Personal NetWare
Personal NetWare
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Personal NetWare

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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.

In 1991, Novell introduced NetWare Lite 1.0 (NWL), as a radically different and cheaper alternative to their central server-based NetWare product. Codenamed "Slurpee", NetWare Lite was an answer to Artisoft's similar LANtastic: 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, Fujitsu FM-R, NEC PC-98/Epson PC 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.

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 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. 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, Fujitsu FM-R, NEC PC-98/Epson PC 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.

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