Nobody sold you a Commodore 64 and promised you the internet. One person, one desk, one screen — that was the deal. Forty years later, we’re renegotiating.

This issue is about the machines that were never meant to go online, and the people who put them there anyway. It starts with Phil Karn hauling TCP/IP onto Z80s over ham radio in 1985, runs through Adam Dunkels stripping a network stack down to a few hundred bytes of RAM, and lands in the present, where a Commodore 64 Ultimate can deal poker hands across the country to an Atari 800 that has no business understanding them.

We didn’t just write about it. We proved it. In November 1985, this magazine published a type-in called Power Poker by Jud Bleser. It’s back in these pages in a new expanded version that uses the C64 Ultimate’s networking to play live opponents through our public relay server at relay.8bitatari.com. Same game, same magazine, considerably longer reach.

Inside this issue:

• The Connected 8-Bit: How Retro Machines Went Online — the full history, from KA9Q to FujiNet, WiC64, Spectranet and Ultimate
• Two Numbers Across the Internet — the complete relay protocol, and the four patterns that keep two computers in sync. Bring your own BASIC.
• The First Third — Apogee founder Scott Miller on Jumpman, the C64, and how the disk-magazine ethos became the shareware revolution
• Power Poker II — the 1985 type-in reborn with online multiplayer
• FS0 — Steve Lewis fits a complete, playable flight simulator into roughly 250 lines of C64 BASIC
• Ask Ray returns — Ray Carlsen has been repairing Commodore hardware since 1964. He’s answering your questions again, every month.
• Milasoft — Andrew Fisher interviews Marcel Lansing on bringing new conversions to the Atari 2600
• Lost & Found: PET adventures recovered, Dialed Back: Looking for Love at 1200 Baud, GEOS printing from the C64 Ultimate, the Atari ST: Friend or Foe?, plus INSIGHT: Atari, MEGA65 Digest, Tandy Land, The 640k Club, and Commodore Corner
• New User’s Guides — C64 Part Two and TRS-80 Part One
• Type-in listings — Rock, Paper, Scissors (online multiplayer demo), Power Poker II, FSO, FASTFONT.BAS for the Atari 8-bit, Back to BASIC tutorials, and Micro Missions challenges

Also new this month: type-in programs are now available on a downloadable disk. The listings stay in print — typing them in is half the pleasure and all of the education — but the working copies are there when you want them.

Go connect something.