swampfox wrote:

Hopefully Marvin is okay for this, being older PC related. […]
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Hopefully Marvin is okay for this, being older PC related.

I've recently been messing around with Novell DOS 7, which is a variant of DR-DOS bundled with Personal NetWare and some other additions.
Its a tad difficult to get full advantage of its networking capabilities, because you not only have to have a Netware ODI, but NDIS2 drivers, a packet driver, and NETX.EXE.
NETX is basically 'net start' for Netware, and it comes with it, but only as a Netware VLM (Virtual Loadable Module), which works fine with other NW-aware machines on the network, but to be able to do IPX/SPX with it over DOS, it needs NETX in an MZ-executable form, which was only available on a seperate Novell Applications Diskette.

In VirtualBox, setting up Networking is a PITA, because there are many different PCNet drivers out there. I finally AMD's official "LAN-32PCI" driver package on some foreign university's FTP server, and it comes with a nice GUI installer under DOS, even. However, after installing the initial ODI driver, it crashes and forced to reboot.
If you do it via command-line instead of the installer, Novell's internal SETUP doesn't do Plug-and-Play, so you have to set Interrupts, Ethernet frame type, and whatnot manually. VirtualBox doesn't give you this information, and option I've tried doesn't seem to work.

Perhaps I'll try it in DOSBox SVN Daum. I know for a fact NW works well with the NE2000. Hell, its Novells own card, and all the drivers are bundled with Netware.

But what would be more interesting, is setting up a NetWare LAN with real hardware! Which I plan on doing and documenting the event this weekend.

Got this ISA Ethernet Card. Can't really identify the make and model, but it clearly says its a Plug-and-Play NE2000 compatible, so I'm okay driver-wise. No gimped Winbond controller either, so I don't believe there are any real compatibility issues.
What I do not know, however, is whether it is 10BASE-T(10Mbps) or 100BASE-TX(Fast Ethernet).
Being an ISA card and related to the NE2000, I want to say the former.
Fast Ethernet came out in 1995, but they made ISA cards throughout the later half of the 90s, and NE2000s that were faster, as well.
There are no dates or FCC IDs on it.

Does anyone have any info? Much appreciated.

Also, if you can, feel free to share any NetWare experience or stories you may have. I know that there are many DOS games that support its IPX/SPX protocol. Anything there of interest?
My first time playing games over the internet was with DirectPlay (I assume TCP/IP) over a dial-up PPPoE connection with Doom 95.

I feel your pain. I'm trying to get Netware 5.1 (wish it was 4.11) running in VirtualBox, so I can use it a funky ginormous GNS3 topology I'm planning. Doesn't help that I'd lost ALL my CNE courseware, and had to get a used reference off amazon for 42 cents. Won't have it for another 4-5 days.

That card is most likely 10BASE2 (the thinnet BNC gives it away), and vaguely remember there being a MAC Address AND another network number you had to deal with. It's definitely not 10BASE-T, because that's twisted pair. If it had a transciever, I woulda said 10BASE5 (thicknet).

Oh, and it's a LANF7236 from Delta Electronics (in H.K?).

Long story short, I was a CNE 4.x and 5.x, but I haven't used it since I had to teach some courses back in late 2000 - early 2001. I did so love NDS (suck it, domain model! and you too, bindery!), Zenworks, being able to load/unload NLMs without crashing the server or needing to reboot. the Netware client, etc... The fact it bootstrapped with DR-DOS was awesome. I was an MCSE/MCT as well as a CNE, and I preferred Netware over NT4 every time. I've long since become a cisco/adtran/juniper/radio guy, and I kinda miss the simple days of futzing with servers. I wish Novell hadn't screwed the pooch so bad...

I kinda remember the IPX to IP translator of ver 5 being fiddly, and I LOATHED the Java Console One. It was so slow, as to be useless

*EDIT*

Oh, did you know that some cisco IOS devices still support IPX/SPX? I've got some, and that's definitely gonna feature into my crazy topology from hell. 🤣

Looking at the NDS NLM management tools, it seems a lot more pleasant to work with than Windows Active Directory.

Anyway, probably should have mentioned, but there is an RJ-45 jack right next to the BNC connector.
Could the RJ-45 be for 1BASE5/StarLAN? I hope not, thats even slower than 10BASE2.

swampfox wrote:

Looking at the NDS NLM management tools, it seems a lot more pleasant to work with than Windows Active Directory.

Anyway, probably should have mentioned, but there is an RJ-45 jack right next to the BNC connector.
Could the RJ-45 be for 1BASE5/StarLAN? I hope not, thats even slower than 10BASE2.

AH! I didn't see the RJ-45 port, so I'm mistaken. It's a 10BASET card after all (the T just means Twisted Pair), but that BNC confuses me. It's most likely a 10Mbit card.

Active Directory is what MS stole from NDS/eDirectory. In the NT 4 days, Microsoft used a Domain model, so you had Primary Domain Controller, and a Backup. You then built "trust relationships" with other domains, and that's how you'd segment out an enterprise network. Total PITA. The inverted tree of NDS, with the objects, containers, rights priviliges, replication servers to keep logins from spanning the wan whenever possible was pure genius! NDS was a dream to administrate! And using ZEN with Client32 was a masterstroke. User goofed up important system files? Zen will fix it at their next login. Plus it had fantastic inventory control built-in.

And none of that even touches on the awesomeness that was NSS.

Man, this is really bringing back some fond memories! 🤣

*EDIT*

For the record, I do want to say that Microsoft totally overengineered that domain model crap. VLANs would've been the way to go.

*EDIT: The Second*

I forgot to mention that if you give me a couple of days to go over that book after it gets delivered, I can probably help you get what you need running, too. It's like riding a bike, once I see the old system utils, I'll get back up to speed pretty quick. One thing though, is that Netware isn't a supported OS in VirtualBox (even DOS has had limited testing), so we'll be charting new territory. 🤣

Word of warning NE2000 is just a standard and some manufactures did a better job then others at compatible so if you can find the actual card's drivers you may have better luck.
I did a quick google on Delta LANF7236G and found this page http://forums.justlinux.com/showthread.php?11 … rk-Card-to-work
about 4 posts down there is a ling to a driver package that has NetWare drivers. Took me 100 downloads or so till I found drivers that worked with my NE2000 compatible card.

I've been thinking of running up a Novell server for dos sharing, I have a soft spot for 3.12 Totally unnecessary for my setup but why not? Is very low on my to do list though.

chinny22 wrote:

Word of warning NE2000 is just a standard and some manufactures did a better job then others at compatible so if you can find th […]
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Word of warning NE2000 is just a standard and some manufactures did a better job then others at compatible so if you can find the actual card's drivers you may have better luck.
I did a quick google on Delta LANF7236G and found this page http://forums.justlinux.com/showthread.php?11 … rk-Card-to-work
about 4 posts down there is a ling to a driver package that has NetWare drivers. Took me 100 downloads or so till I found drivers that worked with my NE2000 compatible card.

I've been thinking of running up a Novell server for dos sharing, I have a soft spot for 3.12 Totally unnecessary for my setup but why not? Is very low on my to do list though.

Ugh, dealing with Bindery?! No thanks! Bindery emulation was a PITA in Netware 4. NDS/eDirectory is orders of magnitude better.

/I know a guy who still runs Netware 286, though, so to each his own. 🤣

chinny22 wrote:

Word of warning NE2000 is just a standard and some manufactures did a better job then others at compatible so if you can find th […]
Show full quote

Word of warning NE2000 is just a standard and some manufactures did a better job then others at compatible so if you can find the actual card's drivers you may have better luck.
I did a quick google on Delta LANF7236G and found this page http://forums.justlinux.com/showthread.php?11 … rk-Card-to-work
about 4 posts down there is a ling to a driver package that has NetWare drivers. Took me 100 downloads or so till I found drivers that worked with my NE2000 compatible card.

I've been thinking of running up a Novell server for dos sharing, I have a soft spot for 3.12 Totally unnecessary for my setup but why not? Is very low on my to do list though.

That is helpful. Unfortunately, that link redirects to DriverGuide and forces you to download some "automatic downloader." No thanks.
Fortunately, found a mirror: ftp://ftp.dlink.com/NIC/de220/Driver/

So its a D-Link DE220? I'm skeptical. Pictures of that card sure look quite similar to mine, but I don't see the Delta IC anywhere.
Guess it wouldn't hurt to try though. Thanks.

Yeah, I don't know why, but there is something about NetWare that I like. Find it...compelling. And its not necessary for me, either.
Glad I'm not the only one. 😁

swampfox wrote:

Yeah, I don't know why, but there is something about NetWare that I like. Find it...compelling. And its not necessary for me, either.
Glad I'm not the only one. 😁

Trust me, the deeper you get into Netware, the more you'll like. I prefer 4.11 myself, but it was really miles ahead of Microsoft at that time period.

I really can't wait for that book to show up, so I can get a refresher on everything I've forgotten about it. Blows my mind Novell doesn't offer courseware for EOL products, even if it was just in ebook format, with a download link to the 2-user student eval of the OS. It's no like they sell it anymore, and anyone still using Netware long since moved to the Linux based versions...

That Delta chip is just a DC-DC converter (inefficient too, ~75%), so the manufacturer can likely have replaced it with whatever was available and matched the specs.

The LAN7236 is just the magnetics / lowpass filter package, also as generic as it gets. To really know what model ethernet controller it uses I'd recommend peeling that "NE2000 compatible" sticker.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was a RTL8019, they're common as dirt. Lack of jumpers indicate PnP compatibility. Best option would be to boot DOS, get yourself a copy of rset8019.exe (the rtl8019 configuration utility) and see if it detects the chip / allows you to change settings. Looking at the POST messages on some systems also lists what ISA PnP hardware is connected, with the name of said hardware.

BWAHAHA! Got my Netware 5.1 server working in VirtualBox (ROUTE.NLM refused to install, though)!!! Now to populate NDS, get used to the CLI again, and figure out how to incorporate this, and a few Client32 machines into GNS3. 🤣

Maeslin wrote:

That Delta chip is just a DC-DC converter (inefficient too, ~75%), so the manufacturer can likely have replaced it with whatever was available and matched the specs.

The LAN7236 is just the magnetics / lowpass filter package, also as generic as it gets. To really know what model ethernet controller it uses I'd recommend peeling that "NE2000 compatible" sticker.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was a RTL8019, they're common as dirt. Lack of jumpers indicate PnP compatibility. Best option would be to boot DOS, get yourself a copy of rset8019.exe (the rtl8019 configuration utility) and see if it detects the chip / allows you to change settings. Looking at the POST messages on some systems also lists what ISA PnP hardware is connected, with the name of said hardware.

...
Wow, I can't believe I didn't think to peel off the sticker.
Thank you!
Found its a UMC UM9008f, and the drivers are here: http://download.solodrivers.com/gestor_downlo … ed/umc/um9008f/

And its 10BASE-T. You can tell because the xtal on the card is only 20MHz.

swampfox wrote:

In VirtualBox, setting up Networking is a PITA, because there are many different PCNet drivers out there. I finally AMD's official "LAN-32PCI" driver package on some foreign university's FTP server, and it comes with a nice GUI installer under DOS, even. However, after installing the initial ODI driver, it crashes and forced to reboot.
If you do it via command-line instead of the installer, Novell's internal SETUP doesn't do Plug-and-Play, so you have to set Interrupts, Ethernet frame type, and whatnot manually. VirtualBox doesn't give you this information, and option I've tried doesn't seem to work.

Sorry to resurrect this, but that Netware book I ordered showed up late last week. PM me, if you need details. I picked the book up for $0.42 on Amazon (used). And one thing I notice with the latest VirtualBox is that you *must* set it up as an AMD PCNETII AND you have to load the ACPI drivers, otherwise it's a no go.

And if you are using VB, you *must* have the client station and the NW server talk directly to each others ports via UDP Tunneling (using vboxwrapper). For example, both used 127.0.0.1 loopback, but you had to cross over the source and destination ports to get them to communiacate, which is as pointless as just connecting the two via a crossover. No amount of getting the server talk to multiple stations over a generic etherswitch, nor a L3 switch seems to work so far. :?

Example: NW5.1 server uses 127.0.0.1: src 20902 dst 20903. The Client station (NT4 or Win98SE) uses 127.0.0.1: src 20903 dst 20902. Absolute PITA. None of the other options worked, since I'm not about to change my entire network address schema to allow bridging, since NONE of these devices have any reason to talk to the internet while in my GNS3 practice topologies.

EDIT

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your initial post, but Netware doesn't use DR-DOS/DOS7 for anything more than bootstrapping. It's a very common misconception that older versions of Netware were DOS based. I apologize in advance if I misunderstood what you meant.

I have been able to connect lots of systems in the past with Novell NetWare Lite / Personal NetWare. BNC & UTP mixed. 3COM EtherLink II / III and NE1000/2000 cards. Works fine. As long as you load the stack: LSL, NE2000 / 3C50*, IPXODI.

Novell Netware and IPX was my first try at networking long before we started using TCP/IP and all that. I rather enjoyed it, wasn't hard to setup and lots of games supported IPX 😀

PeterLI wrote:

I have been able to connect lots of systems in the past with Novell NetWare Lite / Personal NetWare. BNC & UTP mixed. 3COM EtherLink II / III and NE1000/2000 cards. Works fine. As long as you load the stack: LSL, NE2000 / 3C50*, IPXODI.

Oh yeah, back in the day, it was a DREAM to setup (and I *loved* NDS and Z.E.N), and that was back when I was teaching NT4/2000 courses, as well as CNE 4x/5.x courses.

The issue I've got is integrating it into GNS3, so I can build a large virtual topology to simulate real world setup. I'm thinking the issue with that is the vboxwrapper they use. And the sad part is, I think GNS3 beta broke that funcitionality.