6.16) What networking hardware is there for the Atari?

Subject: 6.16) What networking hardware is there for the Atari?

This section by Andreas Magenheimer.

In the late 80`s and early 90`s an american "firm" called Dataque
developed some networking-computer-hardware to link two or more Ataris
together, so that multiplayer games are possible, where each user has
its own computer and tv/monitor screen. The hardware was/is computer
independant and will run fine on any Atari 8Bit computer (whereas most
software for it will only work on XL/XE computers). During a 3-4 year
period of development two different hardware add-ons were developed:

a) Gamelink-1: This hardware was developed in 1989/90. It links two
computers together via the joystick ports. It is limited to a maximum
of 2 computers and thus 2 or 6 players, meaning one free port per
XL/XE computer and 3 free ports per 400/800 computer. However, the
few existing games for this hardware merely support 2 players, no
matter, which computer you have...

b) Gamelink-2: This hardware was developed in 1991/92. It links 2 to 8
computers together via the SIO-port. One computer will then act as
the master and has to boot up the software (from tape, disk, harddisk,
etc.) first. Then all other "slave" computers connect to it and boot
off of this master computer (one after another of course). In Europe
we call this device "Multilink", mostly because of the games written
by Bewesoft (Jiri Bernasek) called Multi-Dash, Multi-Race, Multi-Worms.
A two-computer link-network can easily be done with one SIO cable, just
open the end of the SIO cable and exchange cables number 3 and 5. You
now have an easy two-computer (2-4 players) network-cable.

For some available software, that supports this networking-computer
hardware, see 8.16 which programs support networking computer hardware...