gerry wrote on 2021-11-01, 08:45:

all shrink-wrapped too?

it's like being in an IT office some time back 😀

Most of them yes. More or less unintentionally as I don't care much about them being shrinkwrapped. I coincidentally got them in this condition.

driver dev kits could revive old hardware.
I've gots shrink wrapped millennium &98se but we've seen them before

First garage sale of the year today! Fortunately, the guy's garage was well heated because it was chilly (-12C ) this morning.

I picked up these two Office 2010 family packs for $4 each, one of which came with an unexpected bonus: it had a Windows 8 Pro activation card tucked away inside! Surprisingly, the license key worked, and I was able to upgrade my little workshop PC from W10 Home to W10 Pro. I'm not sure if this key had simply never been used, or if I inadvertently bumped some rando off of Microsoft's good list; but either way, $4 well spent.

I also picked up Big Fish on VCD, which I thought was just a boring old DVD until the RP. 59000 sticker caught my eye. This came all the way from Indonesia! Even more intriguing was the decidedly high-end packaging (for a VCD; I mean, weren't 99.97% of them pirated?). It has textured lettering on the slipcover, foam disc protectors inside, the whole nine yards. And looking at the discs themselves, they were obviously commercially pressed. As a bit of an obscure video format collector with exactly zero "reference-grade" VCDs in the collection, I just had to have it. Especially for $1. Video quality? Dreadful of course, but hey - should the urge to watch Big Fish on my 486 ever strike, well now I can.

Cool, I got/had exactly one VCD too, "Four Weddings and a Funeral" mine was UK market, packaging was "fat" CD case, with VIDEO CD logo on the black spine part. So I haven't seen them in DVD cases before, best keep an eye out. Vid quality wasn't bad on that, but it's hardly an action pic. There was a very slight mid 90s market for VCD for ppl who'd got 3DO consoles with the MPEG module.

- SQL Server 2000
- Operations Manager 2000
- ISA Server 2000
- Exchange Server 2000
- Application Center 2000
- Frontpage 98
- Word 97

I bought it a few weeks ago but shipping something from South Carolina to New Zealand takes a while these days:

Enclosed media was brand new and unopened. I kind of felt bad breaking the seal on the CD-ROM and cutting open the bags of floppies to image everything. Its a collection of TCP/IP software for DOS and Windows 3.1 (X server, NFS client, FTP client & server, TN3270 telnet client, VT220 telnet client and a bunch of other misc utilities). Price was a bit steep for what it is (US$50 IIRC) but there is very little info about this package out there and curiosity got the better of me.

davidrg wrote on 2022-04-13, 10:30:

I bought it a few weeks ago but shipping something from South Carolina to New Zealand takes a while these days: box.jpg contents […]
Show full quote

I bought it a few weeks ago but shipping something from South Carolina to New Zealand takes a while these days:
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Enclosed media was brand new and unopened. I kind of felt bad breaking the seal on the CD-ROM and cutting open the bags of floppies to image everything. Its a collection of TCP/IP software for DOS and Windows 3.1 (X server, NFS client, FTP client & server, TN3270 telnet client, VT220 telnet client and a bunch of other misc utilities). Price was a bit steep for what it is (US$50 IIRC) but there is very little info about this package out there and curiosity got the better of me.

icons.png
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That's an awesome find and never used. That should provide some good fun playing around with the good ole days of networking.

davidrg wrote on 2022-04-13, 10:30:

I bought it a few weeks ago but shipping something from South Carolina to New Zealand takes a while these days: box.jpg contents […]
Show full quote

I bought it a few weeks ago but shipping something from South Carolina to New Zealand takes a while these days:
box.jpg
contents.jpg

Enclosed media was brand new and unopened. I kind of felt bad breaking the seal on the CD-ROM and cutting open the bags of floppies to image everything. Its a collection of TCP/IP software for DOS and Windows 3.1 (X server, NFS client, FTP client & server, TN3270 telnet client, VT220 telnet client and a bunch of other misc utilities). Price was a bit steep for what it is (US$50 IIRC) but there is very little info about this package out there and curiosity got the better of me.

icons.png
x11.png

Interesting, didn't realise they did an X server... though it'll probably only collaborate with early noughties linux at the latest before they swapped over from XFree86

I believe the DOS utils got included in some DRDOS distibutions, 6.0 upwards.

The X server is licensed from Age Logic (based on XoftWare v1.7 according to the Novell support database and implements X11R4) and is surprisingly nice - not really anything missing when compared to modern X servers for windows. I figured it probably wouldn't cope with a modern desktop environment though so I was going to use an SGI Indy for testing but it kept tripping the RCD/GFCI extension lead. So I installed debian stable in a VM and compiled CDE from source. The IBM 3270 terminal emulator is licensed from Attachemate and the NFS client from Beame & Whitesite. Includes a commercial use license for Netscape 1.01 too. Everything else seems to have been built by Novell.

Getting the NFS client going was a challenge until I read the manual - turns out PC NFS clients of this era need an Authentication Server running somewhere. LAN Workplace includes the source code (and binaries) for the Beame & Whitesite one as well as Novells modified version of it. While I could get it building on linux it didn't work properly and I'm not sure why - probably too much has changed in Linux in the last 27 years. Thankfully pcnfsd from Suns PC-NFS product is compatible and still included in the standard NetBSD distribution so a NetBSD VM was enough to be able to mount NFS shares from DOS and Windows.

Certainly an interesting thing to play around with! I think overall mtcp is more useful these days but getting that running along side the NetWare client is a bit of a pain - requires wasting conventional memory on ODI/packet driver shims and you loose TCP/IP in windows.

Today I received a big box copy of Quake 3 Arena, which completes the FPS trifecta. (UT99, Half-Life and Quake 3 Arena). Acquiring old PC games can be challenging in Germany because there are mostly censored versions around or versions with pretty rancid dubs.

davidrg wrote on 2022-04-14, 02:25:

The X server is licensed from Age Logic (based on XoftWare v1.7 according to the Novell support database and implements X11R4) and is surprisingly nice - not really anything missing when compared to modern X servers for windows. I figured it probably wouldn't cope with a modern desktop environment though so I was going to use an SGI Indy for testing but it kept tripping the RCD/GFCI extension lead. So I installed debian stable in a VM and compiled CDE from source. The IBM 3270 terminal emulator is licensed from Attachemate and the NFS client from Beame & Whitesite. Includes a commercial use license for Netscape 1.01 too. Everything else seems to have been built by Novell.

Getting the NFS client going was a challenge until I read the manual - turns out PC NFS clients of this era need an Authentication Server running somewhere. LAN Workplace includes the source code (and binaries) for the Beame & Whitesite one as well as Novells modified version of it. While I could get it building on linux it didn't work properly and I'm not sure why - probably too much has changed in Linux in the last 27 years. Thankfully pcnfsd from Suns PC-NFS product is compatible and still included in the standard NetBSD distribution so a NetBSD VM was enough to be able to mount NFS shares from DOS and Windows.

Certainly an interesting thing to play around with! I think overall mtcp is more useful these days but getting that running along side the NetWare client is a bit of a pain - requires wasting conventional memory on ODI/packet driver shims and you loose TCP/IP in windows.

I'd guess at needing a 2.x.x kernel based linux to get novell support working, though there was a big change in the middle of that series that broke a lot of stuff also. Not sure which distro was most on the ball with supporting it. At a guess I'd say Slackware, but that's often typo hunting hell to get working right.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-18, 15:07:

I'd guess at needing a 2.x.x kernel based linux to get novell support working, though there was a big change in the middle of that series that broke a lot of stuff also. Not sure which distro was most on the ball with supporting it. At a guess I'd say Slackware, but that's often typo hunting hell to get working right.

Surprisingly Novell stuff still works on current linux to at least some extent - you've just got to install the IPX kernel module first. I've had Mars NWE (Like Samba but for NetWare) running on a Pi recently - DOS, OS/2 and Windows all see the Raspberry Pi as a NetWare 3.12 server and can login, map drives, etc, just like a real one.

The LAN WorkPlace stuff is all TCP/IP based though - while the CD includes the NetWare client you can choose not to install it. I think the issue with the NFS authentication server might just be it doesn't know how to validate your password on a modern Linux (or Debian?) system. The server does compile and run (with a few tweaks to the makefile) but all attempts to authenticate with a valid username and password fail. I couldn't get any logging out of it to diagnose the problem but perhaps it was just having some issue reading /etc/shadow.

Getting there...

Huh, now I remember that I wanted to pick up a copy of Encarta.

Need a "Goldilocks" version of Encarta... not too old or it only works with Orifice, bleh, (Not very featureful anyway that one) not too new or it will just be a frontend for the web stuff that ain't there any more.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-26, 00:08:

Need a "Goldilocks" version of Encarta... not too old or it only works with Orifice, bleh, (Not very featureful anyway that one) not too new or it will just be a frontend for the web stuff that ain't there any more.

This is what I have.. I'd rather own something from 95-96 as these better reflect the pre-internet library versions I used at high school but I'm happy nonetheless.

These are dumpster finds rather than purchases:

I don't know what will I do with that XP, I assume it only works with certain Dell PCs. I already have some other copies anyway. It's unopened.
Geforce 4 driver CD from a manufacturer I'm unfamiliar with. Bit sad it didn't come with the box and graphics card.
Windows NT Server - I already own the Workstation version. I never had Windows Server before.
Excel 97 - I already have a full Office 97, this is in better condition though. I probably won't keep it.

Also not a purchase. A coworker said he had this but doens't want it and the box is pretty worn so he also doesn't want to sell it so if I don't take it, he'll throw it to the trash. It felt morally wrong to let it go to waste.

Warp 3 is my first love..