9 ms·

1989 Networking: NetWare 386

134 points by supermatou 2y ago

olsbkj 2y ago
[dead]
- opyate 2y ago
  Not quite a war story, but hey: Our university's computers were all connected by Novell NetWare around the late nineties. I browsed the network folders one day and crept into the depths of the mechanical engineering's masters department, very curious to see what they're working on. Everything was password-protected, though. So, I tried the obvious trick of using the folder name as the password. One of them works: ertjie ("pea" in Afrikaans - this was Rand Afrikaans Universiteit, btw, now called University of Johannesburg) I gain access, and look at some awesome blueprints for what looked like a dune buggy, etc etc. Then I spot something which makes my heart rate increase ever so slightly: QUAKE2.EXE I right click and create a networked link to the EXE and share it with the entire class (30-ish second-years taking "C++ for engineers"). Most of us run the game, and find an ongoing LAN game and join it. All of a sudden, 5 or so masters students are joined by 20+ more folks and having a blast. And "ertjie" popping up on in-game chat asking something like "wtf did you guys come from lol"
qresf 2y ago
[flagged]
jasoneckert 2y ago
NetWare proliferated very rapidly during the late 80s and was common on most networks I used into the mid 1990s. Their file server product was stable and easy to configure, and worked very well with nearly every client out there using the fast IPX/SPX protocol. However, by the mid 1990s it was clear that Windows NT and the TCP/IP protocol of the Internet would soon make Novell and NetWare fade into the sunset.
- ta1243 2y ago
  Netware 4 I think was dubbed "intranetware" and had some form of IP support. We had netware at school in about 93-96 with windows 3.1 running on diskless clients. Netwars was a key component of this. I think Windows 95 and "intranetware 4" came in either summer 96 or summer 97. By 98 or 99 we had some ISDN internet connectivity, I assume via a proxy running on the netware server. Internet access was still ISDN based when I left in summer 2000.
  - efitz 2y ago
    I was excited when I upgraded my NetWare 3.11 servers to NetWare 4, installed the TCP/IP update, and went to enable it. Then, I saw the UX. You had to configure IP addresses as dotted HEX quads. It was pretty obvious that someone at Novell fundamentally didn’t get it.
    - linker3000 2y ago
      I don't remember that. I do remember that with 2.12 and 2.15 I occasionally had to use a hex editor on disk drive-related files to make the drives work with certain hardware. I also recall having to key-in hard drive defect tables as part of the install.
  - lproven 2y ago
    > Netware 4 I think was dubbed "intranetware" and had some form of IP support. No. You have the timing about right but not the version number. Netware 4 was still based around IPX/SPX; the big new feature was a network-wide directory server, called NDS, for distributed authentication. IntraNetware was specifically NetWare 4.11, with improved TCP/IP integration, an Internet-standards email server, and a web server so it could host LAN-internal intranet websites. https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1996/08/pr96151.html https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1996/08/pr96151.ht... > Netwars was a key component of this. Was that a typo for "Netware"? Netwars was a different thing: a game that ran on Netware networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars
hougaard 2y ago
What warez dump?
- peppermint_gum 2y ago
  I'm also interested in learning about it. I've only found this thread on Twitter: https://x.com/virtuallyfun/status/1804913568820699549 https://x.com/virtuallyfun/status/1804913568820699549 Apparently there are all kinds of goodies in that dump, like previously unknown betas of MS-DOS and OS/2, but there are no links to the dump itself. It's a shame that the community is so secretive about this :(
- ndiddy 2y ago
  Someone got access to the full tape backups for two warez BBSes (The WaREZ HouZE and Piper's Pit) and uploaded the tape images to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection https://archive.org/details/ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection. The collection spans the late 1980s to the late 1990s.
  - nxobject 2y ago
    A list of files (tab-separated) in each of the dumps is avilable in a separate download: https://archive.org/details/ibm-lists-details https://archive.org/details/ibm-lists-details These are _very large_, multi-MB zip files, indexing I think north of at least 100GB worth of files.
  - nxobject 2y ago
    PS – I don't think it's been posted yet to HN; you should do the honors...
mccrory 2y ago
MCNE/MCSE here from the mid-90’s, agree it was obvious that Netware would likely fade. Windows NT 3.51 (even though it wasn’t as good at the time), was more user friendly and had the Windows interface, compatibility, etc etc However, it NT wasn’t remotely as stable as Netware at that time either. Then we got to watch as Novell slowly went insane competing and buying WordPerfect and doing all sorts of other crazy moves. I still wish that Novell had taken all of its money and bought VMware when they were just working on GSX/ESX (now vSphere). This would have changed the trajectory of both Novell and the market.
- Angostura 2y ago
  In addition, from what I vaguely recall, one of the big selling point of NT LAN Manager was the ability to deploy network server applications on the server. Novell responded with Netware Loadable Modules, but they weren’t as versatile and needed specialised knowledge/tools.
  - linsomniac 2y ago
    The software I was working on in the late '80s made use of Btrieve, a ISAM database server running on Netware. IIRC there was also a SQL server of some sort that we used with it, mostly for reporting.
    - craz8 2y ago
      I used Btrieve a lot in several jobs in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s. It was fast and easy to work with, mostly I used the stand alone version, not the later NLM on the server
  - flomo 2y ago
    Yep, Netware ran entirely in Ring 0. In linux terminology it was a kernel with no user space, and NLMs were kernel modules. Very fast for file serving, but any application could crash the system. Stability was largely a result of lots of updates. NT had userspace, protected memory, etc, and a GUI for setting up TCP/IP.
linsomniac 2y ago
Reading this I was amazed that the cheapskate place I worked ~89-92 shelled out to get us a Netware server, considering the crappy hardware they had us developers working on. But then I just realized that we were probably running on a pirated copy. The company was a PC builder that wanted to get into software, but they also did some services work like installing Netware. They were a fairly sizable local operation until one day when they won a large bid for computers for the local University by bidding based on a projected continuing drop in components, and then an unexpected supply problem pushed prices significantly up. This was after I left the company, but they seemed to go bankrupt basically overnight.
- pixl97 2y ago
  It was insanely common for those PC builders to be fly by night operations steeped in pirating everything they could get a hold of. It wasn't hard for some random people with a little bit of computer skill to get into it.
efitz 2y ago
Oh man this brings back bad memories- I had forgotten about the Bindery. I was a CNE (3.X) back in the day.
- linker3000 2y ago
  I was a freelance trainer and specialised in NetWare and networking at the time. I was very busy (UK) working for the likes of Barefoot computer training (Aris), Skytech, Azlan, Comtec, Expertise, QA and others. I was also a systems and networking installer. Some training companies insisted that their trainers were 'Novell Certified' - and indeed I was, because to purchase, install and get support directly from Novell, your organisation (in my case, my own company with me as sole employee) you had to have one person qualified as a Certified Netware Salesperson (I think that's what they called it), so I paid for and passed that exam. I never bothered with CNA, CNE or ECNE, although I did write official material for them. That reminds me - I also wrote some of the original CompTIA A+ Service Technician training material, and ended up delivering it and running train the trainer courses around the world. Again, one company asked me whether I was A+ Service Technician certified, and I said I wasn't, so to deliver training for them, I registered, popped into their exam room and took the cert during a morning break in training. Happy to say I passed - helped somewhat by the fact that I wrote some of the exam questions!
linker3000 2y ago
I was a systems engineer and also taught NetWare admin classes. I also worked with Novell to update their training material. I remember the first release of NetWare 386 very well; it was a breeze to install, but the early version had a bug and if you unplugged the 10Base2 coax from the server it would crash. Apparently, the routine to display a warning message on the console had an issue. Novell issued a patch NLM. I had one site that experienced random crashes, but it was not the aforementioned bug. Long story short: After about two months of sleuthing, working with Novell and Compaq, camping on site and driving to/from the office to site (about 2hr each way), I found that it was a mains spike caused by a dishwasher right up against the server room wall in the next room. The fix was to move the Compaq server, which was actually a large desktop model, on its table to the opposite end of the server room.
- stevekemp 2y ago
  I remember working in random IT companies, back in the early nineties, where our "servers" were a collection of random desktop machines running Linux. At the time I think we had one Sun E450, and 20-30 random desktop hosts. All headless, except for keyboards connected. We also had a bunch of phone lines and external modems, which were used to run UUCP jobs overnight, or transfer files other ways, to remote SCO Unixware hosts. It was only later that I worked with "proper" servers, with niceties such as remote access, redundant power-supplies, and maybe even multiple hard drives (!)
  - lproven 2y ago
    > our "servers" were a collection of random desktop machines Also normal for the 1980s and early 1990s. Because PCs were not servers, and servers were not PCs, and almost nobody made or offered server-class hardware built around x86. The first I ever saw was a Compaq SystemPro and those things cost as much as a decent new car. Wikipedia says it was the first ever PC-compatible server! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_SystemPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_SystemPro
  - kennethrc 2y ago
    > early nineties > running Linux "Unix" though, right?
bell-cot 2y ago
Ah, NetWare! Those were the days...though my memories are mostly of the prior (286) version. After you got it working right, NetWare was rock-solid. Though if you weren't seriously experienced with NetWare, the "got it working right" could be difficult to distinguish from "went through Hell". But once MS's OS's grew up enough to cope with running a serious fileserver, NetWare was doomed. Didn't matter that MS OS's were pretty mediocre. Their business strategy was good and ruthless, they had vastly more money, NetWare was a lone-niche product, and Novell wasn't very good at either business strategy, nor bigger-picture technical management.
- lproven 2y ago
  I saw a benchmark in a US PC magazine once, around this time, benchmarking and comparing NOSs: OS/2 1.3 Server with 3+Open, Banyan VINES, MS LanManager on OS/2, and so on. Netware's disk/file benchmarks were around 3000% faster than all others. The mag had to print a disclaimer on the disk benchmark graph, saying it wasn't a misprint or anything, but that Netware's score was so high the bars for all the others had disappeared. It loaded FATs into RAM as it booted and they stayed there. (This is why a UPS was so important.) Its disk indexing speeds were from RAM. SSDs speeds, 25 years before mass-market SSDs were available. Only its near-bulletproof stability made this viable, but it was. Clarification: disk caching in RAM was rare back then because RAM was so expensive... and NetWare needed a lot of RAM, with the amount scaling linearly according to disk size. DEC VMS didn't have any kind of disk cache, for instance. It was an expensive 3rd party optional extra. Soon after as CPUs got a bit faster it went the other way: on-the-fly compression of disk, via tools like Stacker, because not only was RAM very expensive, so was disk space.
  - PopAlongKid 2y ago
    >Banyan VINES I worked for a Fortune 200 corporation the rolled out Banyan VINES in the late 1980s. FYI, it was Unix underneath, worked great as far as I recall.
    - lproven 2y ago
      Sure, yes. It ran on AT&T System V UNIX. https://wiki.restless.systems/wiki/Banyan_VINES_resurrection https://wiki.restless.systems/wiki/Banyan_VINES_resurrection http://banyan-vines.bamertal.com/ http://banyan-vines.bamertal.com/ This has a history but it gets its facts wrong -- e.g. 7.0 wasn't the last version, it got to v8.5. https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/banyan-vines-and-the-emerging-local-area-network https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/banyan-vines-and-the-emerg... VINES's killer features were that the XNS network protocol allowed a network to be divided up into a network of networks, with routing between nodes. (You couldn't do that on the Microsoft/3Com NetBEUI protocol.) And it had an early network directory, called StreetTalk, with a three level address space: user@group@organisation Most rivals either had user@organisation as the only naming system -- including the Internet itself of course -- or you had to name the specific server: alice@bob.charlie.com That is what Novell NDS in Netware 4 was designed to replicate, in a more scalable fashion. Netware 4 was Novell's attempt to catch up with Banyan's StreeTalk.
annoyingnoob 2y ago
I got my CNA in about '92. Really helped land my first full time job.
pajko 2y ago
https://archive.org/details/Hacker_Chronicles_Volume_1_1994 https://archive.org/details/Hacker_Chronicles_Volume_1_1994 The kock.exe turned every account into administrators. Guess who was caught using it in secondary school :)
dura00 2y ago
And lets remember the best feature of NetWare: ncsnipes.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Netwars game was my favorite, then syscon? and filer/salvage.
AlbertCory 2y ago
3Com, where I was, got suckered by Microsoft into "collaborating" on Lan Manager and NetBIOS. That was called internally "Viet BIOS." This led directly to the engineers' slogan: "Strategic" means "you don't make any money"
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Netware was awesome and I remember it fondly. Was quite productive to use and admin. However an expensive niche fileserver OS—which made a lot of sense in the 80s—was simply not needed any longer as hardware, storage, and OS commoditization happened over the next twenty years. Moore’s law was not kind to it. Novell got hit in the head by NT and the internet, and below the belt by Linux, and went down for the count. Was sad the day I removed it from my resume.
sillywalk 2y ago
$7,995. Wow. I wonder how much a contemporary Unix license cost.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  That's $20,256 in your 2024 dollars.
re5i5tor 2y ago
Eric Schmidt was running Novell 1997-2001, when things went all the way down the tubes. I was shocked when Google hired him.
- lproven 2y ago
  Agree strongly. And now look at the broken mess of Google today...
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
A big cultural outcome of Netware was the shear volume of highly compatible Novell network cards that flooded the market. Novell charged a fortune for Netware licenses but their hardware was cheap. Especially when corporations upgraded and there was suddenly 1000 NE2000 cards for $2 each at the local swap meet. Imho the entire LAN culture of the 90's was enabled by being able to join in for the cost of a coffee and people would often have a few spare cards for those that showed up to the party without one.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Half the mid-90s Internet was probably running off NE2000s. Definitely the majority of Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD servers connected to the Net.
lukeh 2y ago
Also a good read: https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-history-of-novell https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-history-of-novell
EvanAnderson 2y ago
Two Netware memories: FIRE PHASERS[0] and the screen saver on the server that showed processor load as a "snake" (and one snake per processor) with length relative to load. [0] http://www.novell.com/documentation/ncl_sle_11/login/data/h5782c3z.html http://www.novell.com/documentation/ncl_sle_11/login/data/h5...
- accrual 2y ago
  That's pretty amazing. Do you recall which version of Netware had the snakes? Did it need to be enabled through config? I'd love to try it out in a VM or 86Box.
  - helpfulContrib 2y ago
    [dead]
  - EvanAnderson 2y ago
    MONITOR.NLM had it in version 3.12 and it continued in later versions. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/G2Jk-tMz-eU https://youtu.be/G2Jk-tMz-eU These instructions for loading NetWare in KVM would probably be helpful: https://www.zx.net.nz/netware/server/411-kvm-2/ https://www.zx.net.nz/netware/server/411-kvm-2/ It has been implemented for Windows: http://www.anderbergfamily.net/ant/perfsnake/ http://www.anderbergfamily.net/ant/perfsnake/ There is also this re-implementation for Linux: https://github.com/cosimo/xscreensaver-loadsnake https://github.com/cosimo/xscreensaver-loadsnake
andrewstuart 2y ago
Hard to grasp now but Netware was really exciting technology at the time. It was also arguably the most advanced server on the Intel platform. There was a moment in time when it looked like Novell might become THE corporate back end server technology and all sorts of servers were built to run on Netware. I think there was Oracle and Lotus Notes and CC Mail and some others However, Novell for whatever reason simply didn't make Netware robust. Netware needed to be memory protected and have task preemption and it did neither, making it unsuitable as a server. Why they refused to do this is unclear. I seem to recall reading that Drew Major didn't have the technical chops to make it happen. I also recall reading that Drew Major believed that task preemption and memory protection were slow, and that speed was more important. Also, Netware was late to the party with TCP/IP support - they were all in on IPX/SPX and in the end TCP won the entire protocol game, sending IPX/SPX, XNS and other common network protocols to the dustbin. Anyhow Microsoft came along with Windows NT and OS/2 and stomped on Novell and since Netware wasn't up to the job, the show was over.
accrual 2y ago
My experiences with NetWare came about 2 decades after most in this thread, but thought it would be fun to share anyway. My high school used some version of NetWare for all of the XP-based machines the students could access. I specifically recall having login form with a red Novell banner across the top. Anyway, since the desktops were pretty tightly controlled, we ended up storing a copy of Unreal Tournament 99 out on the school's file share. It was buried several directories deep with some innocuous filename to help prevent detection. Each day before class started, a group of us would login, download the UT99 files, and drop into a LAN game. We had basic Dell Dimension systems but they were more than adequate for the game, so we'd frag it out every day for 10-20 minutes before class.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Better icons back then than today's software. I remember one that looked like an overhead view of a gecko. I remember around that time UUNet went public.
dugmartin 2y ago
In the shareware days I made pretty good money for a college student with a graphical Netware login utility called "vgalogin" (great name I know). It put the graphics card in VGA mode and integrated a screensaver and quote of the day along with a login dialog. Its main use was simplifying login batch files since with it you didn't need to detect a bad login in the batch file. In those days "marketing" meant uploading the executable to Simtel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel) and they would "announce" it. Getting those random checks in the mail from some company or college I never heard of was pretty cool.
afitnerd 2y ago
I set up a local job recruiters network with netware 386 running over arcnet (2 mbps) in 1989.
brightrhino 2y ago
I installed a 1000 node netware 386 network for GE in Schenectady at the time. It worked very well, what killed netware was NT had no per seat licenses initially, it was priced per server, unlimited users. Most of my customers only used file/print services. Nobody paid for netware after that. After Novell was fatally weakened, Microsoft introduced per seat licensing, then started aggressively auditing compliance.
- randombits0 2y ago
  Embrace, extend, extinguish. IBM invented vendor lock-in. Microsoft perfected it.

134 points by supermatou 2y ago

olsbkj 2y ago

[dead]

opyate 2y ago
Not quite a war story, but hey: Our university's computers were all connected by Novell NetWare around the late nineties. I browsed the network folders one day and crept into the depths of the mechanical engineering's masters department, very curious to see what they're working on. Everything was password-protected, though. So, I tried the obvious trick of using the folder name as the password. One of them works: ertjie ("pea" in Afrikaans - this was Rand Afrikaans Universiteit, btw, now called University of Johannesburg) I gain access, and look at some awesome blueprints for what looked like a dune buggy, etc etc. Then I spot something which makes my heart rate increase ever so slightly: QUAKE2.EXE I right click and create a networked link to the EXE and share it with the entire class (30-ish second-years taking "C++ for engineers"). Most of us run the game, and find an ongoing LAN game and join it. All of a sudden, 5 or so masters students are joined by 20+ more folks and having a blast. And "ertjie" popping up on in-game chat asking something like "wtf did you guys come from lol"

qresf 2y ago

[flagged]

jasoneckert 2y ago

NetWare proliferated very rapidly during the late 80s and was common on most networks I used into the mid 1990s. Their file server product was stable and easy to configure, and worked very well with nearly every client out there using the fast IPX/SPX protocol. However, by the mid 1990s it was clear that Windows NT and the TCP/IP protocol of the Internet would soon make Novell and NetWare fade into the sunset.

ta1243 2y ago
Netware 4 I think was dubbed "intranetware" and had some form of IP support. We had netware at school in about 93-96 with windows 3.1 running on diskless clients. Netwars was a key component of this. I think Windows 95 and "intranetware 4" came in either summer 96 or summer 97. By 98 or 99 we had some ISDN internet connectivity, I assume via a proxy running on the netware server. Internet access was still ISDN based when I left in summer 2000.
- efitz 2y ago
  I was excited when I upgraded my NetWare 3.11 servers to NetWare 4, installed the TCP/IP update, and went to enable it. Then, I saw the UX. You had to configure IP addresses as dotted HEX quads. It was pretty obvious that someone at Novell fundamentally didn’t get it.
  - linker3000 2y ago
    I don't remember that. I do remember that with 2.12 and 2.15 I occasionally had to use a hex editor on disk drive-related files to make the drives work with certain hardware. I also recall having to key-in hard drive defect tables as part of the install.
- lproven 2y ago
  > Netware 4 I think was dubbed "intranetware" and had some form of IP support. No. You have the timing about right but not the version number. Netware 4 was still based around IPX/SPX; the big new feature was a network-wide directory server, called NDS, for distributed authentication. IntraNetware was specifically NetWare 4.11, with improved TCP/IP integration, an Internet-standards email server, and a web server so it could host LAN-internal intranet websites. https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1996/08/pr96151.html https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1996/08/pr96151.ht... > Netwars was a key component of this. Was that a typo for "Netware"? Netwars was a different thing: a game that ran on Netware networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars

hougaard 2y ago

What warez dump?

peppermint_gum 2y ago
I'm also interested in learning about it. I've only found this thread on Twitter: https://x.com/virtuallyfun/status/1804913568820699549 https://x.com/virtuallyfun/status/1804913568820699549 Apparently there are all kinds of goodies in that dump, like previously unknown betas of MS-DOS and OS/2, but there are no links to the dump itself. It's a shame that the community is so secretive about this :(
ndiddy 2y ago
Someone got access to the full tape backups for two warez BBSes (The WaREZ HouZE and Piper's Pit) and uploaded the tape images to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection https://archive.org/details/ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection. The collection spans the late 1980s to the late 1990s.
- nxobject 2y ago
  A list of files (tab-separated) in each of the dumps is avilable in a separate download: https://archive.org/details/ibm-lists-details https://archive.org/details/ibm-lists-details These are _very large_, multi-MB zip files, indexing I think north of at least 100GB worth of files.
- nxobject 2y ago
  PS – I don't think it's been posted yet to HN; you should do the honors...

mccrory 2y ago

MCNE/MCSE here from the mid-90’s, agree it was obvious that Netware would likely fade. Windows NT 3.51 (even though it wasn’t as good at the time), was more user friendly and had the Windows interface, compatibility, etc etc However, it NT wasn’t remotely as stable as Netware at that time either. Then we got to watch as Novell slowly went insane competing and buying WordPerfect and doing all sorts of other crazy moves. I still wish that Novell had taken all of its money and bought VMware when they were just working on GSX/ESX (now vSphere). This would have changed the trajectory of both Novell and the market.

Angostura 2y ago
In addition, from what I vaguely recall, one of the big selling point of NT LAN Manager was the ability to deploy network server applications on the server. Novell responded with Netware Loadable Modules, but they weren’t as versatile and needed specialised knowledge/tools.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  The software I was working on in the late '80s made use of Btrieve, a ISAM database server running on Netware. IIRC there was also a SQL server of some sort that we used with it, mostly for reporting.
  - craz8 2y ago
    I used Btrieve a lot in several jobs in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s. It was fast and easy to work with, mostly I used the stand alone version, not the later NLM on the server
- flomo 2y ago
  Yep, Netware ran entirely in Ring 0. In linux terminology it was a kernel with no user space, and NLMs were kernel modules. Very fast for file serving, but any application could crash the system. Stability was largely a result of lots of updates. NT had userspace, protected memory, etc, and a GUI for setting up TCP/IP.

linsomniac 2y ago

Reading this I was amazed that the cheapskate place I worked ~89-92 shelled out to get us a Netware server, considering the crappy hardware they had us developers working on. But then I just realized that we were probably running on a pirated copy. The company was a PC builder that wanted to get into software, but they also did some services work like installing Netware. They were a fairly sizable local operation until one day when they won a large bid for computers for the local University by bidding based on a projected continuing drop in components, and then an unexpected supply problem pushed prices significantly up. This was after I left the company, but they seemed to go bankrupt basically overnight.

pixl97 2y ago
It was insanely common for those PC builders to be fly by night operations steeped in pirating everything they could get a hold of. It wasn't hard for some random people with a little bit of computer skill to get into it.

efitz 2y ago

Oh man this brings back bad memories- I had forgotten about the Bindery. I was a CNE (3.X) back in the day.

linker3000 2y ago
I was a freelance trainer and specialised in NetWare and networking at the time. I was very busy (UK) working for the likes of Barefoot computer training (Aris), Skytech, Azlan, Comtec, Expertise, QA and others. I was also a systems and networking installer. Some training companies insisted that their trainers were 'Novell Certified' - and indeed I was, because to purchase, install and get support directly from Novell, your organisation (in my case, my own company with me as sole employee) you had to have one person qualified as a Certified Netware Salesperson (I think that's what they called it), so I paid for and passed that exam. I never bothered with CNA, CNE or ECNE, although I did write official material for them. That reminds me - I also wrote some of the original CompTIA A+ Service Technician training material, and ended up delivering it and running train the trainer courses around the world. Again, one company asked me whether I was A+ Service Technician certified, and I said I wasn't, so to deliver training for them, I registered, popped into their exam room and took the cert during a morning break in training. Happy to say I passed - helped somewhat by the fact that I wrote some of the exam questions!

linker3000 2y ago

I was a systems engineer and also taught NetWare admin classes. I also worked with Novell to update their training material. I remember the first release of NetWare 386 very well; it was a breeze to install, but the early version had a bug and if you unplugged the 10Base2 coax from the server it would crash. Apparently, the routine to display a warning message on the console had an issue. Novell issued a patch NLM. I had one site that experienced random crashes, but it was not the aforementioned bug. Long story short: After about two months of sleuthing, working with Novell and Compaq, camping on site and driving to/from the office to site (about 2hr each way), I found that it was a mains spike caused by a dishwasher right up against the server room wall in the next room. The fix was to move the Compaq server, which was actually a large desktop model, on its table to the opposite end of the server room.

stevekemp 2y ago
I remember working in random IT companies, back in the early nineties, where our "servers" were a collection of random desktop machines running Linux. At the time I think we had one Sun E450, and 20-30 random desktop hosts. All headless, except for keyboards connected. We also had a bunch of phone lines and external modems, which were used to run UUCP jobs overnight, or transfer files other ways, to remote SCO Unixware hosts. It was only later that I worked with "proper" servers, with niceties such as remote access, redundant power-supplies, and maybe even multiple hard drives (!)
- lproven 2y ago
  > our "servers" were a collection of random desktop machines Also normal for the 1980s and early 1990s. Because PCs were not servers, and servers were not PCs, and almost nobody made or offered server-class hardware built around x86. The first I ever saw was a Compaq SystemPro and those things cost as much as a decent new car. Wikipedia says it was the first ever PC-compatible server! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_SystemPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_SystemPro
- kennethrc 2y ago
  > early nineties > running Linux "Unix" though, right?

bell-cot 2y ago

Ah, NetWare! Those were the days...though my memories are mostly of the prior (286) version. After you got it working right, NetWare was rock-solid. Though if you weren't seriously experienced with NetWare, the "got it working right" could be difficult to distinguish from "went through Hell". But once MS's OS's grew up enough to cope with running a serious fileserver, NetWare was doomed. Didn't matter that MS OS's were pretty mediocre. Their business strategy was good and ruthless, they had vastly more money, NetWare was a lone-niche product, and Novell wasn't very good at either business strategy, nor bigger-picture technical management.

lproven 2y ago
I saw a benchmark in a US PC magazine once, around this time, benchmarking and comparing NOSs: OS/2 1.3 Server with 3+Open, Banyan VINES, MS LanManager on OS/2, and so on. Netware's disk/file benchmarks were around 3000% faster than all others. The mag had to print a disclaimer on the disk benchmark graph, saying it wasn't a misprint or anything, but that Netware's score was so high the bars for all the others had disappeared. It loaded FATs into RAM as it booted and they stayed there. (This is why a UPS was so important.) Its disk indexing speeds were from RAM. SSDs speeds, 25 years before mass-market SSDs were available. Only its near-bulletproof stability made this viable, but it was. Clarification: disk caching in RAM was rare back then because RAM was so expensive... and NetWare needed a lot of RAM, with the amount scaling linearly according to disk size. DEC VMS didn't have any kind of disk cache, for instance. It was an expensive 3rd party optional extra. Soon after as CPUs got a bit faster it went the other way: on-the-fly compression of disk, via tools like Stacker, because not only was RAM very expensive, so was disk space.
- PopAlongKid 2y ago
  >Banyan VINES I worked for a Fortune 200 corporation the rolled out Banyan VINES in the late 1980s. FYI, it was Unix underneath, worked great as far as I recall.
  - lproven 2y ago
    Sure, yes. It ran on AT&T System V UNIX. https://wiki.restless.systems/wiki/Banyan_VINES_resurrection https://wiki.restless.systems/wiki/Banyan_VINES_resurrection http://banyan-vines.bamertal.com/ http://banyan-vines.bamertal.com/ This has a history but it gets its facts wrong -- e.g. 7.0 wasn't the last version, it got to v8.5. https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/banyan-vines-and-the-emerging-local-area-network https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/banyan-vines-and-the-emerg... VINES's killer features were that the XNS network protocol allowed a network to be divided up into a network of networks, with routing between nodes. (You couldn't do that on the Microsoft/3Com NetBEUI protocol.) And it had an early network directory, called StreetTalk, with a three level address space: user@group@organisation Most rivals either had user@organisation as the only naming system -- including the Internet itself of course -- or you had to name the specific server: alice@bob.charlie.com That is what Novell NDS in Netware 4 was designed to replicate, in a more scalable fashion. Netware 4 was Novell's attempt to catch up with Banyan's StreeTalk.

annoyingnoob 2y ago

I got my CNA in about '92. Really helped land my first full time job.

pajko 2y ago

https://archive.org/details/Hacker_Chronicles_Volume_1_1994 https://archive.org/details/Hacker_Chronicles_Volume_1_1994 The kock.exe turned every account into administrators. Guess who was caught using it in secondary school :)

dura00 2y ago

And lets remember the best feature of NetWare: ncsnipes.

mixmastamyk 2y ago
Netwars game was my favorite, then syscon? and filer/salvage.

AlbertCory 2y ago

3Com, where I was, got suckered by Microsoft into "collaborating" on Lan Manager and NetBIOS. That was called internally "Viet BIOS." This led directly to the engineers' slogan: "Strategic" means "you don't make any money"

mixmastamyk 2y ago

Netware was awesome and I remember it fondly. Was quite productive to use and admin. However an expensive niche fileserver OS—which made a lot of sense in the 80s—was simply not needed any longer as hardware, storage, and OS commoditization happened over the next twenty years. Moore’s law was not kind to it. Novell got hit in the head by NT and the internet, and below the belt by Linux, and went down for the count. Was sad the day I removed it from my resume.

sillywalk 2y ago

$7,995. Wow. I wonder how much a contemporary Unix license cost.

qingcharles 2y ago
That's $20,256 in your 2024 dollars.

re5i5tor 2y ago

Eric Schmidt was running Novell 1997-2001, when things went all the way down the tubes. I was shocked when Google hired him.

lproven 2y ago
Agree strongly. And now look at the broken mess of Google today...

AnotherGoodName 2y ago

A big cultural outcome of Netware was the shear volume of highly compatible Novell network cards that flooded the market. Novell charged a fortune for Netware licenses but their hardware was cheap. Especially when corporations upgraded and there was suddenly 1000 NE2000 cards for $2 each at the local swap meet. Imho the entire LAN culture of the 90's was enabled by being able to join in for the cost of a coffee and people would often have a few spare cards for those that showed up to the party without one.

qingcharles 2y ago
Half the mid-90s Internet was probably running off NE2000s. Definitely the majority of Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD servers connected to the Net.

lukeh 2y ago

Also a good read: https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-history-of-novell https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-history-of-novell

EvanAnderson 2y ago

Two Netware memories: FIRE PHASERS[0] and the screen saver on the server that showed processor load as a "snake" (and one snake per processor) with length relative to load. [0] http://www.novell.com/documentation/ncl_sle_11/login/data/h5782c3z.html http://www.novell.com/documentation/ncl_sle_11/login/data/h5...

accrual 2y ago
That's pretty amazing. Do you recall which version of Netware had the snakes? Did it need to be enabled through config? I'd love to try it out in a VM or 86Box.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago
  [dead]
- EvanAnderson 2y ago
  MONITOR.NLM had it in version 3.12 and it continued in later versions. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/G2Jk-tMz-eU https://youtu.be/G2Jk-tMz-eU These instructions for loading NetWare in KVM would probably be helpful: https://www.zx.net.nz/netware/server/411-kvm-2/ https://www.zx.net.nz/netware/server/411-kvm-2/ It has been implemented for Windows: http://www.anderbergfamily.net/ant/perfsnake/ http://www.anderbergfamily.net/ant/perfsnake/ There is also this re-implementation for Linux: https://github.com/cosimo/xscreensaver-loadsnake https://github.com/cosimo/xscreensaver-loadsnake

andrewstuart 2y ago

Hard to grasp now but Netware was really exciting technology at the time. It was also arguably the most advanced server on the Intel platform. There was a moment in time when it looked like Novell might become THE corporate back end server technology and all sorts of servers were built to run on Netware. I think there was Oracle and Lotus Notes and CC Mail and some others However, Novell for whatever reason simply didn't make Netware robust. Netware needed to be memory protected and have task preemption and it did neither, making it unsuitable as a server. Why they refused to do this is unclear. I seem to recall reading that Drew Major didn't have the technical chops to make it happen. I also recall reading that Drew Major believed that task preemption and memory protection were slow, and that speed was more important. Also, Netware was late to the party with TCP/IP support - they were all in on IPX/SPX and in the end TCP won the entire protocol game, sending IPX/SPX, XNS and other common network protocols to the dustbin. Anyhow Microsoft came along with Windows NT and OS/2 and stomped on Novell and since Netware wasn't up to the job, the show was over.

accrual 2y ago

My experiences with NetWare came about 2 decades after most in this thread, but thought it would be fun to share anyway. My high school used some version of NetWare for all of the XP-based machines the students could access. I specifically recall having login form with a red Novell banner across the top. Anyway, since the desktops were pretty tightly controlled, we ended up storing a copy of Unreal Tournament 99 out on the school's file share. It was buried several directories deep with some innocuous filename to help prevent detection. Each day before class started, a group of us would login, download the UT99 files, and drop into a LAN game. We had basic Dell Dimension systems but they were more than adequate for the game, so we'd frag it out every day for 10-20 minutes before class.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Better icons back then than today's software. I remember one that looked like an overhead view of a gecko. I remember around that time UUNet went public.

dugmartin 2y ago

In the shareware days I made pretty good money for a college student with a graphical Netware login utility called "vgalogin" (great name I know). It put the graphics card in VGA mode and integrated a screensaver and quote of the day along with a login dialog. Its main use was simplifying login batch files since with it you didn't need to detect a bad login in the batch file. In those days "marketing" meant uploading the executable to Simtel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel) and they would "announce" it. Getting those random checks in the mail from some company or college I never heard of was pretty cool.

afitnerd 2y ago

I set up a local job recruiters network with netware 386 running over arcnet (2 mbps) in 1989.

brightrhino 2y ago

I installed a 1000 node netware 386 network for GE in Schenectady at the time. It worked very well, what killed netware was NT had no per seat licenses initially, it was priced per server, unlimited users. Most of my customers only used file/print services. Nobody paid for netware after that. After Novell was fatally weakened, Microsoft introduced per seat licensing, then started aggressively auditing compliance.

randombits0 2y ago
Embrace, extend, extinguish. IBM invented vendor lock-in. Microsoft perfected it.