America On-Line can be made to run under OS/2. A gentleman by name of Groeber in Germany devised a patch to the Kernel for AOL that will let it run in an OS/2 DOS session. This patch has the semi-official approval of AOL & GeoWorks Software Engineeers (they are ones who pointed it out to me). It's not perfect, but it is useable.
There are some caveats:
AOL apparently will not run in the background if you use higher than VGA resolution.
You may have mouse problems, if so, switch AOL to use the MOUSE.COM or MOUSE.SYS settings from within AOL's system setup.
I get an OS/2 error message about COM3 conflict when starting up. You must press "ignore" option.
The patch supposedly disables access to floppy drives while in AOL.
This same patch will also work if you want to use it to fix the GEOWORKS operating environment to run under OS/2. Just follow the instructions using the GeoWorks directory.
Apparently there are several versions of the AOL Kernel.EXE, this patch will check for most of them, and then make the appropriate corrections. To use the patch, do the following:
1. Copy the enclosed GEOWORKS.PAT file to your AOL directory.
2. Open an OS/2 command prompt window.
3. Change Directory to your AOL directory.
4. Make a backup copy of AOL's Kernel.EXE
5. From the OS/2 command line type "PATCH /A GEOWORKS.PAT" (without quotes)
Ignore the two SYS 1595 error messages you will see, this is normal and will not
affect operation of the resulting kernel.exe file.
6. Adjust your DOS settings for the DOS session to include the following:
DOS FILES=150 (or more)
DOS High = ON
DOS LAST DRIVE = (1 letter higher than your actually lastdrive)
=>DOS VERSION = KERNEL.EXE,05,00,255 (IMPORTANT!!!!! Add this line to list!)
IDLE SENSITIVITY = 100
You should now be able to run AOL from an object icon without booting DOS.
More help/info can be found on AOL or I'll help if I can
