Patch for GeoWorks (and America Online) to Run Under OS/2 2.0 Discovered by Marcus Groeber Transcribed from Prodigy by Timothy F. Sipples July 11, 1992 [This patch is not officially supported by the developers of GeoWorks.] The following patch will make GeoWorks Version 1.2 and Pro work in a DOS session of OS/2 2.0 (doesn't have to be a specific DOS VDM). It disables disk drives A and B and makes PC/Geos believe it is running on a "diskless" workstation with only networked partitions (which comes closest to OS/2 in reality). Before applying the patch you should backup your KERNEL.EXE so you can restore it if there are any problems. (You will need it anyway for working under native DOS because the patch seems to be somehow unstable there.) Of course, I cannot guarantee that the patch will work on any particular configuration, but it does work fine on my machine. To apply the patch you will have to do the following. Copy the following text between "Cut here" and "Cut here" to an ASCII file (say, GEOWORKS.PAT). Then go to the GeoWorks directory and enter the command PATCH /A GEOWORKS.PAT. This will use OS/2's built-in patch tool to check the version of KERNEL.EXE and make the appropriate modifications. The patch is highly version specific and will only work on two versions named in the file. (The release can be determined by looking into the SYSINFO file.) These are the current ones in Germany; if there are any other (recent) versions, please drop me [Marcus Groeber, on America Online, presumably] a note. If the program doesn't recognize the kernel version you will get two failure messages (one for each try), otherwise one failure and one success. If the program fails on both tries, KERNEL.EXE will not be modified. --- Cut here --- . Patch file by Marcus Groeber . . This patch file changes the KERNEL.EXE file of PC/Geos to . make it run in a DOS session under OS/2. The program . attempts patches for the various versions of GeoWorks; it . will not apply a patch if the version is not recognized. . It will display either a success or a failure message for . each version it tries. . . Geoworks 1.2: KERNEL.EXE (Release 1.2.5.4, 72688 bytes) FILE kernel.exe VER 00010E0D E9CA VER 00010E1D 268B4543F6C43075 CHA 00010E0D EB0B CHA 00010E1D 81FB48027244EB4C --- Cut here --- If the patch works you will have to change the GeoWorks mouse driver to MOUSE.COM/MOUSE.SYS from within GeoWorks. Anyway, you should run GeoWorks only in a full screen session. Printing seems to work OK except for the fact that you have to leave GeoWorks to make OS/2 flush its internal spool queue to the printer. Incidently, for diagnosing GeoWorks startup problems it is a good idea to run it with the /LOG option to display all the initialization steps as they are performed. It is necessary to change the DOS settings in the DOS session part of the OS/2 configuration like so: Program/Path & Filename C:\Geos\Kernel.Exe (Change as appropriate.) Session DOS/Full Screen DOS Settings: DOS_FCBS 1 DOS_FCBS_KEEP 0 DOS_FILES 150 DOS_HIGH ON DOS_VERSION add KERNEL.EXE,05,00,255 EMS_FRAME_LOCATION AUTO VIDEO_SWITCH_NOTIFICATION ON (should not make much difference) I have run the patch on my system and set the DOS settings as above and it works! Good luck everyone who tries it and DON'T FORGET TO MAKE A COPY OF KERNEL.EXE!