NetWare Lite and Personal NetWare are a series of discontinued peer-to-peer local area networks 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 Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

for DOS- and Windows-based personal computers aimed at personal users and

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

es in the 1990s.

NetWare Lite

In 1991, Novell introduced a radically different and cheaper product from 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 original NetWare product in 19 ...

product, NetWare Lite 1.0 (NWL), codenamed "Slurpee", in answer to

Artisoft Vertical Communications, Inc. is a corporation that specializes in cloud and premises-based private branch exchanges, i.e., business telephone systems. Vertical Communications changed its name on January 1, 2005 from Artisoft, Inc. after acquirin ...

'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 all ...

. 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 file .exe is a common filename extension denoting an executable file (the main execution point of a computer program) for Microsoft Windows, OS/2, and DOS. File formats There are numerous file formats which may be used by a file with a extensio ...

s 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,

Fujitsu FM-R The is a Japanese personal computer, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with IBM PC compatibles. ...

, NEC PC-98/ Epson PC and

Toshiba J-3100 The Toshiba T3100 was a portable PC manufactured by Toshiba released in 1986. It featured a hard drive, 8 MHz Intel 80286 CPU and a black & orange 9.6" gas-plasma display with a resolution of 640x400 pixels. The portable had for the time a ...

) 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 ''Snipes'' (diminutive for Snipers) is a text-mode networked computer game that was created in 1983 by SuperSet Software. Snipes is officially credited as being the original inspiration for NetWars. It was one of the earliest text mode mul ...

, 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 ODI may refer to: * Object Design, Incorporated, a defunct database software company * One Day International, cricket match * Open Data Institute, a UK not-for-profit company promoting open data * Open Data-Link Interface, an implementation of th ...

/VLM (for Open Datalink Interface) 16-bit DOS client portion of the drivers now supported individually loadable Virtual Loadable Modules (VLMs) for an improved flexibility and customizability, whereas the server portion could utilize Novell's DOS Protected Mode Services (DPMS), if loaded, to reduce its conventional memory footprint and run in extended memory 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 virtual memory, paging and safe multi-tasking d ...

. The NetWare Lite disk cache NLCACHE had been reworked into NWCACHE, which was easier to set up and could utilize DPMS as well, thereby reducing the DOS memory footprint 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 ( DOS/V,

, NEC PC-98/ Epson PC and

) 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) drivers, including drivers for SLIP 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 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 volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...

OpenDOS 7.01 DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-D ...

DR-DOS 7.02 DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-D ...

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 DR-WebSpyder is a DOS web browser, mail client and operating system runtime environment that was developed by Caldera UK in 1997. It was based on the DR-DOS operating system and networking components from Novell as well as the Arachne web brow ...

distribution in 1997. When Novell in 1996 introduced its

ODI32 The Open Data-Link Interface (ODI), developed by Apple and Novell, serves the same function as Microsoft and 3COM's Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS). Originally, ODI was written for NetWare and Macintosh environments. Like NDIS, ODI ...

/ NIOS 32-bit DOS/Windows client (

Client 32 Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuab ...

), 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. GroupWis ...

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

*
DR-DOS 7 online manuals also covering Personal NetWare, ODI/VLM and TCP/IP
* 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