Retrocomputing

And so, dusting off my knowledge of Novell Netware from years ago, I started to install NetWare 4.11 in VirtualBox.
Apparently this doesn’t work, but with some hackery thus, it’s fine:
1. Copy all the files off the installation CD in to a directory
2. Download updated NetWare ATA drivers with UDMA support
3. Assuming you unpacked the ZIP file above to /tmp/a, and the contents of the installation CD are in the current directory, do:
cp /tmp/a/NW3X-4X/NBI.NLM ./products/nw411/_/411/syspre/nbi.nlm
cp /tmp/a/NW3X-4X/NBI.NLM ./products/nw411/_/411/boot/nbi.nlm
cp /tmp/a/NW3X-4X/NWPALOAD.NLM ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/nwpaload.nlm
cp /tmp/a/NW3X-4X/NWPA.NLM ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/nwpa.nlm
cp /tmp/a/IDEATA.HAM ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/ideata.ham
cp /tmp/a/IDEATA.DDI ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/ideata.ddi
cp /tmp/a/IDECD.CDM ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/idecd.cdm
cp /tmp/a/IDECD.DDI ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/idecd.ddi
cp /tmp/a/IDEHD.CDM ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/idehd.cdm
cp /tmp/a/IDEHD.DDI ./products/nw411/ibm/411/diskdrv/idehd.ddi
This will update the drivers on the installation CD with those supporting UDMA.
4. Create an ISO image of these files using “mkisofs -D -l . > ../netware411-patched.iso”
5. Install the server. INSTALL.NLM will throw up some errors, and you will need to enter slot 10002 for the IDEATA Disk Driver, but other than that, it’s fine.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to install Word 6 🙂