[OFFER] Novell Netware 3.11

[Beluga]

Some days ago I made WinImage dumps of my copy of Netware 3.11 just for personal backup reasons. I can offer to provide these along with proper scans.

Also I have noticed that the version of Netware 3.11 on the FTP seems to be incomplete. It is missing one disk (DOSUTIL-4).

This is labeled as German version, but this only means that the printed manuals are German. Everything else, including the online help is in English.

There are some downsides:
I can not do Kryoflux dumps at the moment and for several reasons I do not want to ship my disks around. But I think WinImage dumps should be pretty accurate with these disks that are known to have no copy protection at all. (Novell even recommended never to work with the original disks, but instead to make diskcopy clones of them.)

I also can not make a dump of the 5.25" System-1 disk for now that for some reason is also included in this box (along with the normal 3.5" one of course).

If you are still interested, just let me know and I will make the scans!

[mrpijey]

If you are 100% sure your copy is identical to the incomplete on the forum then you can add that just the missing stuff (with scans). Otherwise we need a full dump to make sure...

[Beluga]

I just compared my IMA dumps with the FTP ones using WinMerge. The two copies are not identical.

While most discs are absolutely identical, three of them are not. These are:

System-1: This, of course, was expected. It contains the license in the Server.exe and while mine has the normal 5-user license that these boxed versions normally shipped with, the FTP version has a 20-user System-1 disk. But I am still a bit surprised about how much it differs...

Dosutil-2: There are diffrences in parts of the disk. I could locate a version string for the Ncopy tool. The FTP version says version 3.56 while mine says 3.57

Print-1: There are also diffrences in parts of the disk, but I could not locate any meaningful strings.

I guess I will just upload all of my dumped disks, since it does not make a huge diffrence given the amount of space the scans will take.

[Darkstar]

I can not do Kryoflux dumps at the moment and for several reasons I do not want to ship my disks around. But I think WinImage dumps should be pretty accurate with these disks that are known to have no copy protection at all. (Novell even recommended never to work with the original disks, but instead to make diskcopy clones of them.)

The reason why KF dumps are preferred are because it's very easy to tell if the disk that is being dumped is original and unmodified, or if it has been modified by writing data to it. You can even tell which tracks/sectors are pristine and which are not.

This is not possible with WinImage dumps, so we might never know which disks are truly unmodified.

[mrpijey]

I'll just label it as an alt and we can deal with it later. But thanks for uploading it, and along with the scans it will still be a nice addition. By closer examination by checking file dates etc we should be able to figure out if files were modified etc too.

[Beluga]

The reason why KF dumps are preferred are because it's very easy to tell if the disk that is being dumped is original and unmodified, or if it has been modified by writing data to it. You can even tell which tracks/sectors are pristine and which are not.

That, of course, is a good reason that I did not have in mind.

Regarding originality I have some bad news: I just realised that the System-1 disk has been modified. I guess it turned out to be unreadable on a certain system and someone tried to repair it with a tool called "ISKFIX". The tool left its marks on several spots of the disk, including the end. It notes there (in German) that it did not find any errors. Why it still wrote data to the disk is beyond my imagination.

The (kind of) good news is: My set includes a handlabeled System-1 backup disk. Its contents seem to be fine and I am quite positive that it is a 1:1 copy of the original disk. Especially since back in the day everyone used to make several backup copies of his System-1 disk the moment he got it. But of course, you never know.

So, I am afraid, this release is clearly not an original one.

Still, I think it has some value till someone comes up with a better version.

EDIT:
Also, I want to note that I made a mistake in my initial post. The 5.25" disk is not a System-1 disk but a WSGEN disk. Which of course makes much more sense, because you use this disk to install workstations.

[lardon]

Also I have noticed that the version of Netware 3.11 on the FTP seems to be incomplete. It is missing one disk (DOSUTIL-4).

That is correct. The copy I uploaded a few years ago was missing a few disks. Unfortunately at the time of upload, I didn't knew what I was missing. There wasn't information available at the time to determine what I was missing. So, I just uploaded whatever I had. I think there are several other disks missing. Right now though, my copy of Netware 3.11 is out of reach as I'm attending college.

lardon

[Beluga]

Why do you think that there are more disks missing? It is certainly possible, but for now I have no reason to believe so. I spent some time studying the massive amounts of documentation and so far I did not find any disk mentioned that I do not have. But I also did not come across a full list of all disks.

Though I found an older eBay auction where a 3.11 boxset was sold and it also contained 24 disks. So, for now I am kind of confident that this is complete.

Right now I am unsure about the correct labeling for this release. The sticker on the big box states that this is a German version. But when you open it up it becomes quite obvious that this is just a set of German printed manuals bundled with an English media kit.

[lardon]

The reason I believe so is because when I looked at the box containing the floppies, neither boxes were full. I thought that both boxes had to be completely full of floppies with no spaces in between. In Netware 3.12, there was an install disk to start the installation. Netware 3.11 doesn't have this kind of disk. I'm actually not sure if it was mean't to be like that. But, you could be right. I'm not sure.

Another thing I want to mention is that I didn't include the 5.25 disks in my upload only because I don't have a 5.25 inch floppy drive. I haven't touch it the day I bought it.

lardon

[Beluga]

The install disk is a new feature of Netware 3.12. When installing 3.11 you just have to copy the contents of SYSTEM-1 to your DOS partition and run server.exe. From there you can load install.nlm which is on SYSTEM-2. It is explained like this in the printed manuals as well.

To get a bit more of an insight I installed both copies (lardons upload and my dump) in VMware. I now can confirm that DOSUTIL-4 is needed. When I give the installer of lardons version my image file it continues just fine.

With that in mind, both versions work just fine!

Also the installer did not ask for any other disks that are not available. So I am quite confident that this version is complete now.

[lardon]

Glad to know that only one disk is missing from my copy! I'll try to re-dump the images in raw format, and possibly upload a few scans of the manuals and documentations. But it will be at least a month before I go home for break.