Haha, thanks for the link! It looks funny, yet charming also! 😁
My younger self sometimes wishs we stil would use such stuff today, rather than all mighty TCP/IP..
Because, it reminds me of simpler times (but not necessarily more primitive times) when things were fresh and experimental.
Experimentation, yes, that's what I miss. New ideas, strange new concepts (MS Bob, do you hear me ?).
By all these standardization approaches, the fun often falls along the wayside. Things became waay to unixoide.

Anyone remember Novell NetWare?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-10-02, 18:59:

Anyone remember Novell NetWare?

I do. I run a virtualized Netware server on Linux and run all my vintage machines diskless. I think Netware is the only sane way to network DOS machines.

That's why I'm interested in these strange NOSs that popped up during this time frame.

I'm the same "Axatax" in this thread (that was "my" machine) --

https://arstechnica.com/information-technolog … -beat-16-years/

Axatax wrote on 2020-10-02, 16:48:

If I had $85 to throw around, I would buy https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Windows-Mose … 71d25c52b00ac03 this, just because, and do a review.

I know someone here has to be up for it?

Does it support the IP/RS protocol (IP over Red Sea) ? 🤣

It uses the WWJD protocol.

That's what's called "bad timing": release a peer-to-peer networking product when Windows 95 was just-released, and WfW was already well-established - both with such an option built-in.
No wonder I have never even heard about that product...

I'm only interested in one thing - those network adapters.
Any idea what they are?
4 Mbps looks like neither Arcnet nor Ethernet...

wiretap wrote on 2020-10-02, 22:58:

It uses the WWJD protocol.

Possibly over finely woven wicker-net .

Could see a use for this pre internet days. Cheep peer to peer network for your non WFW or pure dos environment.
Took some people long while to upgrade, My highschool was still running WFW over coax when I graduated in 98.
Their days were numbered but probably lasted a few more years with existing customers (its version 3 after all)

Grzyb wrote on 2020-10-03, 00:07:

That's what's called "bad timing": release a peer-to-peer networking product when Windows 95 was just-released, and WfW was already well-established - both with such an option built-in.
No wonder I have never even heard about that product...

Let's also respectfully remember the armada of plain Windows 3.1 and Win-OS/2 machines still in use at the time.. And those lonely Unix machines running Wabi. 😉
To them, Moses' Network OS lead into the holy lands of network computing. Perhaps.

Seriously though, neither WfW 3.11 nor Win95 was free. In the 90s, you had to buy licenses for each networked PC. And a piece of commercial software was no klick away yet.
Undet this aspect, a little, obscure network software with a generous license model wasn't a bad alternative, perhaps.

If you bought a network pack for $200 that allowed you to connect 50 PCs or so, without any limitations, it wouldn't be bad. Especially, if you could add cheap serial and parallel connections to the network.

These cheap connections could be homemade by the geeks in the company, for example. Or a poorly paid student (as usual). Use case might be the PCs in the parts of the office with little traffic.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-10-04, 14:04:

Could see a use for this pre internet days. Cheep peer to peer network for your non WFW or pure dos environment.
Took some people long while to upgrade, My highschool was still running WFW over coax when I graduated in 98.
Their days were numbered but probably lasted a few more years with existing customers (its version 3 after all)

You can also use the AppleTalk protocol on DOS and Windows 3.x just fine.
There was a third-party software product with support for NE2000 cards.
A link to an archived article is in an old posting by me:
Re: Best way to transfer files over a network in Windows 95?

Jo22 wrote on 2020-10-04, 14:33:

Let's also respectfully remember the armada of plain Windows 3.1 and Win-OS/2 machines still in use at the time.. And those lonely Unix machines running Wabi. 😉
To them, Moses' Network OS lead into the holy lands of network computing. Perhaps.

Only for the plain Windows 3.1.
Software like that NOS is unlikely to work in Win-OS/2 or Wabi - for them one would need OS/2 Warp Connect and NFS, respectively.

@Axatax: could you remove the ebay link and exchange it for screenshots? We really try to keep ebay links off the site, mostly because we had problems with people that link tot hem before. Thanks

btw, NOS in this case stands for Network Operating Software, not system (OS)

Axatax wrote on 2020-10-02, 19:22:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-10-02, 18:59:

Anyone remember Novell NetWare?

I do. I run a virtualized Netware server on Linux and run all my vintage machines diskless. I think Netware is the only sane way to network DOS machines.

That's why I'm interested in these strange NOSs that popped up during this time frame.

Those sweet memories. I remember taking Turbo Pascal course in 1993; the instructor told us to copy the practice files from a sub-directory (yes, it was called sub-directory at that time) in the drive X:.

Little did I realize that drive X: is a network share folder.

Still want to runup a Netware sever on my reto LAN. Would need to be dos and IPX based as that's what I associate it with so probably 3x or 4x.
never used in the "wild" but had to set it up in a lab environment in collage a few times and liked it.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-10-05, 08:08:

Still want to runup a Netware sever on my reto LAN. Would need to be dos and IPX based as that's what I associate it with so probably 3x or 4x.
never used in the "wild" but had to set it up in a lab environment in collage a few times and liked it.

4.x is the best, I think for what we're interested in. You can serve every type of client from DOS 3.3 to at least XP (don't know if anything happened with Novell after that). I think if you have a bunch of DOS machines, or even a mixed network of Mac, OS/2, certain UNIX flavors (even IRIX), this is really the way to go vs. maintaining storage for each machine.

When the whole symphony is playing, the experience is indistinguishable from using local disks for the most part. Netware is a whole different experience from MS's attempts at networking during this era -- Novell's Client32, for example requires 4K of conventional memory for the whole stack vs. MS' 230K LanManager stuff for DOS.

I was considering doing some type of "HOW-TO" for Netware geared toward retro computing or whatnot if that would be of interest.

agree 4x is the better choice but 3x was it's heyday.
but what's holding me back is need another dual CPU system as I want that 2nd snake on the screensaver 😉

We have had a few people ask about Netware without knowing it, usually something like "As I've got the drivers loaded for Doom network can I also share files"
so was going to do a howto but not anytime soon so I'd say go for it!