?

If you want to contribute to the NINA Wiki directly, you have to be a member, and so you must request an account by sending an email to accounts@wiki.nina.chat with desired username and also a few words on what you have to contribute (for spam control). If accepted you will be sent a randomly generated password.

If you want to contribute something anonymously or without registering, send it to contribute@wiki.nina.chat. If anonymity is desired, state so, and after information is taken from your email it will be deleted and never archived, nor your details saved anywhere or revealed to anyone.

See what kind of things we are looking for in our Not Currently Documented section. You should also check the Needed, which is a list of things we are looking for which are not directly related to documentation.

You can also donate to help with this AIM/AOL revival, because it is a full time job at this point.

Currently Being Worked On

• Introduction to the community, terms, etc
• OSCAR Protocol
  • AIM Clients
    • How to move from another AIM service
  • AOL Mobile Communicator
  • Quiet Internet Pager
• TOC Protocol - Includes TOC2 and other information
  • TOC Clients
• WebAPI
• AOL Protocol
  • This is for P3 and FLAP versions.
• Midas Protocol
  • This is for versions such as AOL Desktop Gold.
• MSNP
  • Windows Live Messenger
• YMSG
• Other articles in the works
  • Extended FAQ

Portals

• AOL-Files Portal
  • A merger of archived/recovered AOL-Files/FDO-Files content and up to date information.
• AOL Portal
  • Information regarding AOL as a general service and its history.
  • AOL Underground Podcast