NetWare Lite and Personal NetWare are a series of discontinued

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

s developed by

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

for

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

- and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

-based

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s aimed at personal users and

small business Small businesses are types of corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships which have a small number of employees and/or less annual revenue than a regular-sized business or corporation. Businesses are defined as "small" in terms of being ...

es in the 1990s.

NetWare Lite

In 1991, Novell introduced NetWare Lite 1.0 (NWL), as a radically different and cheaper alternative to their central server-based

NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The final update release was ver ...

product. Codenamed "Slurpee", NetWare Lite was an answer to Artisoft's similar

LANtastic LANtastic is a peer-to-peer local area network (LAN) operating system for DOS and Microsoft Windows (and formerly OS/2). The ''New York Times'' described the network, which permits machines to function both as servers and as workstations, as allow ...

: both were peer-to-peer systems, where no dedicated server was required, but instead all PCs on the network could share their resources. Netware Lite contained a unique serial number in the EXE files that prevented running the same copy on multiple nodes within a single network. This basic copy protection was easily circumvented by comparing files from different licenses and accordingly editing the serial number bytes. The product was upgraded to NetWare Lite 1.1 and also came bundled with DR DOS 6.0. Some components of NetWare Lite were used in Novell's NetWare PalmDOS 1.0 in 1992. A Japanese version of NetWare Lite named "NetWare Lite 1.1J" existed in 1992 for four platforms (

DOS/V DOS/V is a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow DOS on IBM PC compatibles with VGA cards to handle Double-byte character set, double-byte (DBCS) Japanese text via software alone. It was initially developed from PC DOS by IBM f ...

, Fujitsu FM-R, NEC PC-98/

Epson PC The , commonly shortened to PC-98 or simply , is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit Personal computer, personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2003. While based on Intel processors, it uses an in-house architecture making it inc ...

and Toshiba J-3100) and was supported up to 1997. Updates were distributed by Novell as DOSV6.EXE, DOSV.EXE, TSBODI.LZH. NetWare Lite 1.1 came bundled with NLSNIPES, a newer implementation of Novell's Snipes game.

Personal NetWare

Significantly reworked, the product line, codenamed "Smirnoff", became Personal NetWare 1.0 (PNW) in 1994. The ODI/VLM 16-bit DOS client portion of the drivers now supported individually loadable

Virtual Loadable Module NetWare Lite and Personal NetWare are a series of discontinued peer-to-peer local area networks developed by Novell for DOS- and Windows-based personal computers aimed at personal users and small businesses in the 1990s. NetWare Lite In 1991, ...

s (VLMs) for an improved flexibility and customizability, whereas the server portion could utilize Novell's

DOS Protected Mode Services DOS Protected Mode Services (DPMS) is a set of extended DOS memory management services to allow DPMS-enabled DOS drivers to load and execute in extended memory and protected mode. Not being a DOS extender by itself, DPMS is a minimal set of ...

(DPMS), if loaded, to reduce its

conventional memory In DOS memory management, conventional memory, also called base memory, is the first 640 kilobytes of the memory on IBM PC or compatible systems. It is the read-write memory directly addressable by the processor for use by the operating system ...

footprint and run in

extended memory In DOS memory management, extended memory refers to memory above the first megabyte (220 bytes) of address space in an IBM PC or compatible with an 80286 or later processor. The term is mainly used under the DOS and Windows operating systems. D ...

and

protected mode In computing, protected mode, also called protected virtual address mode, is an operational mode of x86-compatible central processing units (CPUs). It allows system software to use features such as Memory_segmentation, segmentation, virtual mem ...

. The NetWare Lite disk cache NLCACHE had been reworked into

NWCACHE NetWare Lite and Personal NetWare are a series of discontinued peer-to-peer local area networks developed by Novell for DOS- and Windows-based personal computers aimed at personal users and small businesses in the 1990s. NetWare Lite In 1991, ...

, which was easier to set up and could utilize DPMS as well, thereby reducing the DOS

memory footprint Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running. The word footprint generally refers to the extent of physical dimensions that an object occupies, giving a sense of its size. In computing, t ...

and significantly speeding up disk performance. Personal NetWare came bundled with the network-enabled game NetWars 2.06. A Japanese version of Personal NetWare 1.0 named "Personal NetWare J 1.0" existed for four platforms (

, Fujitsu FM-R, NEC PC-98/

and Toshiba J-3100) and was supported up to 1995. Updates were distributed by Novell as P10J0?.EXE (with ? replaced by 1 - 5), PNDOSV2.EXE, PNDOSV1.LZH. The Personal NetWare 1.0 product saw five maintenance upgrades for the Western issues and two for the Japanese versions as well as various comprehensive updates to the corresponding VLM client driver suite (1.0, 1.1, 1.20, 1.21) as part of the Novell Client Kit for DOS & Windows up to November 1996 in the Western world and up to April 1997 in Japan. They added many new MLID (

Media Link Interface Driver Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inte ...

) drivers, including drivers for

SLIP Slip or The Slip may refer to: * Slip (clothing), an underdress or underskirt Music * The Slip (band), a rock band * ''Slip'' (album), a 1993 album by the band Quicksand * ''The Slip'' (album) (2008), a.k.a. Halo 27, the seventh studio al ...

and PPP, as well as extra codepages and languages. A full version of Personal NetWare (save the interactive tutorials) also came bundled with Novell DOS 7 in 1994 at a price similar to that of the stand-alone version of Personal NetWare. Portions of Personal NetWare were incorporated into Novell's LAN Workplace for DOS and NetWare Mobile for DOS products, and as such compatible

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

drivers became available for the system as well. Later, Personal NetWare was bundled with full versions of

Caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

OpenDOS 7.01 DR-DOS is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles, originally developed by Gary A. Kildall's Digital Research, Inc. and derived from Concurrent PC DOS 6.0, which was an advanced successor of CP/M-86. Upon its introduction in 1988, ...

, DR-DOS 7.02 and 7.03 between 1997 and 1999; however, these bundles were delivered with the same Personal NetWare files shipping with Novell DOS 7, not the upgraded files, which had been made available for download by Novell since 1994. The ODI/VLM client stack with TCP/IP drivers also found its way into the DR-WebSpyder distribution in 1997. When Novell in 1996 introduced its ODI32/ NIOS 32-bit DOS/Windows client ( Client 32), it used

NetWare Loadable Module A NetWare Loadable Module (NLM) is a loadable kernel module (a binary code module) that can be loaded into Novell's NetWare operating system. NLMs can implement hardware drivers, server functions (e.g. clustering), applications (e.g. GroupWi ...

s (NLMs) instead of VLM modules. While the NIOS client could reduce the conventional memory footprint down to 2 to 5 KB in total, the lack of something like a "PNW.NLM" module (in analogy to the VLM client's PNW.VLM) made it impossible to use the new client in conjunction with a Personal NetWare server.

NetWare clients for DOS

* NETX-based 16-bit client for DOS * ODI/VLM-based 16-bit client for DOS * ODI32/ NIOS-based 32-bit client for DOS (not for NWL and PNW)

LAN WorkPlace for DOS

NetWare Mobile

References

External links

* * * https://www.novell.com/developer/ndk/odi_lan_driver_components.html * https://www.novell.com/developer/ndk/novell_developer_kit_unsupported.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Personal Netware

Personal NetWare NetWare Lite and Personal NetWare are a series of discontinued peer-to-peer local area networks developed by Novell for DOS- and Windows-based personal computers aimed at personal users and small businesses in the 1990s. NetWare Lite In 1991, ...

Novell NetWare Proprietary software