16 Jan
2009
16 Jan
'09
9:13 p.m.
-- "james" <james at jdfogg.com> wrote:
Ah yes, the era of the 3Server is forever seared into my
brain; my first *real* job in the computer business involved
the care and feeding of several generations of these beasties.
The Original 3Server (about the same vintage as the Novell
unit pictured earlier) used an 80188 and a heavily modified
version of MS-DOS. It used an early SCSI implementation,
which was closer to SASI, to attach MFM disks and QIC tapes
via Adaptec bridge boards.
Because there were neither video nor ISA bus, there was more
room for contiguous DOS memory; something over 700k, which
pertty cool at the time. They originally were equipped with
30MB drives, but then the 3Server70 had an 80Mb (unformatted)
unit by Vertex.
These early boxes had the (optional) QIC tape in an external
box; the 3Server3 introduced in 1986 (IIRC) had disk and tape
in one box; in addition the 3Server3 could be interfaced with
appletalk, and also sported the then-new LIM memory used to
speed up the operating system.
These 80188 systems all used either 3+Share or EtherSeries
NOS's for basic drive sharing. IN addition, 3+Mail, 3+Route
(for routing e-mail between sites), 3+Backup and other network
applications were supported under the 3+Share NOS (in <1Mb
RAM).
These were followed by the 3S400 & 3S500 machines, which are
not interesing as they are little more than stock ISA 80386
machines running at 16MHz. These guys could run 3+Share, or
3+Open (a.k.a. OS/2 LanMan as pointed out above). ISTR that
they added TCP/IP late in that products life.
Then Novell took over the world and all of the above 'stuff'
died in obscurity.
It was at this point where I learned in my life that I had a
knack for picking losers.
I need a stiff drink now . . . .
____________________________________________________________
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Here are some
pics of a Novell file server circa 1987.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/novell/68k_file_server
Was wondering if anyone had documentation or software for
this. I had some of the external dual drive scsi boxes for
these at one point.
This reminds me of a similar oddity I used to support years
ago. 3Com made a server, and an OS called 3+ Open. As I
recall, it was an OS/2 - LAN Manager derivative. 
13 Feb
13 Feb
6:39 a.m.
2009/1/17 jeff.kaneko at juno.com <jeff.kaneko at juno.com>:
-- "james" <james at jdfogg.com> wrote:
Ah yes, the era of the 3Server is forever seared into my
brain; my first *real* job in the computer business involved
the care and feeding of several generations of these beasties.
The Original 3Server (about the same vintage as the Novell
unit pictured earlier) used an 80188 and a heavily modified
version of MS-DOS. It used an early SCSI implementation,
which was closer to SASI, to attach MFM disks and QIC tapes
via Adaptec bridge boards.
Because there were neither video nor ISA bus, there was more
room for contiguous DOS memory; something over 700k, which
pertty cool at the time. They originally were equipped with
30MB drives, but then the 3Server70 had an 80Mb (unformatted)
unit by Vertex.
These early boxes had the (optional) QIC tape in an external
box; the 3Server3 introduced in 1986 (IIRC) had disk and tape
in one box; in addition the 3Server3 could be interfaced with
appletalk, and also sported the then-new LIM memory used to
speed up the operating system.
These 80188 systems all used either 3+Share or EtherSeries
NOS's for basic drive sharing. IN addition, 3+Mail, 3+Route
(for routing e-mail between sites), 3+Backup and other network
applications were supported under the 3+Share NOS (in <1Mb
RAM).
These were followed by the 3S400 & 3S500 machines, which are
not interesing as they are little more than stock ISA 80386
machines running at 16MHz. These guys could run 3+Share, or
3+Open (a.k.a. OS/2 LanMan as pointed out above). ISTR that
they added TCP/IP late in that products life.
Then Novell took over the world and all of the above 'stuff'
died in obscurity.
It was at this point where I learned in my life that I had a
knack for picking losers.
I need a stiff drink now . . . .
Ohh yes. In my first job, doing networks support in 1988, I supported
a number of 3Server3s. I got to know 3+Share alarmingly well, given
that I never saw a manual. We also ran 3+Share on a number of generic
IBM PS/2 servers - there was a version of it for generic hardware too.
On a PS/2 Model 60, it ran in 1MB RAM and didn't use the top 384K - so
everything happened in 640K. I found a program to run on a 286 to map
extended memory as LIM EMS and got a gratifyingly large performance
boost - until I discovered that 3Com's DOS-multitasking cleverness
stomped on the XMS-EMS app and had corrupted the disk. I recovered
5000 trashed files from a disk dump, by hand. What a lovely job that
was.
And about 4y later, when I moved to London and got a job with a
high-street VAR on Tottenham Court Road, my new boss was overjoyed to
discover that I knew 3Servers and 3+Share and immediately handed me
Mentorn Films (think Challenge Anneka and the like) as my sole
responsibility - the company's only one with this bizarre old
hardware. They ran a LAN of 286s and 386SXs running runtime Windows 2
with Excel as their accounts department LAN. These machines never had
mice, so not only did everyone know how to use Excel solely by
keyboard control, all the machines had the Excel cross cursor burned
into the middle of the monitor - there was no way to move it and
Windows 2 was too dumb to hide it if a mouse was not connected.
I wrote the original Wikipedia article on the 3Servers, IIRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Server
Contributions welcome!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508
Here are
some pics of a Novell file server circa 1987.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/novell/68k_file_server
Was wondering if anyone had documentation or software for
this. I had some of the external dual drive scsi boxes for
these at one point.
This reminds me of a similar oddity I used to support years
ago. 3Com made a server, and an OS called 3+ Open. As I
recall, it was an OS/2 - LAN Manager derivative. 
6:48 a.m.
Ah yes, the 3com 3+ Open servers, I loved those beasties, I used to work
on them at American Express back around 89-90, the server loaded the OS
off of a tape, no disk drive on the box as I recall. What I loved best
about it were the command syntax, it was so easy to work with that
network OS and setup services and clients, I was disappointed when the
plug was pulled on it. I remembering have to change the power supply
on a Novell 68000 server box, they came in XT type cases, the
motherboards were impressive looking and I've always wanted to find and
acquire a Novell 68K box and finding Novell SNET/NDS to run on it.
Curt
Liam Proven wrote:
2009/1/17 jeff.kaneko at juno.com <jeff.kaneko at
juno.com>:
-- "james" <james at jdfogg.com>
wrote:
Ah yes, the era of the 3Server is forever seared into my
brain; my first *real* job in the computer business involved
the care and feeding of several generations of these beasties.
The Original 3Server (about the same vintage as the Novell
unit pictured earlier) used an 80188 and a heavily modified
version of MS-DOS. It used an early SCSI implementation,
which was closer to SASI, to attach MFM disks and QIC tapes
via Adaptec bridge boards.
Because there were neither video nor ISA bus, there was more
room for contiguous DOS memory; something over 700k, which
pertty cool at the time. They originally were equipped with
30MB drives, but then the 3Server70 had an 80Mb (unformatted)
unit by Vertex.
These early boxes had the (optional) QIC tape in an external
box; the 3Server3 introduced in 1986 (IIRC) had disk and tape
in one box; in addition the 3Server3 could be interfaced with
appletalk, and also sported the then-new LIM memory used to
speed up the operating system.
These 80188 systems all used either 3+Share or EtherSeries
NOS's for basic drive sharing. IN addition, 3+Mail, 3+Route
(for routing e-mail between sites), 3+Backup and other network
applications were supported under the 3+Share NOS (in <1Mb
RAM).
These were followed by the 3S400 & 3S500 machines, which are
not interesing as they are little more than stock ISA 80386
machines running at 16MHz. These guys could run 3+Share, or
3+Open (a.k.a. OS/2 LanMan as pointed out above). ISTR that
they added TCP/IP late in that products life.
Then Novell took over the world and all of the above 'stuff'
died in obscurity.
It was at this point where I learned in my life that I had a
knack for picking losers.
I need a stiff drink now . . . .
Ohh yes. In my first job, doing networks support in 1988, I supported
a number of 3Server3s. I got to know 3+Share alarmingly well, given
that I never saw a manual. We also ran 3+Share on a number of generic
IBM PS/2 servers - there was a version of it for generic hardware too.
On a PS/2 Model 60, it ran in 1MB RAM and didn't use the top 384K - so
everything happened in 640K. I found a program to run on a 286 to map
extended memory as LIM EMS and got a gratifyingly large performance
boost - until I discovered that 3Com's DOS-multitasking cleverness
stomped on the XMS-EMS app and had corrupted the disk. I recovered
5000 trashed files from a disk dump, by hand. What a lovely job that
was.
And about 4y later, when I moved to London and got a job with a
high-street VAR on Tottenham Court Road, my new boss was overjoyed to
discover that I knew 3Servers and 3+Share and immediately handed me
Mentorn Films (think Challenge Anneka and the like) as my sole
responsibility - the company's only one with this bizarre old
hardware. They ran a LAN of 286s and 386SXs running runtime Windows 2
with Excel as their accounts department LAN. These machines never had
mice, so not only did everyone know how to use Excel solely by
keyboard control, all the machines had the Excel cross cursor burned
into the middle of the monitor - there was no way to move it and
Windows 2 was too dumb to hide it if a mouse was not connected.
I wrote the original Wikipedia article on the 3Servers, IIRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Server
Contributions welcome!
Here are
some pics of a Novell file server circa 1987.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/novell/68k_file_server
Was wondering if anyone had documentation or software for
this. I had some of the external dual drive scsi boxes for
these at one point.
This reminds me of a similar oddity I used to support years
ago. 3Com made a server, and an OS called 3+ Open. As I
recall, it was an OS/2 - LAN Manager derivative.
5567
days inactive
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2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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curt＠atarimuseum.com -
jeff.kaneko＠juno.com -
lproven＠gmail.com