Commodore for Workgroups

More than 20 years ago, most of us got their first taste of networked computers when we installed Microsoft’s Windows for Workgroups on our PCs. For many of us, it was the first time our computers could actually “talk” to other computers in a network.

Over the past 2 years, I’ve written a couple of articles that explored the capabilities of the Commodore 64 when it came to networking. Whereas most of the solutions back in the 80s and 90s allowed for basic data-exchange, some more recent ones focused on bringing the C64 on to the internet. But was there ever something like “Commodore for Workgroups” that employed a client-server architecture and that was built entirely on Commodore’s flagship machines?

Turns out, back in ’94 (a year after Windows 3.11), two guys from Germany created exactly that.

Mathias Kettner and Kai Kajitan must have thought to themselves “What Microsoft can, we can do too” and they got to work on building a true Commodore client-server network that used only C64s and an Amiga as the server. The choice for the Amiga as the “leader of the pack” was obvious as it mastered multitasking in no way any other affordable system back then could. This meant that the Amiga would be able to control the network and oversee the operation of all the C64s that were attached to it.

To gain access to the network, just like with its “big brother” Windows, your C64 had to logon to the system. For this, the two friends had created a special login program that showed up on your C64 and that after successful entry of username and password, opened up the world of networking.

Attaching the C64s was done by means of a custom network module for the breadbox’ expansion port that came equipped with an EPROM containing an expanded BASIC instruction set and all the software and hardware necessary to enable networking on the C64.

For the Amiga, they created special “sysop” software that would enable the system administrator to manage the network from his Amiga. He would even be able to send messages to all the home computers in the network, as well as manage the data transfer between the different Commodores. Having the Amiga in the network act as the server, also meant that all the storage media like the Amiga hard drives could be accessed (if the administrator allowed it of course) from the different computers, effectively turning it into a fileserver. This also allowed for the loading and saving of C64 programs directly from the Amiga’s hard drive.

The two whiz kids even created some special C64 network enabled programs like a little game that you could play simultaneously over the different systems (sounds a lot like Microsoft’s network game of Hearts doesn’t it?)

12 years after its creation, the C64 again showed that it was still capable of doing some remarkable stuff… but that should come as no surprise as even to this day, the beige beast never seizes to amaze us!