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Abstract

A system of computers having team/workgroup features built in. A typical hardware component thereof is a unitary chassis of a regular single IBM-PC tower-chassis footprint, designed to house electronics for up to four personal computers, all operating on a single power supply. The unitary chassis provides interconnecting cable for connecting up to four corresponding display terminals and keyboards, which all can be located at other dispersed locations. Each such computer provides a communication/device-sharing card, which may for example be a SCSI-II card providing data rate transfer at 10 Megabytes per second on a single SCSI-II cable. Furthermore, each computer comprises a CPU card and a monitor interface card, such as a VGA card. The invention is especially suited for configuration as a PC-based, multiple-CPU, multi-user workgroup system. Such workgroup systems are especially adapted for collaborative, multimedia and client-server computing for small workgroups. The capability is facilitated by use of direct-access team/workgroup servers, for example a CD-ROM server, a media server, a peer-to-peer server and a file server. The computers recognize these servers as direct-access local drives which are shared by the users in a transparent manner without the need for a complicated Network Operating System.

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First Claim