Technically NetWare 4.x wasn’t very different from 3.x, and together NetWare 3.x and 4.x were the mainstay of many networks small and large for many years. In 1993, NetWare 4.0 was an update to the 3.x line with directory services and other add-ons.

NetWare 3.x had a long life and survived into the Internet era, including its PDF documentation. NetWare 386 was one of the first 386 operating systems for the PC while it lacked some features of other contemporary advanced operating systems (such as pre-emptive multi-tasking), it had others, like dynamically loadable and un-loadable modules. In later days, NetWare networks were almost exclusively Ethernet based (as the other technologies died out), and over time increasingly switched to TCP/IP transport. NetWare networks could use Ethernet, Token-Ring, Arcnet, IBM PC Network, and other physical network layers. Until the mid-1990s NetWare typically used its own networking protocol called IPX. There was not much to see on a NetWare 2.x server console With the partial exception of so-called non-dedicated NetWare 2.x servers, version 2.x and later of NetWare always had dedicated server machines with clients (called “shell” in the old days, later “workstation”) for DOS, OS/2, Macintosh, and more.

In the mid-1980s, Novell offered Advanced NetWare, NetWare ELS, NetWare SFT, and other members of the NetWare 286 family.

Novell NetWare has quite a long history, but the older parts of it are now almost completely lost.

Novell netware special features