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3Com 3Station diskless workstation remote boot via NetWare 3.12

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Thatsmanjear

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Hi there. I acquired a 3Com 3Station, which is a 1986 era Intel 286, 1M RAM, Mono/CGA diskless workstation that can remote boot from a NetWare server. I'm really really really close to getting this thing to boot! I have a NetWare 3.12 server, with the modules, drives and protocol bindings needed for the remote boot along with the boot image. The 3Station "sees" the NetWare server and loads its NetWare remote program loader, but then that loader just gives a "Error finding server.". I'm assuming there's some additional configuration required to specify a server, or something on the server configuration (like a MAC address), but I can find ZERO documentation on this thing (seriously, the Wikipedia page is about it!). I know it's a longshot, but anybody have info on these 3Com workstations? Or somebody who's a NetWare whiz that can help me with some network sniffing to determine what this thing is doing on the network as it searches for the boot server?
 
Are these machines any different from a standard PC/AT with an RPL network boot ROM installed?

In the past, I've played with [rpld] until I got it to load etherboot, which then loaded pxelinux.0 and memdisk, giving me a more modern netboot environment. Unfortunately, none of that will work on a 286 and I can't help with NetWare.
 
286 at what speed? The early 3Stations used a 286-8, the late versions used a faster 286. No apparent pictures of the system board.

1989 Networking: 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1 from Michal Necasek OS/2 version

PC Mag, Mat 26, 1987 pages 148-150, 152 has a review

Index of /communications/3Com/3+Open from IA

link level library (3l) Interface Spedfication from IA

NETWORKS.WRI: Microsoft Windows & MS-DOS 5 for IBM PS/2 trust me, look for 3+Open

Pat’s Memoirs ‑ Design Time interesting

Oh, Remote Boot...
 
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Svenska said:
Are these machines any different from a standard PC/AT with an RPL network boot ROM installed?
Click to expand...
At a high level it's the same, but different implementation. The machine boots, the ROM has code that goes and looks for a boot server, downloads a disk image that has MS-DOS plus all the needed network drivers, boots that floppy image and at that point operates as a normal PC/AT.

My NetWare server has a NLM named 3cboot.nlm that binds to the NIC with Ethernet_ii frames. I think the discovery portion is working OK. When I don't load that NLM the 3station just eventually complains it can't find a server and just goes into it's configuration screen. But when I do load that NLM, the 3station finds the NetWare server (via some discovery mechanism I don't understand, probably IPX based), and it runs the "Novell NetWare Remote Program Loader for 3Com 3Station v1.03EC". My assumption is that the Novell RPL at this point it supposed to download the DOS disk image I have created and loaded, but it doesn't. That's the part I'm trying to figure out. There is a setting in the 3Station configuration named "Startup volume name" that seems important, but without documentation I don't know what to try. I've tried the obvious choices, SYS, the NetWare server name, etc.

The 3Station also has a diagnostic menu you can access in the ROM. One of the choices is to test the boot server link. When I do this test (with the proper NLM loaded on NetWare) it reports "Server test successful, the machine *should* boot"...lol
 
Pictures from above the sysboard? Siemens "286-N', I see a 16.257 MHz osc, probably 8MHz 286. Four TM4256GU9 30-pin SIMMs. One EPROM says "Compatibility Card" by Phoenix Software.

A quick search, the "Compatibility Card" BIOS could be on an adapter.

"The term "Compatibility Card" was sometimes used for adapter cards that added new functionality or improved hardware compatibility for systems that had limited expansion options"

"PEGA1A is the Paradise Autoswitch EGA 350"
 
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Al Kossow said:
I still need to archive the 3Server I bought several years ago
Click to expand...

Continuing on this tangent:
A warning: Don't ever connect one of those to a network that also has newer network stuff, unless you are aware of the risks.

I don't know what actually happened, but in the late 90's I had a 3Server and when I connected it to my network that ran a few PCs, one of them running Windows 2000 with NetBEUI enabled, the 3Server decided to access it's disk violently for a few seconds and after that the installation never wanted to boot again.
Unfortunately I don't have that 3Server any more, it was still at the time things like that was considered "cool e-waste to tinker with" rather than something vintage that ought to be preserved.

(I don't know which exact model it was, but it had a "lower" CPU than a 286 and you would use a DOS program as a network console, temporary sharing your local workstation floppy disk while running that program. The 3Server had a tape drive and a hard disk, IIRC both using separate SASI/SCSI interfaces with adapter boards to MFM/ST412 for the hard disk and the other adapter used whatever interface the tape drive had).
 
Setting Up a 3Station to Remote Boot (87134) no idea

While looking through the various 3+Open stuff, I got the impression that the earlier version of the 3Server software used the Start Volume and later versions didn't. Your setup screen shows "Start Volume Name" of 3STATION, but looking through the 3+Open stuff on IA returned no significant hits for Start Volume...

Background info, nothing immediately helpful: Performance comparison of PC LAN file servers an experimental study .

"One such attempt was the Apple MultiServer, seen here in an extremely rare prototype form owned by Jonathan Zufi, proprietor of Shrine of Apple. Beneath its Apple-branded skin, the MultiServer would have been a rebadged 3Com 3Server, a network server powered by an Intel 80188 CPU. Presumably, it would have run 3Com’s 3+ file sharing software and not an OS designed by Apple. According to Shrine of Apple, the server was cancelled at the last minute and the unshipped units were used for Apple’s sales offices."
 
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Apple had an internal 68K file server effort that evolved into the Macintosh II
Apple had two other 3Com products, the Etherbox Lisa parallel port ethernet interface
and the original Mac II Nubus Ethernet card.
 
Al Kossow said:
Could you take pictures of the board and dump the firmware?
Click to expand...

Here's a better picture of the board, and the ROM images are attached. I noticed strings in both say Copyright 1985,1986 Phoenix Technologies. The sticker on one of the ROMs has the last three bytes of the MAC address.

20251124_161347.jpg
 

Attachments

SOLVED: I now have it successfully booting MS-DOS 3.31 remotely from a NetWare 3.12 server. The issue turned out to be that I was using ethernet_ii frame type exclusively, but what it really wanted was the 3CBOOT.NLM (NetWare Loadable Module for 3Station remote program load) to be bound to ethernet_ii frame type on the NIC, then IPX to be bound to ethernet_802.3 on the NIC. Apparently it uses ethernet_ii for the discovery of the boot server, then uses 802.3 frames for downloading the DOS image to boot. And just FYI, MS-DOS 6.22, and 5.02 both cause "unexpected HW ..." and "unexpected SW ..." interrupt errors when the 3Station tries to boot them. I had to go back to MS-DOS 3.3 before it didn't hang. Next up is for me to put the NetWare client drivers into the DOS image so I can map some drives and run Windows 3.1.

The eBay seller I bought this from said he has a couple more. Click here for his profile:

20251125_183016.jpg
 
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