Subj : Re: Novell NetWare :)
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : acn
Date : Thu Jun 03 2021 14:21:00

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

Hallo poindexter,

ac>> 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 :)

pF> 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 :)

pF> I started with Netware 2.2 on a Mac network running on Token Ring in 1991;
pF> probably the second weirdest install I'd worked on. It was an all IBM, all
pF> 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 :)

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

Cool :)

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

pF> Novell 3.11 and 3.12 were a beautiful combination of simplicity and
pF> stability; I had some of those crazy 1-year uptimes you'd read about - but
pF> 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)

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