Hi,

In the mid-90s, I started my "career" in IT by getting to know Novell
NetWare (4.11) and helping setting up the first computer network in my
high school (while I was in 10th class).

I liked the system a lot, at first it used 10 MBit/s coax networking and later was upgraded to RJ45 cables.
We've set up a pretty nice Novell system with Windows 95 (and later 98 and NT) clients.

I'm pretty proud that the base installation of the NetWare server started
in my basement and got transferred to my school :)

This knowledge helped me pretty much, as I got a job during my last years
in school and during my studies (computer sciences) - administering the Novell network of a radiologist in my home town with two branches attached via ISDN and later via lease lines (1 MBit/s) :)
And this helped me getting my first job in 2006, at a Novell partner.

But I quit this job in 2007, this has been the last time I've used a
Novell system.

...until now! :)

I've found used NetWare packages at eBay and I've set up an ESXi server on
an old PC here and installed NetWare 3.12 :)
As a client, I'm using Win98 in another VM - and it works as fine and easy
as I remember it :)

Also, I got my Lexmark X736de laserprinter attached to it! It's very nice that this printer still supports IPX and is able to attach to a NetWare server in RPRINTER mode.
Printing from Win98 just worked (using a PostScript printer driver) :)

I'm very happy that this is working and that I even got the patches
installed :)

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Ex-users to be precise but there are still schools that use Netware. I was about to type Novell though they are no longer around and it is owned by somebody else now.

I am the IT director for an educational coop in the US and we just onboarded two schools that use some form of Netware or tools like Zenworks. One school
we are migrating over to Windows Server and while the other school we are onboarding, they are using Windows Server already, they use Zenworks.

At one of the schools, our first task was to clear out the office as it had layers upon layers of paper work, boxes, and old technology. In that mess, I was able to recoup Netware 2.2 manuals only, Netware 3.11, Netware 3.12, Netware 4, Netware 4.11, Netware 5, and OES server software, manuals, and original packaging. Those are all now comfortably at my house (along with
some other old items) waiting to be played with.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 8-Bit Classics (21:2/133)

acn wrote to All <=-

I've found used NetWare packages at eBay and I've set up an ESXi server
on an old PC here and installed NetWare 3.12 :)

Oh, that rocks.

I started with Netware 2.2 on a Mac network running on Token Ring in 1991; probably the second weirdest install I'd worked on. It was an all IBM, all token ring shop, but the head of HR was a Mac user.

The first was Portable Netware, a port of the Novell file system and core protocols to UNIX. Netware ran as a UNIX app with a virtual file system sitting on top of UNIX running an Informix database. The database ran a document control system that the Windows clients used.

When the system crashed you'd need to fsck the bare-metal file system then
run checks on the virtual system. Slow as molasses, too.

Novell 3.11 and 3.12 were a beautiful combination of simplicity and
stability; I had some of those crazy 1-year uptimes you'd read about - but
on more traditional hardware.




... Humanise something free of error
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Not anymore, but in the mid-90's to early 2000s the navy (Canadian) was using Netware on the ships and ashore. It was excellent. Worked well. I remember when they switched to Microsoft for everything and it sucked. Lost features, some of which we still don't have in 2021 (like undeleting a file on a
network drive).

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Free Speech You Smeg Head (21:1/225)

In the mid-90s, I started my "career" in IT by getting to know Novell NetWare (4.11) and helping setting up the first computer network in my high school (while I was in 10th class).

I never ended up near netware. But the BBS had NetwareLite peer to peer on 10Mb coax when I first got hold of network cards. IPX networking lasted until the BBS closed up. I did have someone try and set me up with 3.5? at some stage, I don't think I had the hardware to pull it off, most the equipment was still 286 clients.

By the time 95 rolled around everything was pretty much running IP4.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Am 02.06.21 schrieb 8-Bit@21:2/133 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo 8-Bit,

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Ex-users to be precise but there are still schools that use Netware.

Cool :)

I was about to type Novell though they are no longer around and it is
owned by somebody else now.

Yes, today's company owning the products is MicroFocus.
Gladly they still host many of the old support documents :)

I am the IT director for an educational coop in the US and we just onboarded two schools that use some form of Netware or tools like
Zenworks. One school we are migrating over to Windows Server and while the other school we are onboarding, they are using Windows Server already,
they use Zenworks.

I never understood why anyone really wants a Windows Server system, and I pity everyone who has to work on such systems (me included).
In the past, NetWare always was the better option and today a Linux-based system would be my preferred choice. Especially as almost all malware
targets Windows+Outlook+Exchange+AD, which seems today's variant of "no
one ever got fired for buying IBM".

At one of the schools, our first task was to clear out the office as it
had layers upon layers of paper work, boxes, and old technology. In that mess, I was able to recoup Netware 2.2 manuals only, Netware 3.11, Netware 3.12, Netware 4, Netware 4.11, Netware 5, and OES server software,
manuals, and original packaging. Those are all now comfortably at my house (along with some other old items) waiting to be played with.

Very nice :)
My eBay finding of NetWare 4.11 and GroupWise will arrive approx. friday
and the seller told me that he included some other Novell products he is clearing out :)

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Am 02.06.21 schrieb Otto Reverse@21:1/225 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo Otto,

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Not anymore, but in the mid-90's to early 2000s the navy (Canadian) was using Netware on the ships and ashore. It was excellent. Worked well.

Oh, interesting.

I remember when they switched to Microsoft for everything and it
sucked. Lost features, some of which we still don't have in 2021 (like undeleting a file on a network drive).

Yes, many NetWare networks switched to M$ software, because some folks pretended that it will be better, faster and cheaper.
Cheaper it was, but only in quality...
Now they have to keep up with security fixes, malware and all that stuff.

It's sad that Novell did many things wrong with their sales partners and
thus lost many of them to the other side...

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Am 02.06.21 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo poindexter,

I've found used NetWare packages at eBay and I've set up an ESXi server ac>> on an old PC here and installed NetWare 3.12 :)

Oh, that rocks.

Thank you.
It took a while to figure out how to install NetWare, the patches and the drivers -- and in what order.
But now, it is running :)

Just for reference:
I'm using ESXi v7 and the VM for NetWare has 32MB RAM and an 8GB HDD using
an IDE adapter. The virtual CD-ROM is also attached to the same IDE
adapter.
The virtual NIC is the "AMD Lance PCNet 32".

For the installation, I've used the ISADISK driver for accessing the hard disk in NetWare and no NIC driver.
After the base installation, I've installed most of the patches and the ODI33G driver set which contained the driver CNEAMD which works fine for
the PCNet32 NIC.
The update CDUP5A contains updated drivers for IDE, so I removed "load isadisk" from startup.ncf and added "load nwpa", "load ideata port=1f0
int=e" and "load idecd".
This loads the newer IDE driver and also allows mounting the virtual CD-
ROM. ("load cdrom" in autoexec.ncf enables the CD commands)

For me, the biggest problem was the "hen and egg" problem to get the
updates installed without having network access to the SYS: volume.
So I tried installing all updates that get installed to the DOS volume
first, then set up the network driver and finally install the rest of the updates to the SYS: partition from a virtual Win98.
And after doing this, it turned out not to be that difficult :)

I started with Netware 2.2 on a Mac network running on Token Ring in 1991; probably the second weirdest install I'd worked on. It was an all IBM, all token ring shop, but the head of HR was a Mac user.

;-) Nice.
Did NetWare 2.2 server really run on a Mac or was it just a client?

I've also used TokenRing for a while as my private LAN system.
I got some used TR equipment and it worked fine with my Linux systems.
And being 16 MBit/s, it was faster (and being TR, more reliable) than 10 MBit/s ethernet which was the alternative back then.

I just had to swap it out for Ethernet when I bought a PowerBook G4 and I
had to find out that no TR drivers existed for MacOS X :)

The first was Portable Netware, a port of the Novell file system and core protocols to UNIX. Netware ran as a UNIX app with a virtual file system sitting on top of UNIX running an Informix database. The database ran a document control system that the Windows clients used.

Cool :)

When the system crashed you'd need to fsck the bare-metal file system then run checks on the virtual system. Slow as molasses, too.

Novell 3.11 and 3.12 were a beautiful combination of simplicity and stability; I had some of those crazy 1-year uptimes you'd read about - but on more traditional hardware.

The NetWare 4.11 system I administered back then also had really good uptimes. The only problems I had in the ~7 years were failing hardware...

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Hi!

Novell NetWare 3.12 was the firs network operating system in saw.
We used it in my parents company to connect the Windows 3.11 for Workgroups Clients. IPX/SPX was the used protocol.

I liked the system a lot, at first it used 10 MBit/s coax networking and later was upgraded to RJ45 cables.

Oh yes, the BNC cable with the terminators on both ends.

I've found used NetWare packages at eBay and I've set up an ESXi server
on an old PC here and installed NetWare 3.12 :)

I used to run it on my old 386 Compaq and run my own NetWare Server.

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Not right now, but in the past, yes.

Regards
Andreas

-=Kautzner-Computer-Museum=-
zahrl.ddns.net:2023
https://kcm.or.at

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: KCM BBS (21:1/218)

I am the IT director for an educational coop in the US and we just onboarded two schools that use some form of Netware or tools like Zenworks. One school we are migrating over to Windows Server and while other school we are onboarding, they are using Windows Server already, they use Zenworks.

I never understood why anyone really wants a Windows Server system, and
I pity everyone who has to work on such systems (me included).
In the past, NetWare always was the better option and today a
Linux-based system would be my preferred choice. Especially as almost
all malware targets Windows+Outlook+Exchange+AD, which seems today's variant of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM".

While I agree that a few years ago, it was pretty great. The integration with Windows is lacking compared to a Windows server. While I don't know
everything that the new system does, I have learned to appreciate Microsoft
and their tools. We use Google for our email and most cloud storage and AzureAD/Intune for cloud based Microsoft. Not much local AD except in the schools and that will change in the next few years. Servers, I build many on Ubuntu. It just works.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 8-Bit Classics (21:2/133)

Am 03.06.21 schrieb goto_KCM@21:1/218 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo goto_Kcm,

Novell NetWare 3.12 was the firs network operating system in saw.
We used it in my parents company to connect the Windows 3.11 for
Workgroups Clients. IPX/SPX was the used protocol.

Yep, exactly :)
At my school, we started with Win95 PCs (Pentium-75 pizzaboxes from Siemens-Nixdorf).
My first task at the job that I had during my last school years was to migrate the DOS/Win3.1 systems there to Win95 (or Win98, I don't remember
it now) :)

I liked the system a lot, at first it used 10 MBit/s coax networking and ac>> later was upgraded to RJ45 cables.

Oh yes, the BNC cable with the terminators on both ends.

Yep :) It was a really funny time. Just imagine a room full of
schoolchildren (and a teacher) and someone disconnects the bus at his/her workstation. Yay.
And another problem we had with the BNC network: The school contracted a local computer shop owner to install the network (cables, connectors,
NICs). But he obviously either didn't know what he was doing or had bad
tools - because half of the BNC connectors on the cables he provided just fell off some time after installation. Yay :)

I've found used NetWare packages at eBay and I've set up an ESXi server ac>> on an old PC here and installed NetWare 3.12 :)

I used to run it on my old 386 Compaq and run my own NetWare Server.

*thumbs-up*

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

acn wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I started with Netware 2.2 on a Mac network running on Token Ring probably the second weirdest install I'd worked on. It was an all IBM, all token ring shop, but the head of HR was a Mac user.

;-) Nice.
Did NetWare 2.2 server really run on a Mac or was it just a client?

Netware ran on a generic 386 PC. Clients were all Mac.

I've also used TokenRing for a while as my private LAN system.
I got some used TR equipment and it worked fine with my Linux systems.
And being 16 MBit/s, it was faster (and being TR, more reliable) than
10 MBit/s ethernet which was the alternative back then.

Yep, token passing topologies were the thing back then, when Ethernet was
all shared space. Before ethernet switches, collisions were a serious issue and the network could seriously degrade.

My first switched network used a 6 port 10 megabit ethernet switch as a core switch, and 24 port hubs as user switches. That was fancy stuff back then.

I did a lot of stuff with ARCnet back then - seriously lenient. We'd run it
on different grades of coax, accidentally plug hubs into hubs, and it still worked. Passing a token meant that it'd degrade gracefully. Having to set a network ID via jumper was a pain, though.

Someone once joked that you could tell who was a network person by asking
them how many syllables were in the word "coax".

Novell 3.11 and 3.12 were a beautiful combination of simplicity and stability; I had some of those crazy 1-year uptimes you'd read about - but on more traditional hardware.

The NetWare 4.11 system I administered back then also had really good uptimes. The only problems I had in the ~7 years were failing
hardware...

I started to lose momentum with 4.x when they added directory services. I
had bounced back and forth between managing networks and managing phone systems and when I went back, Windows NT had started taking over.

I was a member of a Novell user group in the SF Bay area from 1991-1996, and we'd met once at their office in San Jose. I remember being in my 20s and amazed at an office campus with day care, a spa, hair salon, day care, a
food court with high chairs so you could have lunch with your kid, a pond, walking paths...

Fast forward many years later and I wondered why my current office space looked familiar. My current employer had bought the Novell campus and I was working in the same place.



... Overtly resist change
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Spectre wrote to acn <=-

I never ended up near netware. But the BBS had NetwareLite peer to peer
on 10Mb coax when I first got hold of network cards. IPX networking
lasted until the BBS closed up.

I remember wanting to play with Netware Lite and Novell DOS, but I had a
DOS BBS, an OS/2 desktop, and LANTastic working at the time.

By the time 95 rolled around everything was pretty much running IP4.

I worked at a company that specialized in making screen savers with flying toasters on them at the time. They were about 80/20 Mac and DOS/Windows, and we used Netware 3.12 servers with Services for Mac, and later added IP to
the mix.

Trying to keep 3 different ethernet types, an IPX netware network, Appletalk running on ethernet_snap, and integrating ethernet_II frames and adding IP
to the mix was a pain in the ass... I'm surprised it all worked.

At least it was all UTP by then and not coax.

It all worked until the Chicago builds (Windows95 beta) came out, and they
had optional netware file sharing protocols. If you didn't know the 8
digit hexadecimal number (mine was DEADBEEF) and left it at the default of
all 1s, the existing network would die.

The engineer who turned out to be the culprit blamed Microsoft for not being more careful. I had to remind him he was on a production network and it was
a beta.

In retrospect, I'm sure some developer must have gotten a secret award for coming up with another way to screw Novell.

Luckily that feature didn't make it into the release version.




... Overtly resist change
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

acn wrote to 8-Bit <=-

I never understood why anyone really wants a Windows Server system, and
I pity everyone who has to work on such systems (me included).
In the past, NetWare always was the better option and today a
Linux-based system would be my preferred choice.

Novell's high cost got Microsoft's foot in the door, and just good enough
(but significantly cheaper) gave them an opening. Novell didn't support IP well, and UNIX was expensive and needed separate admin staff at the time.

So, given your choice of Netware for file and print services, and a UNIX environment for IP management, or a couple of NT boxes with GUIs to do it
all, lots of companies took the Microsoft path.

Sure, they were 23/6 systems and needed the occasional reboot, but the
people who needed the extra uptime could use Netware.

Active Directory versus Novell DS was the final killer. With Microsoft
owning most of the client OSes that was a done deal.

all malware targets Windows+Outlook+Exchange+AD, which seems today's variant of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM".

I made a good living setting up Linux environments with mail, groupware and file/web services for startups back in the early 2000s for people who
couldn't afford "WOEA", but now I think G suite does a better job than bringing it in-house.

My eBay finding of NetWare 4.11 and GroupWise will arrive approx.
friday and the seller told me that he included some other Novell
products he is clearing out :)

Please don't make me run a Novell network at my house. Please don't make me want to run a Novell network at my house...


... Overtly resist change
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Greetings;

acn wrote to goto_KCM <=-

Novell NetWare 3.12 was the firs network operating system in saw.
We used it in my parents company to connect the Windows 3.11 for Workgroups Clients. IPX/SPX was the used protocol.

When I went for my MOAB/Netware 4.x cert, when things were all said and done
I asked the instructors if they were aware Novell 2 could run tcp/ip. They insisted it could not. I asked for admin access to one of their 2.x training servers and to be given an unused IP... and 5 minutes.

When I was done I told them to ping the server as proof... they were floored that it worked, and they then logged into it as further proof. The protocol stack is not included with 2.x however 3.x is compiled under the same flavor
of C as 2.x so all one needs to do is copy over the NLMs from 3 to 2, configure them and off you go! Had the NLMs not been compiled with the same C setup, it may not have worked. I did test it in my lab ahead of time so I was confident it would :)

... Old musicians never die, they just get played out.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
* Origin: Carnage! Hartford, Ct (21:4/107)

Re: Re: Novell NetWare :)
By: poindexter FORTRAN to acn on Thu Jun 03 2021 07:37 am

couldn't afford "WOEA", but now I think G suite does a better job than bringing it in-house.

Small mention here: that only works if you or your company can afford the paperwork to let Alphabet
deal with the data.

I work with data that would need the signed aproval of the President of the Spanish Data Protection
Agency to be sent abroad.

To my knowledge, a lot of Google data is backed up to foreigner servers which can be a legal
liability. This is the reason why my old college ran their own groupware suites instead of
externalizing them to Google.

--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

Re: Novell NetWare :)
By: acn to All on Wed Jun 02 2021 02:58 pm

Are any more NetWare users here? :)

Ha!

Yes, I have netware 6.5 running here, although I think I might change down to 3.12 (which is what I used in my first job all those years ago). Seems 6.5 is quite bloated and wants a GUI interface. Probably doesnt help that all that knowledge of how to maintain it has been forgotton for too long :)

I was running my original DOS BBS on it (Ezycom with Portal of Power), but was having strange "file not found" issues with it (when the files/dirs were clearly there). It was probably a memory issue since the netware drivers seem to take up quite a bit of convential memory.

I found all the netware versions on a website somewhere (that has old OSes of many flavours) - including license keys. (I think https://winworldpc.com/home)

...ëîåï

... Those who think they know it all, often upset those of us who do.
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)

Trying to keep 3 different ethernet types, an IPX netware network, Appletalk running on ethernet_snap, and integrating ethernet_II
frames and adding IP

I got as far as trying to run NWLITE over IP :) It was pretty nasty though, most of the high level drivers with a shim for loading over a crynwyr driver. The best I could manage was clients able to see each other, but not actually talk to each other. Kind of frustrating.

Also used Artisoft's The Network Eye back then too... great for working on headless clients. Just bang in the netbios name and have the remote screen display right in front of you. Had a raft of weird clients, all 286s, some with just a floppy drive, others with shared and subst drives all over the place. Looking back it was eye wateringly complicated if you were looking at it from outside.

I also couldn't get NWLITE to play nice with things like desqview either. It tended to eat to much low memory and lose connectivity between different tasks.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Someone once joked that you could tell who was a network person by
asking them how many syllables were in the word "coax".

Hahahaha so true!

Dave!


dflorey
Retro16 BBS --> bbs.retro16.com (WIP)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Retro16 BBS (21:1/226)

Hey deon;

deon wrote to acn <=-

https://winworldpc.com/home)

Great link, thanks for sharing!

... Urologist's license plate: PPDR
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
* Origin: Carnage! Hartford, Ct (21:4/107)

Hey Spectre;

Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

[snip]

I also couldn't get NWLITE to play nice with things like desqview
either. It tended to eat to much low memory and lose connectivity
between different tasks.

Years ago my first bbs was Renegade with 1 line and d'bridge for echomail.
I eventually upgraded to 2 lines... mainly out of curiousity to see what its chatroom features were like and such. The "big board" at the time was a TBBS system with 12 lines, and he also had a MajorBBS with about 6 lines on it.
I loved TBBS but there were some great features coming out for MajorBBS including MajorFIDO which I became a team member of.

MBBS had support for IPX/SPX but at the time I only had a NWLITE server and client setup. They claimed that the protocol in NWLITE wasn't 100% compatible with IPX/SPX and the link would not work. Since MBBS ran on a stand-alone pc this was an issue to speak with it however after some config hacking I did
get it to work quite nicely. Eventually I got full Netware 3.x and installed that. Ran that for years, even linked to my primary linux server quite nicely. It made for a great file storage system. I wasn't too keen for the GUI they incorporated in 4. I haven't run it since. They claimed that you could never install a foreign key in it but that was false... or at least I figured out that undocumented feature <G>

... Old accountants never die, they just lose their balance.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
* Origin: Carnage! Hartford, Ct (21:4/107)

Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Also used Artisoft's The Network Eye back then too... great for working
on headless clients.

Way back when, I worked for a company that threw out a lot of stuff. I got a box of 2400 baud modems that jump-started the BBS, and we'd give the others away with people we wanted to call BBSes.

When I installed their Netware network, they tossed out a LANtastic network, which went home with me. I shared the screen with the BBS using their apps, don't know if that was branded Network Eye or something else - but it
worked.

Later, I moved my desktop to OS/2 and was able to create a DOS VDM that ran the LANTastic drivers, so I could still talk to the DOS BBS box.




... Apotheosis was the beginning before the beginning.
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Way back when, I worked for a company that threw out a lot of stuff. I
got a box of 2400 baud modems that jump-started the BBS, and we'd give
the others away with people we wanted to call BBSes.

Oh man, thats awesome - I would have killed for access to multiple 2400s in 91. :P

I used to call America Online and order 40 starter kits for my Computer User Group; one of the ladies in the group would take them and de-sticker them... return the next week and - we always had free 3.5"s.

But a modem-pool? OMG... I'd of been a happy camper!



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/05/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)

its chatroom features were like and such. The "big board" at the time
was a TBBS system with 12 lines, and he also had a MajorBBS with
about 6 lines on it. I loved TBBS but there were some great features coming out for MajorBBS including MajorFIDO which I became a team

There were two large multiline boards in Melbourne, one TBBS the other MBBS. The MBBS guy just did stuff his way, aside from adding dialin PPP at some point I don't think it ever changed.

Somehow, the TBBS guy was able to use FrontDoor to transfer mail, although I have no real idea what kind of message base TBBS sports or how it was tossed there after. We had a "local" net running at one point.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Way back when, I worked for a company that threw out a lot of stuff. I got

I got lucky twice... my original network gear came from another BBSer that collected it from an obsoleted government dept network. Can't imagine trying to run large number of systems on thin but there you go. The other was a couple of years later, an IT company moved into a space a few down from where I was working and during the move they started throwing out dumpster loads of goodies. Came home with lots of goodies from there that year. Then each end of financial year they'd throw out a bit more. Was good while it lasted.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Hello Spectre;

Spectre wrote to N1uro <=-

There were two large multiline boards in Melbourne, one TBBS the other MBBS. The MBBS guy just did stuff his way, aside from adding dialin PPP
at some point I don't think it ever changed.

Melbourne?... Australia or Florida?

Somehow, the TBBS guy was able to use FrontDoor to transfer mail,
although I have no real idea what kind of message base TBBS sports or
how it was tossed there after. We had a "local" net running at one
point.

I actually had TBBS running on Netware. It was pretty neat - and all done in DBase. I only had an eval copy so much of it was crippled. Major became Worldgroup.... I ran it for a year then dropped it. Even though that
was done in C, it didn't run too well on Netware. I did have D'bridge
tossing the echo areas until MajorFIDO came out in Alpha and I was asked
to be on their dev team. Had lots of fun headbanging on ideas.


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Melbourne?... Australia or Florida?

Ostraya mate, we don't give a continental about Florida :) Did know there was one in Florida, but seeing as the US has almost one of everything from everywhere else in the world, its not to surprising.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

goodies from there that year. Then each end of financial year they'd
throw out a bit more. Was good while it lasted.

Good times. Back then, I think each generation was so much more powerful
that a lot more usable stuff was tossed by companies.

Going from a 286 to a 386, or 386 to 486? Amazing.

Going from a Core 2 duo to an i5? Not so much.

If it weren't for the speed boost with SSDs, a lot of companies would keep their hardware around for much longer and not upgrade to newer systems. The industry had better come up with another speed bump in a couple of years' time, or going from an i9 to i11 will be a tough choice for companies when enough is good enough.


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Am 03.06.21 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo poindexter,

I started with Netware 2.2 on a Mac network running on Token Ring

[...]

Did NetWare 2.2 server really run on a Mac or was it just a client?

Netware ran on a generic 386 PC. Clients were all Mac.

Ah okay, that I got it wrong :)

Yep, token passing topologies were the thing back then, when Ethernet was all shared space. Before ethernet switches, collisions were a serious
issue and the network could seriously degrade.

Yep. And so Token-Ring had a real advantage :)

My first switched network used a 6 port 10 megabit ethernet switch as a core switch, and 24 port hubs as user switches. That was fancy stuff back then.

Oh, I don't remember what my first Ethernet setups looked like.
But at least at home, it wasn't fancy stuff :)

I did a lot of stuff with ARCnet back then - seriously lenient. We'd run
it on different grades of coax, accidentally plug hubs into hubs, and it still worked. Passing a token meant that it'd degrade gracefully. Having
to set a network ID via jumper was a pain, though.

;-)

Someone once joked that you could tell who was a network person by asking them how many syllables were in the word "coax".

Could you explain this one to me? Sorry :)
(I guess I don't have enough experience with coax networks, as I've only
used the 10base2 'cheapernet')

I was a member of a Novell user group in the SF Bay area from 1991-1996, and we'd met once at their office in San Jose. I remember being in my 20s and amazed at an office campus with day care, a spa, hair salon, day care, a food court with high chairs so you could have lunch with your kid, a pond, walking paths...

Fast forward many years later and I wondered why my current office space looked familiar. My current employer had bought the Novell campus and I
was working in the same place.

Nice coincidence :)

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Am 03.06.21 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo poindexter,

I never understood why anyone really wants a Windows Server system, and ac>> I pity everyone who has to work on such systems (me included).
In the past, NetWare always was the better option and today a
Linux-based system would be my preferred choice.

Novell's high cost got Microsoft's foot in the door, and just good enough (but significantly cheaper) gave them an opening.

That's right.

So, given your choice of Netware for file and print services, and a UNIX environment for IP management, or a couple of NT boxes with GUIs to do it all, lots of companies took the Microsoft path.

Sadly, that's true.
And when Novell integrated TCP/IP in a better way (NetWare 5), it was too late...

Active Directory versus Novell DS was the final killer. With Microsoft owning most of the client OSes that was a done deal.

Although I don't understand it. If one had used NetWare, GroupWise and ZenWorks, the network management was quite similar to a ActiveDirectory
and GroupPolicy system, even with more features - as far as I remember.

I made a good living setting up Linux environments with mail, groupware
and file/web services for startups back in the early 2000s for people who couldn't afford "WOEA", but now I think G suite does a better job than bringing it in-house.

Maybe, but you give away the control over your data (and the data itself).
You are even more dependant on the system, that it is available and that
no AI system thinks you did something wrong and closes the account.

My eBay finding of NetWare 4.11 and GroupWise will arrive approx.
friday and the seller told me that he included some other Novell
products he is clearing out :)

Please don't make me run a Novell network at my house. Please don't make
me want to run a Novell network at my house...

;-) My package arrived and it looks nice :)
At the moment, I have my NetWare 3.12 VM running and I'm collecting all
the patches for the 3.x and 4.x versions and will put them in my BBS's
file base.

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Going from a 286 to a 386, or 386 to 486? Amazing.

Not sure what the year was now... but early-ish 486 territory, and they through out a few 386DX models.. a lot of it was ooooold stuff though too... I forget the model number, but there was a 1U rack that stood about 5-6' tall, 5170 or something maybe, a couple of XT boxes with a coax based card for terminal use... Definitely a RT/6000 though as well, never did get that to run though :/

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Yep. And so Token-Ring had a real advantage :)

I believe it was a bit horses for courses... an over large ethernet could have bad collision problems, and multiple collision problems as the fallback was stop for a predetermined time and try again, so two of more nodes with collisions could keep colliding. But in a low utilisation/node density you could get better throughput than with token-ring. But a load that could bring ethernet to its knees would still be chugging along with token ring. A little like comparing a diseasal to petrol/gas or a racehorse to a war-horse to completely different schools of thought.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Am 09.06.21 schrieb Spectre@21:3/101 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo Spectre,

Yep. And so Token-Ring had a real advantage :)

I believe it was a bit horses for courses... an over large ethernet could have bad collision problems, and multiple collision problems as the
fallback was stop for a predetermined time and try again, so two of more nodes with collisions could keep colliding. But in a low utilisation/node density you could get better throughput than with token-ring. But a load that could bring ethernet to its knees would still be chugging along with token ring. A little like comparing a diseasal to petrol/gas or a
racehorse to a war-horse to completely different schools of thought.

Hmm, as Token-Ring had 16 MBit/s and Ethernet had 10 MBit/s, at least the nominal speed was higher.
And I remember that copying files between my Linux machines really was
fast and made use of that speed in my TR network.
So it really outperformed a 10 MBit/s Ethernet network...

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Hmm, as Token-Ring had 16 MBit/s and Ethernet had 10 MBit/s, at least the

Interesting, I never actually used TR only ThinNet back then, although I did have a couple of people try and talk me into it for perceived advantage. I am/was certain TR had a lower signalling rate though.. Was there more than one version maybe? Ahh there was 4 and 16Mbps versions... I do believe I was being offered 4Mbps as being more effective at full load than 10Mbps Ethernet

I don't ever recall anything much causing network saturation though either. The only time I ever ran into issues was bulk copying via samba you could lock all the other nodes until copying finished.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
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acn wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Someone once joked that you could tell who was a network person by asking them how many syllables were in the word "coax".

Could you explain this one to me? Sorry :)

"normal" people pronounce it with one syllable, network people with two syllables.


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Re: Re: Novell NetWare :)
By: Spectre to acn on Thu Jun 10 2021 12:49 am

I don't ever recall anything much causing network saturation though either. The only time I ever ran into issues was bulk copying via samba you could lock all the other nodes until copying finished.

I had a couple of systems in colo facilities where they'd provide a 10 mbps connection that would start falling over around 6 mbps.
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
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Am 09.06.21 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo poindexter,

Someone once joked that you could tell who was a network person by asking pF>> them how many syllables were in the word "coax".

Could you explain this one to me? Sorry :)

"normal" people pronounce it with one syllable, network people with two syllables.

Oh okay :) Yes, I'm also pronouncing it "co-axial" :)
Thanks!

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Am 10.06.21 schrieb Spectre@21:3/101 in FSX_RETRO:

Hallo Spectre,

I am/was certain TR had a lower signalling rate though.. Was there more
than one version maybe? Ahh there was 4 and 16Mbps versions...

Yes, there were 4 and 16 MBit/s versions, and even a 100 MBit/s version later.

I don't ever recall anything much causing network saturation though
either. The only time I ever ran into issues was bulk copying via samba
you could lock all the other nodes until copying finished.

Well, that is a network saturation then :)
And *that* wouldn't happen in a TR network.

Regards,
Anna

--- OpenXP 5.0.50
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)

Sometimes you need to coax the coax into working :)

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

either. The only time I ever ran into issues was bulk copying via samba you could lock all the other nodes until copying finished.

Well, that is a network saturation then :) And *that* wouldn't
happen in a TR network.

I'm not so sure it was "network" saturation as "server" saturation. At the time we used to retire the oldest PC to the server role. I think at this stage the server was struggling to process packets, but it was also working as a router for both dialup and eventually ADSL. The file copying issue was the only one that ever killed everything. Eventually it "the server" started throwing errors and locking the card up with overflow back to back writes to the card, whatever it was... but either way I think you're right even if the card/server wasn't keeping up TR would still release it.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
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On 06-11-21 12:30, Spectre wrote to acn <=-

Sometimes you need to coax the coax into working :)

:D


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