Novell Netware 3.12 once more runs on Qemu!

Posted on by

This version of Qemu seems to be one of the better ones in a LONG LONG time.

Netware 3.12

Netware 3.12

Much to my amazement, as I fully expected this to crash much like all the other versions, it actually runs.

qemu-system-i386.exe -m 16 -hda netware312.disk -device ne2k_isa,irq=10,iobase=0x300 -soundhw pcspk -serial none -parallel none -k en-us

I’m just more amazed it works.  Now I did try it on my old setup of a NE2000 on 0x300 Interrup 2/9 but I was getting some IRQ issues.  So I went ahead and reconfigured Netware for IRQ ‘A’, and set the CLI for 10. Of course I haven’t actually tested networking, this is really a ‘wow it did something’ statement.  No doubt I’ll have to build a new GNS3 test bed with this Qemu, and see how Netware performs.

10 thoughts on “Novell Netware 3.12 once more runs on Qemu!”

    • oh nice, he’s got native building instructions..! I tried DOOM v1.1 on MS-DOS 5.0 and it’s horribly broken.. Not that it matters I guess as there is PCem now which excels at running ancient DOS based stuff.

  2. Re the networking – NW5 is working via a tap interface to the host PC.

    Do you think it’s worth trying to build with SDL (or SDL2) rather than GTK3? If so I think I still have my toolchain from my 1.6.1 experiments.

    • Ive found it works best in tandem with GNS3… use the UDP tunnels to a virtual switch, and from there you can setup a libpcap interface and bind that to a NIC…

      • Also managed to get NW 4.2 to install although it’s a long and painful process! Again, the network is up on a Windows 8.1 host with the openvpn tap adaptors. To get qemu configured with one ne2k_isa I needed

        -netdev tap,id=tap1,ifname=tap1,script=no,downscript=no
        -device ne2k_isa,netdev=tap1,irq=5,iobase=0x300

        And I can see IPX traffic in Wireshark!

      • OK I’ve spent some time on this with the Windows version and 2.1.2 which is on my Fedora 21 Box.
        Installed NW 4.11 on both – runs well after I removed the junktuned my Qemu command line.
        Being a Netware n00b I then discovered to do anything useful I needed a client so proceeded to make DRDOS 7 VM and install Novell Client/32. I now have the two talking over IPX and I’ve successfully used the client to upload NW4SP9 to the server.
        I built a virtual net on the Linux using a bridge and tap interfaces on Qemu. I’ve also had it working using the socket interface across 127.0.0.1, useful if you’re using OSX and don’t have a bridge.
        I’d be happy to share my Qemu startup scripts if there is any interest.

        • I’ve always added GNS3 to make it somewhat easier to mix in various emulators. I did have command line setup that I seem to have misplaced (the joys of moving yet again).

          Even though I prefer to use Windows for this kind of thing, my laptop is OS X, and the server I rent is Linux..

  3. Novell Netware! I vaguely remember classrooms with dos boxen that booted into windows 3.11 from these beasts with some NET MAP wizzardry in AUTOEXEC.BAT faster than from the local disk. If there is a cookbook on how to pull this off I’d like to know.

  4. Hello, what you’ve done is amazing.
    You can contact me, please? I have a paid job.
    We have functioning Novell NetWare 3.12 (I have the installation media) and I would need server migrate to a clean install on a new PC. Data Transfer manually. I need only emulated functional network solutions.

    I will be glad if you answer must be negative. To know that you have received the message.

Leave a Reply