ABSTRACT
Networking systems have been available from the earliest days of the microcomputer, the first being proprietary file or disk servers manufactured to control network operations. Novell’s NetWare S-Net was one of the pioneers. A clunky-looking white box powered by a Motorola, Inc., 68000 chip, it was designed as a star topology with a relatively low number of users. From the beginning, S-Net needed an operating system to provide services to the workstations that used CP/M and then DOS. Novell hired a development team to build its first network operating system, which existed as software independent of Novell’s proprietary server. NetWare was the result. Other organizations followed similar routes.
