Feed: sizeof(cat)
Title: ICQ in 2025, on OS X and PowerPC
Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2025 21:21:01 +0000
Link: http://sizeof.cat/post/icq-in-2025-os-x/
 
[image 1]
 
Running an ICQ client on your PowerPC machine (and OS X 10.1+), in 2025, is not 
really that hard considering the ICQ network has been shut down since 2024[2]. 
Download the last version[3] (3.4.23) of ICQ available for OS X and PowerPC 
architecture, and install it. The nina.chat[4] people are nice enough to provide
access to an ICQ service that will allow you to use the old clients. Problem is 
that you need to patch the server address inside your ICQ client, basically, all
occurences of .icq.com will need to be changed into .nina.bz.
 
Open the /Applications/ICQ/ICQ 3.4 binary in a hex editor and look at offset 
0x3EB926. Replace icq.com with nina.bz, do the same thing for the offset 
0x3F2DED. Save the file and now your old ICQ client will work over the ICQ 
service provided by nina.chat[4].
 
Same thing can be achieved from a Terminal window using xxd:
$ cd /Applications/ICQ$ cp "ICQ 3.4" "ICQ 3.4_backup"
$ echo 003EB926: 6E 69 6E 61 2E 62 7A | xxd -r - "ICQ 3.4"
$ echo 003F2DED: 6E 69 6E 61 2E 62 7A | xxd -r - "ICQ 3.4"
 
Enjoy ICQ.
 
Links: 
[1]: http://sizeof.cat/post/icq-in-2025-os-x/img/icq.jpg (image)
[2]: https://uk.pcmag.com/mobile-apps/152479/icq-one-of-the-oldest-instant-messengers-is-shutting-down (link)
[3]: https://download.macintoshgarden.org/apps/icq_mac_3.4.23.sit (link)
[4]: https://nina.chat/ (link)

