Novell Netware Clint in 32 bit?

One quesstion. Gives it a Novell Netware Clint in 32 bit? I only can find one in 28 bit.

Micky

Eh?

Do you mean ‘client’ and 26 bit?

Ah, ok. Two mistakes. I mean client and 26 bit.

Micky

People still use Novell Netware?
I, slightly vaguely, recall the last netware “server”¹ at work. I can’t recall whether we shut it down in 2005 or 2006.

¹ “Server” as it was, in its last incarnation², utilising my old PC chassis and m/b, a couple of NICs from a previous incarnation and a hard disc from our stock.

I thought Netware was dead and buried 20 years ago. Certainly, dead and buried is what it should be.

I use Novell Netware and need a Risc OS client. What is with IPX? Has Risc OS 5 IPX or not?

Micky

I’m not aware of any 32bit IPX support.

Acorn were quite early adopters of TCP/IP (at least in the home computer sense), releasing TCP/IP products in the late 80s I believe.
Before that, they used their proprietory Econet system.

When they developed Access/ShareFS for easy machine-to-machine networking, it was built on a TCP/IP foundation (well UDP), and then the TCP/IP stack gradually found its way into ROM.
As such, RISC OS essentially bypassed other network standards like IPX and NetBEUI (although !Omni had NetBEUI support for schools to access MS servers) – by contrast, MS were quite late to the TCP/IP party (Win95 didn’t include TCP/IP without a commercial add-on).

This was a bit of a problem when we ported games in the 1990s – almost all of them used IPX for multiplayer, not TCP/IP.

In the late 1990s (around the time Acorn closed down) I think someone did do an IPX driver for 26bit era machines, and possibly a full netware client. I haven’t any first hand experience though.

If you look at the history of netware, they moved to a “netware over TCP/IP” thing in later versions, and it is possible that something fitted in there – not sure. My last Netware experience was installing Netware 4 (barely) on 386 PCs at my old school (circa 93), and watching the “OS” basically collapse the computers to a barely useable state. Par for the course for PCs in that era, unless you kept investing year-on-year.

Short version – although there was a user-created IPX/Netware driver(s) for 26bit machines, I don’t think any of them were ever 32bitted, and none were ever formal enough to be part of !Omni etc. They may/may not have ever worked. It is conceivable that Aemulor will allow them to run for test purposes, but I have never tried.

In more positive news, there is actually source provided here…

https://www.kingswood-consulting.co.uk/nwclient/

I thought Netware was dead and buried 20 years ago.

As you will note, with enough “Trigger’s broom” work, it was possible to keep it on life support. Exporting the database and importing to a SQL setup on a real server was declared to be a 6 week 30 data-clerk manual process. Or, after a bit of Auto-IT scripting by myself and a colleague – a two-mouse-click and leave it for 30 minutes process.

Certainly, dead and buried is what it should be.

Holly stake through the middle, bury at crossroads at midnight is probably best.

by contrast, MS were quite late to the TCP/IP party (Win95 didn’t include TCP/IP without a commercial add-on).

I don’t think this is correct. Last Windows I had to install a 3rd party TCP/IP stack was Windows 3.1 (Trumpet Winsocket, which was shareware and I think free for private use). Windows for Workgroups (3.11) had MS TCP/IP included, and so had Win95 (although it was not installed by default, but it was shipped with it by default).

I think RISC OS 3.6 was the first to include the TCP/IP stack by default. If the Freenet stack as well as all those applications like Telnet and FTP clients didn’t exist back then, we would have been stuck with Acorn’s ultra-expensive “TCP/IP suite”.

All IIRC of course, it has been a long time…oh, and PPP took a long time to be supported “for free” – I wasted literally days of work creating clever dial-up connection scripts for SLIP to work around that problem, while my PC-using friends just shook their head in disbelief.

I don’t think this is correct. Last Windows I had to install a 3rd party TCP/IP stack was Windows 3.1 (Trumpet Winsocket, which was shareware and I think free for private use).

Correct.

Windows for Workgroups (3.11) had MS TCP/IP included,

Correct, but could be a bit fragile at times.

and so had Win95 (although it was not installed by default, but it was shipped with it by default).

Correct. NetBEUI was on, the TCP/IP was an extra dive into more obscure config as I recall. MS were still pushing the brilliance of an unroutable networking protocol. Mind you, on a toss up to choose between IPX and NetBEUI I think IPX was worse.

The worst part of the MS setup was that, irrespective of any fiddles to the configured order of protocol precedence, it always sent every packet using NB first (three times) before moving to any alternate protocol. There were immense speed ups available to PCs in a routed network by simply removing NetBEUI from server and clients.

Apologies if I was wrong there – I vividly recall having to buy the Plus pack for Win95 to be able to add TCP/IP and thought it wasn’t included in the base OS until the OSR2 release.

However, I can’t find much corroboration of that, beyond the fact that Plus contained Internet Explorer and dialup internet access.

Acorn network cards included versions of the TCP/IP stack in the early 1990s, although it may well have been the more limited InternetA module. Enough for TCP/IP based file sharing.

The lack of the Resolver module in 3.70 was a big omission thought :(

lol guys, are we seriously in a position to discuss nailing the lid shut on other archaic operating systems while keeping a straight face?

At the risk of being on topic..

Did anybody else download that source and look at it? I did on RISC OS which seemed like the right choice but I don’t think it was. What tool chain from 2006 would have cross compiled for RISC OS on presumably windows?

There is quite a bit of arm assembler in it and that would all have to be checked to be 32bit clean.

I am not up for it.

In the day I was writing my own ipx stack and 802.3 DCI4 handler, but dropped it stone dead when a boot leg copy of this one arrived in my lap.

I used ipx boot disks against the Marse netware deamon on Linux with ghost to image windows machines for long after having any official netware products to support.

I would say make your netware server talk something else too like NFS and use a RISC OS nfs client instead.

I had another project at the time, and Watcom C, in mind which was to make an NLM that could speak RISC OS NetFS to ethernet connected clients. My strategy was to make it work on RISC OS first and then port to Netware. A another cooperative multitasking os built out of discrete modules. For those who have never seen it, its surprisingly similar, minus the GUI.

Its good to see Netware getting a mention even if in a very surprising place, and also that I am not the only nutter with a foot in both camps.

lol guys, are we seriously in a position to discuss nailing the lid shut on other archaic operating systems while keeping a straight face?

The last version of Netware that had a reliance on IPX was 3.x IIRC. Later v3.x had TCP/IP capability, 4.x was default TCP with IPX capability.

So, back in RO land, the question would be phrased: “are we seriously nailing shut the support for Arthur and RO2?”

Did anybody else download that source and look at it?

I had a look to see how much was .arm files as opposed to anything that would be relatively easy for someone to update.
The answer is that unless the code is already mostly 32 clean, then the PC card software would be easier to bring into the 32 bit world and no one has done all of that.

Did anybody else download that source and look at it? I did on RISC OS which seemed like the right choice but I don’t think it was. What tool chain from 2006 would have cross compiled for RISC OS on presumably windows?

I did download the sources as I wondered if it was an easy win to recompile the module and/or touch up the assembler function exits. I was slightly aghast at whatever assembler syntax that was – very unusual – it wasn’t GCC and it wasn’t ObjAsm (or armasm from RealView on Windows). So there would be two steps required: a first pass to swap to a syntax of a tool I have, then review any 26 bit-isms.

Unfortunately that’s more than the 30 minutes I had spare. I’d guess you’re looking at about 2 days’ work.

The answer is that unless the code is already mostly 32 clean, then the PC card software would be easier to bring into the 32 bit world and no one has done all of that.

Ah yes – how are you getting on with that Steve? I remember adding an OS_Memory 9 subreason for you in 2014 but did you make any progress with !PC since then?

Maybe one of us should venture to ask nwclient@kingswood.consulting.co.uk, probably best if its not all of us though.

I just found my install cd set for 4.11 should it come to that but as to what to install it on that might have a compatible NIC, it could be a challenge. I an ne2000 ISA card. I recently built up a modern PC case with a DX5-133 SBC for my Ecolink card so I could swap the Ecolink for the NE2000 I guess.

At the risk of being even more off topic..
I think these version numbers are all out by one.
> The last version of Netware that had a reliance on IPX was 3.x IIRC. Later v3.x had TCP/IP capability, 4.x was default TCP with IPX capability.
I ran near on a thousand machines over four campuses on Netware 4.1 and the only things that smelt of tcpip at all were the vax. It might have been native tcpip by Netware 5 but it surely wasn’t the default for four.

I was slightly aghast at whatever assembler syntax that was – very unusual

Downloaded and had a quick look. It looks like it might have been the ancient “as” assembler (Google says Niklas Röjemo).

That’s the problem when the computer company makes their assembler an expensive commercial product…people write their own, and with different syntax (consider also Nick’s Asm)…

Ah yes – how are you getting on with that Steve? I remember adding an OS_Memory 9 subreason for you in 2014 but did you make any progress with !PC since then?

That was around the time when people started ramping up the workload without ramping up the staff resource.
I think in the intervening time about the only thing I’ve looked at is tweaking the keyboard shortcuts in the desktop and then some rather rude comments shifted my focus elsewhere.
Not being an actual regular programmer, my focus is easily shifted away.

I think these version numbers are all out by one.

That’s what 15 plus years of brain fade will do for you.
I do recall that the affected database had a dependency on a feature in 3.x that wasn’t supported in 4.x and that the only available version we could use for TCP/IP was 4.x

I use the emulator RPCEmu 0.9.4 with Risc OS 3.71 with ethernet bridge.

And now I have access to Novell Netware 5.1 with IPX.

Micky