I still feel a sense of relief when I see the words 3c509 and 3c905 – "puh, this'll work out of the box on Linux without a days-long fight with out-of-tree drivers". I know it's a quarter century since this feeling was useful.
I still have a 3c905 stashed in an anti-static bag. (I know it's not that useful anymore, either...)
It bailed me out of several server builds. Pop it in, PXE boot, run the kickstart, install the drivers for the interface I was really going to use. I think it's maybe only been a decade since I did that.
I remember those 3com NICs. Great for catching electromagnetic flux. You could put a computer next to a wall and monitor dmesg to know when somebody turned the lights on in the room (eth0 down... eth 0 up!).
In the early days it has its own server OS, 3Com 3+Share. It was a multitasking file server OS and it was based on MS-DOS. Yes really. An internally multitasking server stack on DOS. I became expert in it in my first job and my 3rd job leant heavily on that and my skills.
It used the MS LAN Manager stack over NetBEUI.
It inherited DOS limitations like 32MB partitions. On PC servers everything had to fit into 640kB of RAM and natively it could not use XMS, only EMS.
3Com offered a range of dedicated network file server boxes, the 3Server. The first was an 80186 and later the 3Server3 with a 386.
Then it got big into OS/2 and released 3Com 3+Open. The multitasking stuff obviated by OS/2 1.0's own built in multitasking but now it was multiprotocol and the server could run other stuff too.
The 3Server had no display, no port for one, no keyboard connector. It could only be administered over the network. It did have a little 1-line LCD display for showing a status message, accessible via a DOS device driver for showing custom messages. A physical rotating dial let you choose a station number at hardware level.
Because there was no display, that part of the 80186 memory map could be used for RAM, so a 3Server could give 800-900kB of RAM to DOS. A selling point: it could have 25% more memory than a PC and was arguably easier to configure.
The 3Server3 had for the 1980s very high memory limits, but we didn't sell many.
3Com's DOS apps had their own pre-CUA text-mode windowing and menuing system, 3+Menus, with a consistent UI and navigation keys, before Windows 2.0. Fill in fields in any order, Enter to accept, Ctrl+Enter to accept the whole dialog box, close it (with an animated zoom-out effect), and return to the previous level. This applied to all 3Com software and meant very fast navigation. Last seen in the DOS setup tool for the 3C589 ISA NIC.
As well as file and print, it bundled an email server client, which almost none of my clients ever used, and it also could act as a network gateway, with tools for WAN linking of networks into a big MAN, which I also never used.
I remember putting 3+Share on an IBM PS/2 Model 80 with the biggest hard disk I'd ever seen at that time: 330MB, on an ESDI interface. I had to partition it as drives C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, H:, I:, J:, K: and L:. All 32MB except for an 11MB L: drive.
NOS on C:, main network app on the next letter, data on the next letter, home directories on the next, print spools on the next... it tool some ingenuity to find ways to use them all on DOS 3.3.
There was only one supported big-partition tool, VFeature Deluxe from Golden Bow Systems, and none of my clients were willing to pay for it. GBS did various DOS addons: a software disk cache, VCache; a defragmenter, VOpt; and VFeature, for disk partitions over 32MB.
I even tried installing it on Compaq DOS 3.31 which had big FAT16 partition support using the same system that MS-DOS 4 later adopted, but 3+Share could not see the big drives.
gspr | 15 hours ago
I still feel a sense of relief when I see the words 3c509 and 3c905 – "puh, this'll work out of the box on Linux without a days-long fight with out-of-tree drivers". I know it's a quarter century since this feeling was useful.
hoistbypetard | 8 hours ago
I still have a 3c905 stashed in an anti-static bag. (I know it's not that useful anymore, either...)
It bailed me out of several server builds. Pop it in, PXE boot, run the kickstart, install the drivers for the interface I was really going to use. I think it's maybe only been a decade since I did that.
vbernat | 3 hours ago
I remember at the time it was not just the driver. It was it's ability to go to 100 Mbps while many cards struggled to get to half of it.
lorddimwit | 11 hours ago
Ah 3com. I was interviewed by TippingPoint, hired by 3com, and quit HP.
rkaw92 | 11 hours ago
I remember those 3com NICs. Great for catching electromagnetic flux. You could put a computer next to a wall and monitor
dmesgto know when somebody turned the lights on in the room (eth0 down... eth 0 up!).lproven | 8 hours ago
Misses out the company's height.
In the early days it has its own server OS, 3Com 3+Share. It was a multitasking file server OS and it was based on MS-DOS. Yes really. An internally multitasking server stack on DOS. I became expert in it in my first job and my 3rd job leant heavily on that and my skills.
It used the MS LAN Manager stack over NetBEUI.
It inherited DOS limitations like 32MB partitions. On PC servers everything had to fit into 640kB of RAM and natively it could not use XMS, only EMS.
3Com offered a range of dedicated network file server boxes, the 3Server. The first was an 80186 and later the 3Server3 with a 386.
Then it got big into OS/2 and released 3Com 3+Open. The multitasking stuff obviated by OS/2 1.0's own built in multitasking but now it was multiprotocol and the server could run other stuff too.
lproven | 7 hours ago
The 3Server had no display, no port for one, no keyboard connector. It could only be administered over the network. It did have a little 1-line LCD display for showing a status message, accessible via a DOS device driver for showing custom messages. A physical rotating dial let you choose a station number at hardware level.
Some pics here, but not the models I knew:
https://www.bcsatellite.net/blog/pats-memoirs-design-time/
Because there was no display, that part of the 80186 memory map could be used for RAM, so a 3Server could give 800-900kB of RAM to DOS. A selling point: it could have 25% more memory than a PC and was arguably easier to configure.
The 3Server3 had for the 1980s very high memory limits, but we didn't sell many.
3Com's DOS apps had their own pre-CUA text-mode windowing and menuing system, 3+Menus, with a consistent UI and navigation keys, before Windows 2.0. Fill in fields in any order, Enter to accept, Ctrl+Enter to accept the whole dialog box, close it (with an animated zoom-out effect), and return to the previous level. This applied to all 3Com software and meant very fast navigation. Last seen in the DOS setup tool for the 3C589 ISA NIC.
As well as file and print, it bundled an email server client, which almost none of my clients ever used, and it also could act as a network gateway, with tools for WAN linking of networks into a big MAN, which I also never used.
I remember putting 3+Share on an IBM PS/2 Model 80 with the biggest hard disk I'd ever seen at that time: 330MB, on an ESDI interface. I had to partition it as drives C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, H:, I:, J:, K: and L:. All 32MB except for an 11MB L: drive.
NOS on C:, main network app on the next letter, data on the next letter, home directories on the next, print spools on the next... it tool some ingenuity to find ways to use them all on DOS 3.3.
There was only one supported big-partition tool, VFeature Deluxe from Golden Bow Systems, and none of my clients were willing to pay for it. GBS did various DOS addons: a software disk cache, VCache; a defragmenter, VOpt; and VFeature, for disk partitions over 32MB.
https://golden-bow-systems.software.informer.com/
I even tried installing it on Compaq DOS 3.31 which had big FAT16 partition support using the same system that MS-DOS 4 later adopted, but 3+Share could not see the big drives.