Back Doors In Software Or Programs
- Thread starter steve123
- Start date
I remember that too. The other was getting around the OEM-only install of Windows 95. You could do a custom install and be able to install the software as though you were repairing the machine. With online registration now, that's difficult for most of us as the liceses are tracked in the cloud, and the effort we need to go through just isn't worth it. That is, unless you like to do this kind of thing.
This sounds all to familiar. A bit before that, I was working for an insurance company that relied on a Novell Netware network and servers that ran a B-trieve based database. At least once a week we had to do a restore from scratch and then a big database repair, and we think TS12 is bad! This would take hours, if not days sometimes, and then we'd go through and have to do the processing to bring stuff up-to-date. I worked the computer room, swing shift, and got stuck doing the extra reports and batch jobs.
I came into networking computers after the tail end of Novell Netware stopped being used on some of our customer sites. I bet that was some fun headaches.
I came into networking computers after the tail end of Novell Netware stopped being used on some of our customer sites. I bet that was some fun headaches.
You didn't miss much "fun".... It was a snotty net-os which loaded on top of DOS. It wasn't as robust an environment as NT, although I did have one server which ran for 450 days before it needed a reboot, but that was a rarity. It also had a very tight pallet of certified hardware it could load on, and was generally picky about everything else. In the computer room one server always crashed for some reason. It was as though it was paranoid and would crash if you looked at it for too long.
Dos-based, yet.. Seriously! A server boot drive would be formatted and partitioned using MS-DOS then Novell would "sit" on top of that. This then had the support built into it for larger hard drives and networks. The network permissions were great though and very powerful. I had taken a network admin class for Novell at the time, and even looked into becoming a Novell Engineer. Instead I ended up pursuing the MS NT 4.0 branch instead, but never became an MSCE because I couldn't afford the tests.
Novell was workable but awkward, and by the time Windows NT came along, it beat the snot out of it. People said that Microsoft pulled sneaky moves, and what not, but I don't think so. NT was based on VMS and OS/2, which both did things much better and natively as it didn't rely on DOS underneath. Novell tried to compete with Netware 4.0 but that was too little and too late. There were some cross pollination though. The forest and trees concept in Novell 4.0 became the Active Directory structure found in Windows Server 2000 and up.
I still have a bunch of books somewhere on it with the disks. I should dig it out and try to install it in a VM and see what it's like.
John
Probably not if you or they use a PVN to go online. I had fun once routing via Russia on a PVN to access EBay or PayPal, when I received emails from them re some "suspicious" activity going on with my LogIn.
But then again, it was the Terminator, going back in time, doing his evil deed and then going forward into the future without leaving a "HASTA LA VISTA, BABY" nor an "I'LL BE BACK" behind.
VinnyBarb
Once upon a long, long time ago - working in military stores we had huge reels of magnetic tape and had to feed in 10,000 plus cards with one piece of information to change the stored item amounts and then do it all over again when they changed the reels at the end of that run to change the total again - this went on and on and was considered top of the line in systems back then - but wars were slower and less spontaneous then as well, and we all played with real trainsets!!!
This sounds like the old IBM 3270s I never had the opportunity to run.
I came along at the end of the mainframes and mini-computers, but had my taste of the older technology. The card readers were pulled out by then, but the 2540 and 1270 BPI tape decks were still there hooked to the cluster of VAXs and Sun OS systems. One VAX ran Ultrix, while the other three machines ran VMS 4.2, and the SUN of course ran Sun-OS, the precursor to Solaris. These machines were my introduction to Unix and a whole world I got to explore and enjoy.
My worst nightmare was during a full back up of one quarter end cycle. One backup had 24-plus tapes and kept going! I ran out of active tapes that I had initialized and had to scrounge around for the final estimated two tapes left. I went to the old tapes, that were in the to be init'd box located on the 5th floor which meant I had to walk up a flight of stairs to get them. I found my two tapes, put one on another machine whose backup cycle ended only to find that the tapes had lots their BOT tapes. Oh no!!! I had to then measure out 14 feet, or two floor tiles, and put the foil tape at that location. The first tape mounted fine, ran the backup for the 20 minutes. The final tape mounted, wiggled, and ended the backup after writing the logs. The last tape was needed for just the logs files.
When I wasn't sorting reports or mounting tapes, I was drawing out my dream layouts on scrap green bar paper. It was a perfect size for measuring out a 4 x 8 piece of plywood.
John
I forgot about those.
Very loud indeed. In one place I worked, the maintenance staff built sound-proofed cabinets for the chassis and fit them in under the desks. These looked really nice, but were a bear to try to get the PC out of for updates and repairs.I had a Visual V1050 CP/M machine, which I got from the company back in 1984 as an employee. The case was large and empty and had 2 very loud Teac floppy drives and a very loud fan. When the system was booted up, you could hear it in the other room. It was a great system and came with quite a bundle too of software.
John