ICiconidentify·Dec 31, 2025
Hey all — thanks for checking out Dialtone. I plan to open-source the server code eventually; for now I’m just having fun with it and continuing to iterate.
I’m a firm believer that a reverse-engineered system like this — especially something so historically “90s internet” — ultimately needs to exist in an open-source way.
To show I’m serious about the reverse-engineering work (and not just the nostalgia), here are two critical tools I’ve built for understanding AOL and its protocols:
• WireTap: https://github.com/iconidentify/wiretap
A packet-level tracing tool for capturing and analyzing the conversations between an AOL client and server.
• AtomForge: https://github.com/iconidentify/atomforge
A full-blown FDO → ATOMSTREAM compiler. FDO is the bespoke scripting language AOL used to define “forms.” Before forms are transmitted over th
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e wire (wrapped in a “P3” frame), they’re serialized down into bytes — AtomForge handles that whole pipeline.