Jump to content

AOL Instant Messenger 4.8 no longer connects


Andrew T.

Recommended Posts

On 3/24/2016 at 2:45 AM, DocLexus said:

Caught this topic while Google searching, so signed up to post this reply.

Have been running AIM 5.9.6089 w/ AIM Ad Hack (to eliminate ads and other crap from AIM) and AIM Encrypt style SSL certificates (for secure IM communications) for many years.  Like others in this thread, received messages about this version of AIM expiring on Mar 15, which actually lasted until Mar 23.  Knowing that AIM Encrypt was never made compatible w/ newer versions of AIM (perhaps called AIM Triton), I didn't even consider upgrading to the latest AIM client.

Instead, found a simplistic (and seemingly lightweight) enough IM client called Pidgin which is compatible w/ numerous IM protocols (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and much more).  It supports plug-ins, including a separately downloadable and installable one called Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) which supports advanced encryption of IM convos.  For more details on setting up the OTR plug-in, see this link.

With Pidgin and the OTR plug-in, am able continue communicating via AIM, securely.

P.S. I realize that this thread has been posted in a Win 9x/ME forum.  I've been running AIM 5.9 on Win7 (and thus installed the latest version of Pidgin under that OS).  According to this post, Pidgin 2.7.x and higher IS NOT Win 9x/ME/NT4 compatible (where the latest version, as of this writing, is 2.10.12).  Older Pidgin versions can be found here, although I have no idea whether they're AIM compatible, and if so whether they support whatever protocol AIM is now enforcing.

Thanks.  Pidgin is actually pretty good.  I like it.  Very similar logging style to AIM.  Easily readable HTML files.  It's a keeper!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

from reading this thread and doing some research

version 1.0 to version 1.7 will work with any 32 bit system (from 98 to 7)

for 64 bit versions, i've tried changing server and port numbers and ive searched for aim servers (login.icq.com works, you need an icq screename and password), 

changing the configuration of the program to trick the server into believing its an older version would work to (i dont know how to do that).. i also tried packaging the 16 bit installer but it still wont 

fly on the 64 bit version.. any others have any updates?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/30/2016 at 9:51 AM, polymer said:

this is so frustrating. I use, what I call a dinosaur MAC ... it's running OS 9.2.2 because I have this excellent design software that I use daily. This computer can't handle the internet much less a newer version of AIM. we use AIM to talk between employees and transfer files... newer computers use newer versions of AIM. The dinosaur MAC is running AIM 4.7, we don't need anything fancier... and we don't tech support so I don't understand why AOL would just lock the program out entirely rather than say, "hey, no, there's no tech support for that" if someone contacts them for it.

I need something that works like this AIM on an old computer to continue to work efficiently. I hope someone comes up with a way to connect it.

You may find my archived AOL for Mac OS X useful. AOL has a built in client, and you should be able to sign in for free using a TCP/IP connection:

http://sdfox7.com/macppc/AOL_for_Mac_OS_X.dmg

It has been years since I've used that program on a PowerPC Mac, and I do not recall what version of the program it is. It's probably 10-15 years old.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Just wanted to update those who are still holding out for AIM 5.9

Today I tried AIM 5.9.6089 in a virtual machine for Windows 98 and still doesn't connect. No cigar. It's proving to be a modification we'd need to make in the way AIM connects to but I'd have no idea where to finish with that.

Edited by Gabby
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Gabby said:

Just wanted to update those who are still holding out for AIM 5.9

Today I tried AIM 5.9.6089 in a virtual machine for Windows 98 and still doesn't connect. No cigar. It's proving to be a modification we'd need to make in the way AIM connects to but I'd have no idea where to finish with that.

In your case since your running a x86 architecture you can run aim 1 through 1.7 without any issues..

5.9 wont work, if you wanna run AIM on win 98 you can run any version between 1 and 2 will work..Me personally if theres a way to get the 16 bit installer to work on a win 7 x64 architecture that would be perfect (ive tried extracting from the new executable installer no luck).. my guess is AOL configured all the other oscar servers to kick you out if your using a newer client (greater than version 2)

Any other updates anyone?

Edited by mario72
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never been a big AIM user, so I'm not particularly motivated to do this myself, but someone else could..

You could solve this problem by reverse engineering the protocol of the version of AIM you want to use and the most recent one, and creating a server program (which could run locally or on another machine) to accept the older protocol from clients which could could point to it instead of AOL itself since it supports changing the server (if it didn't you could use the hosts file to redirect). When it connects to that server program, the server would then spit out a modern protocol request and send that to the actual AOL server. Upon receiving data, it would then relay it back to the client.

It's less lightweight than just running AIM by itself, but since you could put the server on another computer someone could potentially do this on a public server someplace (privacy concerns of course, for those who care about that) it could be done remotely or on another local machine to offset the resource usage.

Depending on how different the protocols really are, you could potentially patch the software, but that'd be much more of a headache to do and may not necessarily be possible.

15 hours ago, mario72 said:

Me personally if theres a way to get the 16 bit installer to work on a win 7 x64 architecture that would be perfect

x64 doesn't support 16-bit applications at all - the NTVDM is the component that lets them run, and they made the decision to never port that to x64. Before anybody says that it wasn't possible, there was NTVDM on NT4 for DEC ALPHA, so they already had code for an emulating NTVDM. They just consciously chose not to support it (which pisses me off to this day)..

Someone could potentially create a build of DOSBOX with a custom Win3x video and mouse driver that would "export" the windows to the host system for display outside of the Win3x system, much like VM solutions do these days. That's what I'd really like to see happen, but I'm not the sort of coder who knows how to make Win3x drivers enough to hack that up. I made NTVDM64, which takes over as the EXE handler for Windows and reroutes 16-bit EXEs into DOSBOX, but that's an incomplete solution and for some reason breaks some normal 32/64-bit EXEs (rare occurrence, never figured out the cause). I wrote that in Python, though, so perhaps I should take a crack at it in C# now that that's my predominant coding language.

Anyway I'm getting somewhat off topic, so I'll stop there.

Edited by Yushatak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Yushatak said:

I've never been a big AIM user, so I'm not particularly motivated to do this myself, but someone else could..

You could solve this problem by reverse engineering the protocol of the version of AIM you want to use and the most recent one, and creating a server program (which could run locally or on another machine) to accept the older protocol from clients which could could point to it instead of AOL itself since it supports changing the server (if it didn't you could use the hosts file to redirect). When it connects to that server program, the server would then spit out a modern protocol request and send that to the actual AOL server. Upon receiving data, it would then relay it back to the client.

It's less lightweight than just running AIM by itself, but since you could put the server on another computer someone could potentially do this on a public server someplace (privacy concerns of course, for those who care about that) it could be done remotely or on another local machine to offset the resource usage.

Depending on how different the protocols really are, you could potentially patch the software, but that'd be much more of a headache to do and may not necessarily be possible.

x64 doesn't support 16-bit applications at all - the NTVDM is the component that lets them run, and they made the decision to never port that to x64. Before anybody says that it wasn't possible, there was NTVDM on NT4 for DEC ALPHA, so they already had code for an emulating NTVDM. They just consciously chose not to support it (which pisses me off to this day)..

Someone could potentially create a build of DOSBOX with a custom Win3x video and mouse driver that would "export" the windows to the host system for display outside of the Win3x system, much like VM solutions do these days. That's what I'd really like to see happen, but I'm not the sort of coder who knows how to make Win3x drivers enough to hack that up. I made NTVDM64, which takes over as the EXE handler for Windows and reroutes 16-bit EXEs into DOSBOX, but that's an incomplete solution and for some reason breaks some normal 32/64-bit EXEs (rare occurrence, never figured out the cause). I wrote that in Python, though, so perhaps I should take a crack at it in C# now that that's my predominant coding language.

Anyway I'm getting somewhat off topic, so I'll stop there.

Well for the time being i am running Trillian so i dont know what worth is there in trying to do what you recommended, one thing i tried was messing with the ocm files and maybe tricking the server that the client that is connecting is an older version but that didnt work either. Thanks for the information though

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I don't suppose anyone is looking into this? If programs like Pidgin can use AIM authorisation then surely these older AIM versions can have something done to them to make em work again?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...
On 6/14/2016 at 0:15 PM, Xirix said:

I don't suppose anyone is looking into this? If programs like Pidgin can use AIM authorisation then surely these older AIM versions can have something done to them to make em work again?

Pidgin is now showing this message:

aim.png.ed8b2aff6af64da4bbac568f0181f96d.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 12/4/2015 at 1:19 AM, rloew said:

The same thing happended with AOL 5.0 a while back. Same symptoms. It appears they routed me to a server that ran the old protocol just long enough to login, post the message and logout.

I tried freezing the client to keep the connection open but was disconnected anyway.

Just wanted to post an update, I fired up my Windows 98SE virtual machine and discovered that AOL 7.0 no longer connects. Not sure when this happened exactly, but this means that AOL is officially dead on Windows 95, since AOL 7.0 was the final version that was made for 95. AOL 7.0 was released in 2001, so it was a good run for the last 15 years! :D

aol7w981.jpg

aol7w982.jpg

AOL 9.0VR, the final version made for Windows 98SE, does still work. With AOL being purchased by Verizon last year, who knows how long until they pull the cord. It could be a while since AOL 9.0VR also supports 2000/XP/Vista.

aol9w981.jpg

aol9w982.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/24/2017 at 9:12 PM, mario72 said:

see virtual machines dont cut it.. at least for me..

I just wish there was a port/server to get into AIM with at least the 32 bit versions of AIM

I could appreciate your desire for the vintage "real thing".

In my experience, it's been nice using the virtual machines. Being able to install and run Windows 95/98 and NT4.0/2000/XP/7 all on the same machine is very convenient. The performance is also very good, as my system has an SSD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...
On 5/1/2017 at 1:45 PM, sdfox7 said:

I could appreciate your desire for the vintage "real thing".

In my experience, it's been nice using the virtual machines. Being able to install and run Windows 95/98 and NT4.0/2000/XP/7 all on the same machine is very convenient. The performance is also very good, as my system has an SSD.

 

On 5/1/2017 at 1:45 PM, sdfox7 said:

I could appreciate your desire for the vintage "real thing".

In my experience, it's been nice using the virtual machines. Being able to install and run Windows 95/98 and NT4.0/2000/XP/7 all on the same machine is very convenient. The performance is also very good, as my system has an SSD.

Well, regardless of client version your using AIM is going down as it is

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It should be pretty soon huh? I still let my AIM accounts connect automatically, but I've basically already made the switch to using Trillian as my IM account. I'm not sure if there is a Trillian that works in 9x that can use a Trillian account. I'm going to guess my old installs will be pretty much unusable shortly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...