ZXnet

Novell 16bit VLM Client for DOS/16bit Windows

This page covers the old DOS Requester (VLM) client which originally came with NetWare 4.0, 3.12 and 4.1. It first appeared in April 1993 (or slightly earlier) and was replaced by Client32 in 1996. It should work with all versions of Netware from 2.2 up to 6.5 from what I can tell. Its support for Windows 3.x is a bit more limited than Client32.

System Requirements

• MS-DOS 3.1 or newer
• 286 CPU or better

Download v1.21 (22 November 1996)

If you want to just use the VLM client download this final version and ignore the rest of this page. If for some reason you want or need to run older versions read on.

Tracking Down Past Releases

Tracking down copies of the VLM DOS requester and its updates has proven very difficult because:

• There is limited information about early versions in googles usenet archive and next to nothing on the web. Did 1.0 actually get a public release? I can find no definitive answer to this - just a handful of people talking about using it.
• Early versions were available for a limited time only from CompuServe, ftp.novell.com and one or two mirrors all of which were gone by the time archive.org started archiving the web.
• Novell tended to re-use filenames. VLMUP2.EXE could upgrade you to v1.11 or a pre-release version of 1.20 depending on the files age. The same seems to be true of other update files such as DOSUP9.EXE.
• None of my Novell Support Connection CDs are old enough to cover the early history of the VLM client and the available copies of the Network Support Encyclopedia (NSEpro) on the internet are too old

Some stuff here has ended up coming from old shareware/BBS compilation CD-ROMs because there appear to be no other sources still online. In some cases these files are zip files when the associated readme files indicate they should be self-extracting executables so it is possbile these were converted by the CD-ROM authors (or the BBS they got their data from). Finding the remaining missing patches and client kits will likely require finding copies of the Network Support Encyclopedia Professional (NSEpro) or Support Connection CD-ROMs of the right age as there appears to be no online source for this stuff that google (or I) can can find.

Updates

The update situation for the DOS Requester (VLM) client looks to have been, to put it charitably, a complete mess. Actually trying to make any sense of this from only preserved usenet discussions nearly 30 years later is difficult.

As best I can figure early on there were client kits which contained the a full copy of some version of the client available from various sources (compuserve, ftp, retail) and there were a variety of patches/updates to be applied to these to fix bugs or upgrade to newer versions. At the start updates seemed to be delivered through a combination of DOSUP9.EXE (which contained updates for the DOS bits) and WINUP9.EXE (which contained updates for the windows bits), VLMUPn.EXE (new version upgrades seemingly) and other misc patches. Earlier numbers in the DOSUPn.EXE and WINUPn.EXE series seem to apply to the netware shell (netx) only. DOSUP9.EXE and WINUP9.EXE at least appear to have been periodically updated with new content. Possbily the compuserve 6.3 filename limitation prevented them from moving to bigger numbers (DOSUP10.EXE).

At the end of 1994 for some absurd reason WINUP9.EXE and DOSUP9.EXE were split into a total of four files (WINDR1.EXE, NWDLL1.EXE, VLMUP1.EXE and NET33X.EXE) and the original DOSUP/WINUP files were replaced with a pair of readme files explaining the situation: dosup9.txt, winup9.txt. Of course this new VLMUP1.EXE split out of DOSUP9.EXE was an entirely different VLMUP1.EXE from the one released the previous year and contained newer files than the VLMUP2.EXE released a few months earlier. Apparently the obvious solution to this problem was to just delete VLMUP2.EXE and pretend it never existed.

So there are a bunch of different revisions of these update packages which are not interchanable. The readme files within these updates often don't clearly state what revision they are so its hard to know what update file goes with what other update file or applies to which version of the VLM client. I guess back in the early 90s the way to tell was to just download all the things you need together at the same time so you can perhaps have a consistent point in time snapshot of the situation. Sadly 30 years later there are few if any such snapshots - just scattered lone update files and client kits.

So in the table below are a bunch of updates that I don't have enough information to put firmly against a particular VLM Client version. Its also worth noting that the updates I have put with particular versions of the VLM client are really just a best guess - in many cases the updates may well apply equally well (or better) to other versions. If you want to use these updates for some reason I recommend reading the readme files carefully, perhaps look at readmes for updates against other versions of the client (in case I've incorrectly categorised them) and searching the Google Groups usenet archives for more details where needed.

Download

This table contains such client kits as I could find plus, as noted at the end of the updated section above, my best guess at placing a few updates/patches with the versions I think they apply to.

	WSDOS1 EXE 268693 04-28-93 10:30a
	WSDRV1 EXE 789951 04-28-93 10:39a
	WSWIN1 EXE 635290 04-28-93 10:35a
	3 file(s) 1693934 bytes

Missing Stuff

After much searching I've been unable to locate client kits for the following versions. Is possbile client kits for some or all of these versions were never made available for free download but were only available as a product (pay money, get client on floppy disk with printed manual) or with a product (bundled with some version of NetWare or something else).

• 1.00
• 1.01 - Need WSWIN1.EXE from around 22 April 1993 only. Size should be around 789,951 bytes. I've found the other bits (WSDOS1.EXE and WSDRV1.EXE)
• 1.03 - Possibly this was never released as anything but an update to 1.02 (vlm103.zip)
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.20

I have also been unable to locate good copies of the following updates:

• vlm103.zip - Upgrades 1.0x to 1.03. Was available on ftp.novell.com at least as early as 8 October 1993.
• vlmup2.exe - An older version of the vlmup2.exe that can already be found on this page. Should be a self-extracting DOS archive containing a readme file (vlmup2.txt) dated around 16 June 1994. Have only been able to locate a zip version of this which was likely created from the exe.
• nwdll1.exe - Should be a self-extracting DOS archive containing a readme file (nwdll1.txt) dated around October 1994. Have only been able to locate a zip version of this which has been modified to include an advertisment (ADVERT.EMS) for a shareware CD-ROM
• vlmup1.exe - Should be a self-extracting DOS archive containing a readme file (vlmup1.txt) dated around October 1994. Have only been able to locate a zip version of this which has been modified to include an advertisment (ADVERT.EMS) for a shareware CD-ROM
• windr1.exe - Should be a self-extracting DOS archive containing a readme file (windr1.txt) dated around October 1994. No copies of this turn up on google as on 20-MAR-2021.

Screenshots

• Version 1.02
• Installing v1.21 on DOS 6.22 on an emulated 286 with 2MB of RAM and also trying to login under DOS 6.0 and 5.0, 4.01 and 3.21.

See Also

• Using Windows Networking with the VLM Client
• Support Issues for the NetWare DOS Requester (VLM) 1.20
• Integrating VLMs with Windows for Workgroups
• Windows for Workgroups using VLM/NETWARE.DRV (v3.02)
• Using VLMs with Windows 95 (also available in as a word document)
• AppNote: Packet Burst Update: BNETX vs. VLM Implementations, November 1993
• AppNote: The Functions and Operations of the NetWare DOS Requester 1.1, May 1994
• AppNote: NET.CFG Parameters for the NetWare DOS Requester 1.1
• AppNote: Black Screen of Death Explained

Disclaimer & Comments

I'm not a netware expert, don't have any of those fancy novell certifications and have never administred a netware network; I've just played with it at home occasionally since 2004 or so. Email me if you've got any suggestions or corrections for this page or any extra information you think is worth including here. My address is david at this websites domain name (without the www bit of course).