Original versions of Lotus Notes available for download

January 24 2005

One of several "Lotusphere specials"... my colleagues and I, in celebration of the 15th anniversary of Lotus Notes, have posted the original Notes V1, V2, and V3 builds on IBM developerWorks: Lotus for download.  This is a limited time offer through next week.
Thanks to a myriad of cohorts who helped make this happen.
More details and download links >

Ed Brill | WDW Dolphin, Orlando FL USA Category:  Lotusphere 05  Add/View Comments [29]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Bill  | 1/24/2005 1:34:53 PM

    When I try to download, I get a 'page out of sequence' error after signing in and completing the mini-survey.

  1. 2  Carl Abrahamson  | 1/24/2005 1:57:43 PM

    Very cool. Thanks!

  1. 3  Tony S Lee www.peripheral.ca | 1/24/2005 2:33:15 PM

    Great!! Now if I could get a copy of OS/2 Warp...

  1. 4  Chris Whisonant  | 1/24/2005 3:23:34 PM

    Tony, we have OS/2 at our site. We are still running an old IBM PC with OS/2 that controls our 3995 Optical Jukebox. This is well past IBM's service. If we ever have a problem with the box our CE would have to call a lonely IBMer in Phoenix and hope that he would give us some support. But it's extremely stable, so we don't worry about that too much.

    I I could probably wrangle up a copy for you if you can wait until next week after I'm back from Lotusphere. E-mail me...

    Just passed my 3rd Domino administration exam for 6/6.5 - 1 to go!

  1. 5  Greg Walrath http://www.univarusa.com/ | 1/24/2005 4:07:42 PM

    Anybody get these to install? When I try the DOS v1 install, it prompts me for the second disk, but I only have the one install folder.

  1. 6  Tony S Lee www.peripheral.ca | 1/24/2005 7:09:27 PM

    @4 Chris, thanks... I used to have the bucketful of OS/2 Warp floppies. TGF CD's.

  1. 7  Bernard Devlin  | 1/25/2005 4:54:26 AM

    Very cool idea... I came to Notes at version 4, but I'd been interested in it for a few years before that. Now I will be able to see the evolution clearer. Incidentally, a few months ago I downloaded Lotus Agenda from the lotus ftp site - it's great they made that freely available. I'm now using that as an organiser and PIM on OS/2 and Windows, and via DOS emulation) on the Mac, Linux. (I had been looking to use Agenda for some years, as it had such a great reputation).

  1. 8  Werner Novak  | 1/25/2005 5:00:31 AM

    Tried to install V1 but don't get the install set with the download. "dosprogram2" and "data" directory is missing to install und dos/win !!

  1. 9  Werner Novak  | 1/25/2005 5:09:45 AM

    And for th os2 install der "data" directory is missing !!

    So no chance for V1 at all (For now, come on Ed) !!

  1. 10  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 1/25/2005 5:30:13 AM

    I'm hoping that my colleague who did the installer is reading my blog.... if not, I'll check in on it later.

  1. 11  Jeff Mitchell  | 1/25/2005 7:00:40 AM

    I'm checking into it Ed.

  1. 12  Bill Truax  | 1/26/2005 11:28:56 AM

    Since I was working at Lotus in those days and actually started creating DB's for internal use in the QA lab in V1.1, I was thrilled to find out these were available for DL, however, none of the 3 links on IBM's site actually return any results. Have they been pulled early?

  1. 13  Bill Wood http://deming.us/tibetpics/-%20Start%20Slideshow.htm | 1/26/2005 1:36:37 PM

    I too tried the V1 install and was prompted for "Disk 2". I'm hoping you will fix this problem and repost.

    Interestingly, the download says that V1 runs under DOS, however when you install it loads a runtime version of MS Windows (if you don't already have it installed).

    I also tried loading the Help.NFS file into Notes 6.5 and got an error - "Named object corrupt".

  1. 14  Greg Walrath http://www.univarusa.com/ | 1/26/2005 2:29:41 PM

    At this point, it looks like these have been pulled. Hopefully they'll be back soon.

  1. 15  Hans van der Pols  | 1/26/2005 5:28:05 PM

    Tried it several times yesterday and today. I only get a "Notes Vx" not found error. Pretty boring. I had hoped to get a part of my life back (started with 2.1)

  1. 16  Richard Daley  | 1/27/2005 12:17:39 PM

    Please post them again or at least let us know what the scoop is. It isn't fair to post and then pull w/o explanation.

    Good Gracious.

  1. 17  Wolfgang Hass http://classposter.gswh.de | 1/27/2005 12:46:43 PM

    oops... where have they gone to? I got the error "notes v1" not found.

    I started with R2.0 and would love to see R1 working.

  1. 18  Craig Lordan  | 1/27/2005 3:16:33 PM

    They mysteriously disappeared from the Trials & Betas site but they have just been restored.

  1. 19  Bill Truax  | 1/28/2005 9:13:29 AM

    Thanks to whoever got them reposted and a big thanks to Ed and friends who had the idea and did the work to get them up there in the first place!

  1. 20  Greg Walrath http://www.univarusa.com/ | 1/28/2005 12:13:31 PM

    Unfortunately, it looks like this is still broken - same files, same file size, still missing disk 2 for the DOS install of V1.

  1. 21  Jeff Mitchell  | 1/28/2005 5:17:30 PM

    I've got all the files off my 5 1/4 floppies of the V1 Install disks. Sorry it took so long but you try finding a 5 1/4 floppy drive next time you are at Lotusphere. I'm recreating the webkits and making sure it fully installs this time (on DOS at least, I'm not going to try to install OS/2 1.3 again). It probably won't be reposted until Monday at the earliest. Sorry for any disappointment this problem caused.

  1. 22  Dan Jaffe  | 1/28/2005 10:40:31 PM

    I'll be !! I've always wanted to see R1 which many may not know was not really sold as a production product (at least that's what I remember) [Ed correct me if I'm wrong].

    I started life with R2, working at Proteon at the time (a maker of IBM compatible Token-Ring hardware in Westboro Ma - long since gone). Lotus had just sold Notes to a major New York bank (I think it was the largest sale of Notes at the time). The bank had our TR adapters and was having some problems with our NetBIOS drivers (it was our bug). Anyways ... I had a chance to work with Iris on debugging the problem. During one visit I had the chance to meet with Ray and Tim. They were just great to work with, even with all of the pressure of the pending sale. A year later I joined Ungermann-Bass - at that time management was looking at a replacement of Cc:Mail. I managed to convince UB management to give Notes a try (R3). We had a few bumps with OS/2 and hardware performance issues otherwise It was a great success. UB was sold at which time I left and joined Lotus support team which was a great time. I still can't believe how much I have influenced people into using Notes and Domino as well as some of the enhancements that have been added to it over the years. I have since moved on doing network and mail systems design and consulting the last few years.

    I still have a copy of the R2.0 documentation and software set with my copy of 123 1.0a.

    I'd love to hear of others stories on their first encounter with Notes and how they influenced others into using it.

  1. 23  Bill Wood http://deming.us/tibetpics/-%20Start%20Slideshow.htm | 1/29/2005 3:54:22 PM

    I first saw Lotus Notes - V2 - at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in early 1991 in NYC. I was amazed - we were looking for a replacement for Vax mail and DEC had this really lame PC mail product - forget the name now - and here came Lotus with a client-server mail system, rich text and offline-capable, based on a PC platform! Scott somebody was the Lotus salesman - he was great. We bought 200 licenses for SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals R&D (now GlaxoSmithKline) and ran a pilot for 12 months, then in 1992 bought 6000 licenses and replaced our terminal-based infrastructure with PCs running Windows 3.1 and Notes. The development capabilities even then were very compelling, and the replication and security model were way ahead of their time (still SOTA today). In 1991 I wrote an action tracking system for teams in Notes and today it has grown into our "ConnectWare" template, with thousands of instances and used monthly by over 15,000 people at GSK.

  1. 24  Greg Walrath http://www.univarusa.com/ | 1/31/2005 2:25:02 PM

    @21 - Thanks for the reply, Jeff. I completely understand that you don't haul those things around with you. :)

  1. 25  Jeroen Jacobs http://www.sith.be | 2/2/2005 6:59:52 AM

    Hi,

    I still get the "Notes Vx not found"-error. Is there a mirror available somewhere ?

    Greetings,

    Jeroen Jacobs

  1. 26  Nick Halliwell www.comware.net | 2/3/2005 2:59:08 AM

    I have just go to get teh new download as I have the want "2nd disk" problem but all I can get is a search page that says no results found.

    Come on Ed there are lots of us who down loaded the orgional version and need the re posted one. The deadline is tomorrow.

    HELP!!!!!!

  1. 27  Bill Wood http://deming.us/tibetpics/-%20Start%20Slideshow.htm | 2/3/2005 8:21:33 AM

    Hi Ed, where is the download for Notes V1?

  1. 28  Jens Polster www.domblog.de | 2/13/2005 10:08:53 AM

    I just checked the trials download page again and even though the page linked in Ed's blog entry says that the downloads are not available anymore I found a new Notes V1 download here:

    { Link }

    I haven't checked if the installer works correctly this time but it is a different file name and size than the first posting.

  1. 29  Bob Greenberg http://www.rfinder.net | 12/23/2012 9:37:26 AM

    Does anyone have a current place to find Notes for OS/2? I have a machine that died and I rebuilt it with eComstation 2.0 but I cannot find my install for OS/2...its been like 7 years...

    TX in advance...

    Bob