When Apple launched its Macintosh Office concept in January 1985, part of its three-pronged approach to sharing computer resources was a network file server, in addition to the LaserWriter and Mac-PC interoperability. Apple promised this file server in 1985, which was designed to be a stand-alone machine, basically a headless Macintosh. However, this product, which was to include print spooling and electronic mail too, never shipped and instead Apple released its AppleShare file server software in spring 1987. During that time, a small number of third-parties already released their own file sharing software that used the AppleTalk network. Among these were Infosphere XL/Serve and MacServe, and Centram TOPS.

The first file sharing application that Apple demoed in spring 1985 was called ClipTalk, which allowed users to transfer files between Macintosh computers using AppleTalk. It probably operated as a peer-to-peer arrangement, with no formal distinction between client and server. By March 1985, Bill Croft and others at Stanford had written implementations of Telnet and TFTP for Macintosh, as well as a Unix file server for Macintosh. This server, called EFS for External File System, was written by John Seamons of Lucasfilm and was adapted for AppleTalk by the people at Stanford.

The first native Macintosh file server was XL/Serve, released in summer 1985, which allowed a Macintosh XL to act as a disk server and print spooler for an attached Imagewriter. The 10 MB hard disk of the Mac XL could be partitioned in up to 16 volumes, with a 2 MB volume size limit. XL/Serve ran under MacWorks and required 1 MB of RAM. Finally, a major component of Apple's Macintosh Office concept was now available: a file server and print spooler. In 1986, XL/Serve was ported to the Macintosh Plus and beta copies of MacServe were out for testing in spring 1986.

The Macintosh Office was indeed a concept ahead of its time, and we'll explore it more fully in a future Mac 512K Blog article. Today, we're going to take a look at the TOPS networking system for Macintosh.

All about TOPS

TOPS stands for Transcendental Operating System and was an early experiment in cross-platform networking from Centram Systems West, and also the company's first product. There was a TOPS for Mac and a TOPS for PC. With the PC AppleTalk card, an IBM PC could join an AppleTalk network too. TOPS for Mac was first released in August 1986, about 6 months before AppleShare was demoed in February 1987. At the time, Centram was also working on a port to VAX VMS.

Beta copies of TOPS were out for testing in July. Jon on the Info-Mac mailing list reported seeing a friend's beta copy of TOPS:

Jon on mod.mac, 30 Jul 1986 wrote:

I have a friend who is a beta tester for them and we toyed around with it. I only saw the Mac portion but he tells me that it works with his PC too. At any rate, you use a DA to publish your disks for use by others. Then they can mount these disks from a list on the DA. Then it acts just like a regular disk. Pretty nifty. I would recommend it although they have a sneaky scheme where each node has a serial number and they all compare to see if it is duplicated anywhere on the net and they all quit if it is. However, rumors assure me that this can be beaten although it would be wrong...

Apple touted PC-Mac connectivity for the Macintosh Office, and sure enough, both PCs and Macs could act as a TOPS file server. Bill Berner had a PCXT running TOPS, acting as a file sever. He connected to it with a Macintosh, copied MacWrite to the PC's hard disk, then launched MacWrite over the network from that PC. He was also able to use Excel on the Mac to save WKS format files to the PC hard disk, then open those files on the PC using Lotus.

In October 1986, Tim Maroney of Centram gave a talk at Stanford Macintosh Developer SIG about the development plans for TOPS. John Mark Agosta posted a summary of the talk to the Info-Mac mailing list, which is worth excerpting from:

John Mark Agosta on mod.mac, 24 Oct 1986 wrote:

CENTRAM TOPS server software, which has been shipping for several months, is the company's first product, and has been doing well enough to let them move into a larger facility. It is built on top of a "remote function protocol", a close relative of the "Apple session protocol." TOPS intercepts the basic file traps, like PBOpen, etc, and using the protocol, executes a corresponding routine remotely. This is how it lets you share files on another disk over AppleTalk. Apple's "Apple File Protocol" will in principle be the same, and CENTRAM intends to maintain compatability with AFP in their "TOPS-2" version of server software. This is where the story really begins... CENTRAM is, in various stages of extending TOPS, in the next versions, to include: - A unix server. This would require a hardware connection, like one of the Kinetics gateway products. The main addition needed to the present product is "file illusion management", eg., a way of aliasing files to various parts of the unix file stucture, like link allows within the file structure. Conceivably, there would be a table that maintained these links more or less invisibly to the user. - A VMS server also. This is still on the drawing board. Tim has been working on a commercial version of "MacIP", a version of telnet for the Mac that runs on top of TCP/IP protocols. This grew out of the public domain version he worked on at CMU. This version, however will be commercial quality software. This would let the Mac live on a local net with unix machines (again connected by a Kinetics gateway), and, as far as I see, not require the rest of the net to understand the remote function protocol. The Mac would speak a range of the existing network protocols that run on TCP/IP, except I don't recall him having plans to let the Mac be an ftp server. As a consequence of this and other products, Tim has plans for a large number of "building block" pieces of software. For MacIP he plans to write a complete complement of telnet/ftp/smtp/TCP/IP for the Mac. For TOPS he has an "Interbase" multi-file B-tree package with multiple keys. Also, the SFfile routines required modification for TOPS, which is refered to as the "file interface package." Most exciting is a rewrite of the Mac OS to allow multi-tasking (no kidding). This would not be forward compatible with existing Mac software, (no one writes applications clean enough to make that possible) but rather would let CENTRAM applications work in a multitasking environment. These numerous building blocks are not planned as commercial products, but might be licensed (eg. to developers, so many people could use the TOPS protocols, for instance), and distributed thru developer channels. Finally, another product planned is a Postal system, with a nifty Mac interface and automatic remote retrieval of messages. It would work with or without a mainframe server host.

The first version of TOPS did not use the same Apple Filing Protocol as AppleShare because it was released months ahead of AppleShare. TOPS was later acquired by Sun Microsystems. TOPS version 3.0 features mail, network printing, and file sharing for Mac 512Ke, Plus, and SE. It was released in 1989. It is compatible with AFP-based applications, meaning that the file server can be accessed by clients using AppleShare in the Chooser.



My version 3.0 bundle, pictured above, comes with a full set of manuals and installation disks for the entire TOPS networking system. Included as a bonus is Dataviz MacLink Plus, a file format translator for PC-Mac interchange.


Installing and Using TOPS

TOPS cost about $120 per computer. TOPS had to be purchased per-computer because each TOPS disk was serial numbered, and the serial number was broadcast on the network to check for duplicates. A post from Raines on the Delphi Mac digest explained more:

Raines in net.micro.mac, 7 Aug 1986 wrote:

I ran NETCHECK (from Apple) while TOPS was running, and found out a bit about their copy-protection scheme. I'll tell you this much: their copy-protection is tied into the very essence of the way AppleTalk's NBP works, so it might be VERY DIFFICULT to change from that end. On the other hand, some people tell me that any serial number is easily findable and changeable.

Another post from 1987 stated that the TOPS serial number is in the TOPS file itself.

Insert the TOPS disk and run the Installer application. Installation only takes a minute.



Click the Drive button if necessary to choose which volume to install TOPS on, then click the Install button. A dialog box will show progress of installation, after which you'll see this dialog box. You'll need to restart your Macintosh afterward.



After your Macintosh restarts, open the Chooser from the Apple menu and ensure that AppleTalk is Active.



TOPS is controlled through a Desk Accessory in the Apple menu. At left is a listing of files and folders on your Macintosh. To share a file or a folder on the network, highlight its name, then click the Publish button.

At right are the file servers available on the network. Select a name from this list and click Mount to access its files on the Macintosh desktop. Right now, I don't have any other servers on my network, so this list is empty.



The Copy button lets you copy files to or from your Macintosh across the network. Because TOPS is used as a Desk Accessory, you don't need to return to the Finder to copy files; you can do it from within any application that supports Desk Accessories.

I setup my AppleTalk network using PhoneNet wiring for two Mac 512Ke units with expanded memory, but because I only have one set of TOPS disks, I could not use TOPS on both Macs. The TOPS software recognized that the serial number was already in use by the other Mac 512Ke, and it refused to run.

I did not try using InBox, the electronic mail application. It's possible that too is protected by a serial number.

So it seems that this adventure has come to a premature end. Either I need to figure out how to defeat the serial number protection scheme, or I need to find another copy of TOPS with a different serial.




We are now once again at the end of yet another Mac 512K Blog article. The next article will show how to expand the Mac 512K's memory with a Dove MacSnap! And the one after that will show how to add SCSI to your Mac 512K, so we are in for very interesting times ahead!

The Mac 512K Blog wrote:

This blog chronicles the Macintosh 512K and my projects with it. We will test software, fix hardware, program it, hack it, and generally take the 512K Macintosh to its limits. Do leave any feedback you may have by posting a comment to this article.