NINA is now in private alpha. AIM from the earliest versions up to 5.9 work. To get access, simply donate here https://nina.chat/donate. ICQ and AOL Desktop are next on the roadmap but this is a huge win. The developers have lots of exciting stuff coming and I hope it could peek the interest of some of you folks here.

In theory, any operating system capable on running AIM should work. I helped them get Kopete's AIM plugin working and Pidgin 2.14.2's before they had removed it, which are both good applications for Linux, and I even saw someone use it on AIM 1.6 with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

NINA is now in beta and now has support for TOC, AIM chat rooms, and many other codebase improvements. AOL Desktop support is confirmed working and will be released to testers soon. Other donators have discovered many clients that are working on NINA such as ICQ and iChat.

That's cool! Thanks a lot for the information!
That's quite a progress since last time I checked.
I hope that the AOL client from GeoWorks will work eventually, too. 🙂👍

Edit: Ah, silly me! It's the chat/messaging system! 😅
Windows 3.1x messenger support sounds awesome, still.
Edit: Support for ICQ clients sounds great, too. I fondly remember ICQ5-7 days..

Jo22 wrote on 2023-10-12, 15:00:

That's cool! Thanks a lot for the information! That's quite a progress since last time I checked. I hope that the AOL client fro […]
Show full quote

That's cool! Thanks a lot for the information!
That's quite a progress since last time I checked.
I hope that the AOL client from GeoWorks will work eventually, too. 🙂👍

Edit: Ah, silly me! It's the chat/messaging system! 😅
Windows 3.1x messenger support sounds awesome, still.
Edit: Support for ICQ clients sounds great, too. I fondly remember ICQ5-7 days..

Late reply, but you will surely be excited when you see some QLink stuff NINA is working on. I also just realized I put this in the General Old Hardware forum, can a mod move it to Software section?

The AIM Express Adobe Flash client along with it's WebAPI protocol allowing HTML applications to interface with NINA is now available for donators. Quite retro, but works very well.

This sounds like an exciting project because a huge part of my old internet nostalgia is ICQ (and later AIM) and the chat rooms in each. Many, many hours spent chatting before cell phone texting was really a thing.

I still know my ICQ number and AIM username, though I likely wouldn't remember the passwords anymore. Are the original usernames being brought over, or will there be a way to sign up fresh and "claim" our old identities before someone else does?

nezwick wrote on 2024-03-15, 16:26:

This sounds like an exciting project because a huge part of my old internet nostalgia is ICQ (and later AIM) and the chat rooms in each. Many, many hours spent chatting before cell phone texting was really a thing.

I still know my ICQ number and AIM username, though I likely wouldn't remember the passwords anymore. Are the original usernames being brought over, or will there be a way to sign up fresh and "claim" our old identities before someone else does?

Sadly no regarding usernames being brought over, if I recall correctly negotiations with AOL were attempted but they were unwilling to cooperate. However you are free to get your former username, and right now if you donate (minimum to get access to the private beta is $5, you also get priority support and updates from the developers) you can claim even 3 letter screennames. ICQ numbers are available as well, and there is one on the donator crew who's quite enthusiastic about ICQ and QIP.

Chat rooms will undoubtedly be a feature on the public launch on both AIM and AOL Desktop.

NINA now has support for ICQ up to version 6 and the iOS and Android AIM apps, allowing you to chat in a retro fashion on your smartphone. Their launch of AOL Desktop is soon and chatrooms are already in the screenshot as pictured. They're about $260 behind on hosting due to some issues, so if you'd like to chip in $5 for beta access, you won't regret it. Attached in the screenshot is the AIM iOS app and ICQ 6.