Unboxing Novell NetWare 2.15, 4.11 and an ISA NIC
Posted by my-names-gavin@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 81 comments
Today on r/vintagecomputing, I unbox Novell NetWare 2.15 and 4.11 alongside what appears to be a sealed NE2000 NIC for use with a future legacy project PC... plus some screenshots, too!
I like the 2.15 big red box due to the several volumes of comprehensive information, ranging from shell generation to administering the NetWare network plus detailed guidance on integration with OS/2 and ‘Macintosh’ clients. I also like how some of this documentation is in binder format and how this allows for easy insertion of supplementary updates etc.
The smaller cream education box still has comprehensive information in the several softback volumes which also cover the transition from using the NetWare Bindery to NetWare Directory Services but the 2.15 box is my favourite (not that you'd guess!)
The ISA Token Ring NIC is hopefully going to be utilised once I get around to acquiring some more vintage hardware and I have a couple of Xircom's in my study cupboards so the NIC might yet make another appearance on r/vintagecomputing
I’ve never used NetWare in industry but it’s abundantly clear that it was lightyears ahead of NT but the proprietary protocol and late adoption of TCP/IP along with Microsoft snapping at its heels sadly doomed this once great and expensive red network giant
I know I say this every week but I really looking forward to engaging with the comments on this post, especially from any [previous] NetWare SysAdmins - please share your experiences (good and bad!) and I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who migrated from NetWare to NT back in the day and what they thought at the time and with the benefit of hindsight, what they wish they'd done differently
brett0@reddit
I became a CNA 4.11 in 1997/98.
Netware Administrator was incredibly powerful and reliable. It was much more advanced than Microsoft AD. Probably still is. The user/group profiles were incredibly good at executing scripts when users logged in, eg mapping network drives and running antivirus updates.
Coupled with the ability to snapshot applications, it made it really easy to provide apps to groups of users at a click of a button. Users could login to any computer in an organisation and be sure that their Apps were installed on the PC. If it wasn’t installed, the Netware Application Launcher would install it, without the need for reboot. This was particular good in a hospital setting, where specialist Doctors would roam the wards and need access to specialised apps.
Groupwise was really well integrated. Very reliable, predictable and user friendly.
It was sad to see the Microsoft sales machine convince senior management in organisations that AD was the future. AD did not provide the same usability or capabilities mentioned above (at the time). It was inferior.
MS Outlook was a joke compared with Groupwise, but felt like Outlook was becoming the industry standard and pressure started to build about the seamless integration between Outlook and Office. Microsoft started giving MS Exchange away for free to make the switch :(
I worked with Netware for 5+ years and was moved onto a new client running AD for 2 years. I quit being a Sysadmin after that because I couldn’t bear working on an inferior product. I gave it 2 years and it made me sad.
Thanks for the memories!
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
You're very welcome and thank you for your comprehensive reply detailing your experiences
It was clear to me during virtualising early environments quite how powerful NetWare was - do you feel the dominance of NT was the beginning of the end or was it the lack of NetWare TCP/IP integration initially?
I appreciate NetWare was expensive and Microsoft were giving away free copies of NT [apparently] which of course didn't help
MondoDismordo@reddit
NT had no dominance then, they wanted to, but NetWare held 70% market share in those days. And due to our merger with Excelan, TCP/IP was in the house as early as 1991, long before the non-commercial use edicts cam off the Internet we know today. We supported more protocols that MS, for quite a while. IP/IPX, TCP/IP and AppleTalk.
One advantage that we never really pushed as hard as we should have was auto end node configuration. You did not have to mess around with end node addresses, DNS entries, blah, blah, you just plugged in your PC and you were online... The new WAN card I developed back then was plug and play too.
Why did NetWare fail? We lost our focus on networking as our core business. Ray Noorda made a backroom merger deal with Word Perfect before telling the board. Quite a few folks thought this was a boneheaded move, me included. We still went ahead with it, right when we were negotiating a global NetWare Business Internet with AT&T. (which later became AT&T WorldNet.)
So in the end, Novell tried to take on the desktop as well and failed miserably. That's what killed the company for the most part. That, and hiring Eric Schmidt, who left not long after and went on to run Google.
Forgot to add, I worked at Novell for about ten years...
Nice sub BTW. Enjoying the trips down nostalgia lane...
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Microsoft were quite late to the networking party, weren't they; I believe IBM and 3Com were quite well established for networking but the power and functionality of NetWare is evident and I had read about the WordPerfect disaster but I never really appreciated and understood the magnitude of that decision in potentially in sealing NetWare's fate?
MondoDismordo@reddit
IBM was a reseller of NetWare, and we had a tight relationship with them for our SAA networking interfaces. I remember that cause after the reseller deal was signed, our stock went ballistic. That agreement basically cemented NetWare as THE networking OS, as it was blessed by IBM. OS/2 did not come out until years later when they realised they had missed the bus. 3Com hated us, because we came out with a cheap internet card that only cost about $100, vs. $1,100 for their equivalent networking card. That was the beginning of the explosion of networking, we made it affordable to companies of all sizes, not just the big enterprises.
brett0@reddit
Netware 4.11 had TCP/IP support both client and server. I don’t think that was the limiting factor for the organisations that I worked for. One organisation didn’t use IPX at all - with 5,000 PCs.
IMO, it was Microsoft’s highly effective sales machine and their ability to coerce organisations to “trial” their products for a reduced overall cost. Later increasing costs once they’d monopolised networking.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Thank you for explaining
MondoDismordo@reddit
I worked for Novell for 10 years, and was the WAN product manager for most of that time. The top box might be an NW2000, which was the WAN interface I created. We worked with Eagle to manufacture both. In any case, any former Novell people on this sub?
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Thank you for replying - I've just double-checked my box and it definitely says NE2000 (883-000556-002 with a work order #62094) however I shall also keep my eyes peeled in the hope I manage to acquire an NW2000... quite what I'll do with it remains to be seen but still an aspirational acquisition!
MondoDismordo@reddit
Well, it might be a collectors item, as it never really took off. We were about 9 years too early with it. You can blame me personally for that. I had big aspirations for that card, hoping we could recreate the success of the NE2000. Unfortunately, it was a T1-E1 card and when we released it, DSL was not even available yet. I got disgusted with the company after the WordPerfect debacle and my stock was under water. We could have owned the business Internet market. Oh well. Went to work for AT&T instead working on legal Internet music downloads... And we all know where that went.
Have fun people, and happy to answer any questions about Novell in the early 90's...
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I really appreciate your input and everyday is a school day too; you just never know who you might end up replying to in u/vintagecomputing!
sharpied79@reddit
IPX/SPX was awesome, no pissing about with the likes of DHCP, just use the MAC address of the card and job done.
Netware for SAA, BorderManager, GroupWise, etc.
I loved Novell, hence why I became a CNA in 4.11 in October of 1998.
Then the company I worked for binned it all off in favour of NT4 and Lotus Domino/Notes.
MondoDismordo@reddit
Yeah, Lotus Notes was just a horrible distraction. Novell decided to merge with word perfect. That was the beginning of the end. We should have never tried to take on the desktop.
Cwc2413@reddit
I loved it as well. It was far better for the time!
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Did you ever play Doom or any other games etc.?
Did you feel the migration to NT4 was a downgrade; there seems to have been a lot of emphasis from Microsoft for using GUIs for network management etc. with the NT family but I don't find the CLI interfaces difficult that Novell supplied?
At some point I do want to tinker with the 'shells' because I'm curious to see how they interact with DOS etc. and what limitations I might encounter!
SlaveCell@reddit
Doom over IPX, yes!
Big-Preparation-1109@reddit
Ipx had its place.
CitronTraining2114@reddit
Snipes, ftw.
sharpied79@reddit
Not on the network at work, LAN parties at friends, most definitely...
commodore-amiga@reddit
Ugh - you had to do Lotus instead of Exchange. :)
Big-Preparation-1109@reddit
The first exchange sucked, migrated to it after our ccmail db hit 65536 emails and it all melted down. I tried so hard to fend it off, but noone helped, and then i was blamed. Vintage sysadmin here.
sharpied79@reddit
At the time I would take Domino over Exchange 5.5 or even 2000 (it started to get better with 2003)
commodore-amiga@reddit
I was Exchange 4.0 certified and worked for MS, so I was kinda obligated to hate on Lotus. ;)
AnotherUnknownNobody@reddit
I worked at a sleep disorders clinic running studies primarily. I thought I was going to go into sleep medicine. Then the managing doctor told me how much he was paying an engineer to come in and manage the network. I asked if I could assist and was granted permission. If something was wrong I would get on the phone with Randy and we would work through it. This is how I got into IT administration and never looked back. We installed Novell Netware using a huge stack of 3.5" floppy disks.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Yeah I think there's \~30 5.25" floppies but due to the hardware licensing limitation (and my 2.15 box not having the licensing NIC) I've never explored them
Remarkable-Memory374@reddit
im an it instructor these days but i cut my teeth as an assistant running netware, I STILL think it was a better system than active directory.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Yes I agree; NetWare was phenomenal for the day
Tony-Angelino@reddit
Oh yes, 3.11 was my first. Bare skeleton "Windows" network, then adding Novell and SCO to the fold.
Interesting_Study998@reddit
I held CNE 3,4,5, A+ and MCSE. My first career.
NMI_INT@reddit
Same did CNE 3 in 1993 and mcse in 1996.
steppek@reddit
Same!
SlaveCell@reddit
Same (apart from 4), and also the last certs I ever really studied for. I also went for the MCSE+I (I think it was that, basically the IIS design).
funkympc@reddit
A+, CCNA, and MCSE all before i graduated HS in 99.
zzTWiLiGHTzz@reddit
Similar CNE 3, 4, 5 and CNA3.
What a reliable system a Netware 3 installation on certified Compaq hardware can be.
SlaveCell@reddit
v4 introduced NetWare NDS which for me was always superior, even if I spent hours and hours making it synchronise, building country based trees, offices etc!
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Did you find the transition to NDS from the Bindery cumbersome as some of the reading I've encountered seems to suggest if you weren't 'big', the NDS could be more of a burden than an advantage to you compared to the Bindery model?
SlaveCell@reddit
I honestly don't remember, but I know that it was a bit overkill for 90% of my use cases (single server serving a small office). And I think the bindery was just a single file, so really easy to backup, clone a server etc.
Tripodski@reddit
Wow, this takes me back! I installed a few of these!
CitronTraining2114@reddit
Those were the days. Built a 1-server Novell LAN for work in 1985 to coordinate engineering efforts. That first server had a 30MB hard drive and kept us from having to use floppies for everything. Grew that to 3 servers and multiple departments with Internet email in the 3.x days before NT Server took over. cc:Mail and a dial-up that connected every few hours.
Never took a class.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Did you ever use the VLMs or just the networking shells as I’ve not tinkered with the NW shells yet?
CitronTraining2114@reddit
Too long ago - don't honestly remember.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
No worries and I'm grateful to you for contributing - I guess I'll find out for myself very soon!
William-Nilly@reddit
So cool.
My early career as a CNE began with setting up Netware 3.11 networks for accounting firms. I used to use “Fire phasers 2” in the login script in every installation as an aural confirmation that everything was working.
That’s not a token ring card, BTW. It’s a 10Base2 coax card. It is a genuine Novell NE2000 card though. That’s a rarity. There are plenty of NE2000 compatible cards around. But the genuine Novell ones were the best.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Thank you for correcting me - I’ll try to pay more attention in future! I’ll include phasers in a test script too at some point to ensure that I get the authentic NetWare login experience!
Invader1976@reddit
My first server OS
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I honestly wish I use this today…
Tamrail@reddit
I actually still have my floppy with my 10 users license for 4.11
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I’m currently using an archive.org 5-user licence upload in my VMs but there’s a couple on eBay with hardware (and more books to read!) which I’ll be buying at some point
barneyman@reddit
first job was IT support for a Netware house early 90s - found the Ralph Brown Interrupt List that outlined all the Netware Interrupt calls, automated most of my mundane jobs, wrote an SPX based modem sharer, then moved to another place in mid 90s and wrote NLMs for a living.
fun times.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Thank you; I was unaware of the RBILs but I shall explore them at some point!
Infymus@reddit
I used to install that for a living in the '90s. Fun fact, you can bring the whole network to a crawl by playing four-player Doom on it.
blinkyknilb@reddit
That was my bread and butter for years.
Pubcrawler1@reddit
I keep a Novell 3.12 VMware image that I run when I need to work with old DOS pc’s. Pop in a network card, run a network boot floppy, login and all my utilities programs are available.
Jumpy-Exercise59@reddit
Load monitor
bok4600@reddit
IF that was released in today's time, it would contain the card, all software on a dvd, including a searchable pdf manual on said software dvd
roehnin@reddit
More like include just the card and a QR code to download the software
InsaneGuyReggie@reddit
Isn’t NetWare 2.x the one that required an ISA card as a form of hardware copy protection?
I liked NetWare well enough I served my own blog on a 6.5 machine that also did file/print and an email domain for myself. I had an old pentium running NW5 as a router until 2007.
RetinaJunkie@reddit
One of the few things in vintage computing I can say I hated...
Big-Preparation-1109@reddit
Ran 2.2 myself, having to compile driver sucked, got much better with v3x
bluewizard8877@reddit
My first job back in the 90s was with a software company. They used Novell for their files servers for many years until they eventually moved over to NT. They also used a Novell product,…zenworks? for reconfiguring desktop environments on the fly. Very useful when doing software development and testing when you need to completely change settings and drive mappings from one database environment to another.
LittlePooky@reddit
Goodness-the good old days when a computer program or a piece of hardware came with a printed manual.
ironsteam713@reddit
Wow! That brings back a lot of fond memories! BrainShare was a great time. Really enjoyed teaching LANalyzer, LANtern, TCP/IP and NFS! ECNE, CNI
AdamoMeFecit@reddit
I really miss Netware NDS. Active Directory still doesn’t measure all the way up.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I like the key combinations (* in RConsole and Ins & Del in SYSCon); small but very useful touches
auximines_minotaur@reddit
Imagine, an OS so backward it didn’t even have its own native networking stack. Amazing that MS-DOS won out over literally any of its competitors. I guess it was better than CP/M, but that’s about it.
(also it basically was CP/M, but that’s neither here nor there)
commodore-amiga@reddit
CNE 2 and 3 - 1988
NorthernPlastics@reddit
NDS, fantastic. Windows integration via NDS for NT, nightmare.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I'm going to have a proper play around with that too - Gateway Services for NetWare?
I had a preliminary look at it because once I get my vintage hardware sorted, I figured I'd have to use it to access NDS resources on Vista+ boxes as I don't fancy totally changing the default
winlogonNorthernPlastics@reddit
If I recall GSNW was the MS-produced bridge that allowed Windows users to access NetWare file and print resources. NDS4NT allowed NetWare admins to manage native NetWare and NT users and resources from within NDS Manager. The latter was fantastic when it worked but from personal experience was flakey as hell and when it went down there were minutes if not hours of unhappy users who would be making their feelings known. Hell on toast
Even with that, they were happy memories! Hope you have a blast playing around with NetWare once more. Am kinda envious.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I shall checkout NDS4NT as I was previously unaware of that so thank you for highlighting that to me - you never know, if I can source it then it may make an appearance on r/vintagecomputing!
NorthernPlastics@reddit
Good luck! I recall running NDS4NT 2.0 with NetWare 5.x, I would assume 1.0 would be straightforward to find but I can only see it via a German IT toolbox kit on archive.org.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
I shall keep my eyes peeled and update my bookmark wishlists too
jtstowell@reddit
You build VMs? Hella sweet.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Oh yes; it's the nearest to the real experience I'm going to get until I get my vintage hardware sorted
In my graduate job, I had to use KiXtart for logon scripts and it does the job beautifully. I have a simple
Logon.batand I use the variable%NetLog%for9x, 9x-Kix, NT, NT-KIX, DOSandMSCliand that one script calls different .kix scripts depending on the%NetLog%variable value and maps drives from DOS3 and Windows 1 up to Server 2003 (I didn't fiddle with the SMB permissions Vista+ but you probably could get away with it!)Cardboard-Condo266@reddit
Jeez. That was my bread and butter for years.
zzcleanzz@reddit
Those were the days! The beginning of networking for me.
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Sadly my graduate job was XP and Server 2003 but I would have loved to have managed a real NetWare environment; I could argue that the domain restructuring Microsoft implemented with Windows 2000 is suspiciously reminiscent of NDS in both structure and terminology... but of course, Microsoft wouldn't dream of doing such a thing! 😂😂
Longjumping-Wave-123@reddit
Wow so cool!
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
Thank you I hope you enjoyed exploring!
Longjumping-Wave-123@reddit
I worked with novell as a 14-16 year old it intern. Memories...
my-names-gavin@reddit (OP)
That would have been a really interesting internship, especially for the time too
I am particularly interested in how NetWare licensing works too as I believe it works using a heartbeat doesn't it; that's after you've supplied your licensing disk of course! I've played with some software that used the geography of sectors to attempt to ascertain if you were using a dupe and to try to prevent you using it but it seems
diskcopy(ordd) was your friend here due to the faithful sector-by-sector duplication