Novell NetWare Product Overview from 1987
Posted by 2n3866@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 17 comments
Did you know that Novell used to sell server hardware based on the 68000 and 80286? (See Section 2.)
TMWNN@reddit
Novell indeed began as a hardware company. The software of course took over, so much so that even 3Com and IBM admitted that customers bought their networking gear more to run Netware than to run 3Com and IBM's networking software.
People nowadays probably have more experience with NE2000 cards—Novell published the reference design which many emulated—than Netware itself, so in a sense Novell has come around full circle.
cdheer@reddit
Also, companies sold Netware bundled with their own hardware. “Blue box” Netware, we called it, since (duh) it came in a blue box instead of red. My memory suggests it was locked to the bundled hardware, but I never did any blue box myself.
hcoverlambda@reddit
Oh man, when I was a teenager I worked at a mom and pop computer store and someone brought in a copy Netware 3.12 to sell. I borrowed it and setup my first network and it was like magic!
RumbleSkillSpin@reddit
When I started, one of my first tasks was to retire a 68000 based server for the 286 - I want to say that was also a software upgrade to 2.0a. The 68000 was mostly wire-wrapped, pretty much hand built hardware.
2n3866@reddit (OP)
Yikes! Wire wrapped? That's scary.
RumbleSkillSpin@reddit
At the time that server was built, it wasn’t too uncommon to see at least some portion of PC-architecture machines to be wire wrapped. I think the pace of innovation was greater than the pace of manufacturing processes, so wire wrapping ended up being a faster path to production.
2n3866@reddit (OP)
Do any of you NetWare veterans have any copies (paper or PDF) of NetWare Solutions or NetWare Connection magazine? The Internet Archive has a few issues from 1997-1999, but it's only a small fraction of the total run. If you'd be willing to part with them, I would scan them and give them to the Archive...
Breezeoffthewater@reddit
I was a CNA, CNE & MCNE and ran everything from Netware 3 up to 6. 4.12 was probably the most stable but I remember adding a new Netware 5 server into the NDS and trashing the entire tree that took the whole organisation down in 1996 - good times!
Savings_Art5944@reddit
First IT job was a Novell network admin.
codykonior@reddit
I never used NetWare so it has always been a mystery to me.
the_darkener@reddit
IPX/SPX ruled!
Invisible_INTJ@reddit
Did you ever try routing IPX over a WAN natively? It was very difficult as IPX generated a lot of traffic.
Cisco would allow you to bridge IPX over IP to help. There was also encapsulating IPX over IP to create a tunnel, but IPX was very noisy so that didn't work very well.
It took Cisco a long time to drop IPX knowledge from the CCIE exam, and when the finally did, a lot of people were relieved. It was the same time they dropped DECnet, IBM's SNA, and a bunch of other protocols I no longer remember.
the_darkener@reddit
Fair. But it was great for the time period and it was still way better then NetBEUI lol
Invisible_INTJ@reddit
That was another protocol you needed to learn for Cisco, I forgot about that one! Basically learning how to route the unrouteable.
Interesting_Study998@reddit
I held a CNE 3,4 and 5.
ExternalMany7200@reddit
Still have my certifications around here somewhere, also a full install of (the abomination) that was Netware 6.
commodore-amiga@reddit
Somewhere around 1989, I used to have a few Novell workstations in my work lab. They were already old news and I could have kept them. Bummed I didn’t.