The

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...

3Server was a headless dedicated

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the techn ...

machine designed to run 3Com

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

(LAN) server software,

3+Share 3 (three) is a number, numeral (linguistics), numeral and numerical digit, digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cu ...

Background

The companion product was the diskless 3Station network workstation, a dedicated client machine. However, 3Servers could also network with standard PC-compatibles and were commonly used in this role. Having no display other than a small one-line

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but i ...

and no keyboard or mouse interface, 3Servers were controlled via another PC on the network which allowed console access to the internal server software. The original 3Server was a x86 computer that wasn't compatible with any ordinary PC based on an

Intel 80186 The Intel 80186, also known as the iAPX 186, or just 186, is a microprocessor and microcontroller introduced in 1982. It was based on the Intel 8086 and, like it, had a 16-bit external data bus multiplexed with a 20-bit address bus. The 80 ...

CPU, running a special version of

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

and 3Com's proprietary

network server In computing, a server is a piece of computer hardware or software (computer program) that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called " clients". This architecture is called the client–server model. Servers can provide vario ...

software. This was a multitasking network server stack that ran on top of single-tasking DOS. Internally, it had a

network stack The protocol stack or network stack is an implementation of a computer networking protocol suite or protocol family. Some of these terms are used interchangeably but strictly speaking, the ''suite'' is the definition of the communication protoco ...

, file and print server modules, disk caching, user handling and more, all running simultaneously inside the DOS memory space. Because they were not limited by the PC memory map, 3Servers could support 1

megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...

of flat memory, breaking the PC's 640 kB barrier. This was a large amount of RAM for the time. The original 3Server shipped in 1985 with of RAM and a single hard disk. It had slots for adding six additional drives, making it one of the first

network attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the techn ...

(NAS) arrays. It supported both

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

(then branded EtherSeries) and

AppleTalk AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the ...

and was quick to add IBM Token Ring as well. The 3Server/70, introduced in July 1985, doubled the storage space to The 3Server/500 was a

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors 80486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the ...

-based 3Server/600 introduced in 1991. The last models, the 3Server386 family, ran

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

1.3 as the basic operating system, using 3+Open, a variant of OS/2

LAN Manager LAN Manager is a discontinued network operating system (NOS) available from multiple vendors and developed by Microsoft in cooperation with 3Com Corporation. It was designed to succeed 3Com's 3+Share network server software which ran atop a he ...

. 3Com's version was an enhancement of the basic LAN Manager package, also sold by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

and IBM and on other operating systems - for example, running on

VAX/VMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Ope ...

it was the basis of DEC

Pathworks PATHWORKS (it was usually written in all caps) was the trade name used by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts for a series of programs that eased the interoperation of Digital's minicomputers and servers with personal computer ...

Decline

In February, 1991, 3Com announced that it would hand over all rights to LAN Manager, 3+Open, its Macintosh and NetWare integration, and related software to Microsoft. The company soon exited the network server business as well.

References

Server hardware {{server-compu-stub