1 Aug
2002
1 Aug
'02
7:24 a.m.
Doug,
Besides collecting it, is there anything you can do with it??? Has anyone
found any of the original CDC Plato servers and been able to restore them to some
functionality so that Plato terminals could be connected and tried out???
I own several of the Atari 800 Plato carts that turn an Atari into a Plato
Terminal using the Graphics 8 mode with animated graphics. I remember first
signing up and trying it out in 1984-85 or so I was was amazed at the speed in
which code was sent to the computer to draw graphics, create animations and so
forth.
Curt
Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
This is two
years late, but the terminal the original poster describes
sounds like an IST (model 1), a CRT-based CDC product, vintage about 1978.
There was a later edition called the IST-II, also CDC. It had two 8" drives
and a Z-80 CPU, as well as connectivity to CDC PLATO mainframe systems,
either by dialup modem (1200 bps) or multiplexer.
Actually, I was the original poster; a reply to me mentioned the
terminal you're describing.
The IST is not the oldest PLATO terminal, but it
is the oldest that CDC
manufactured, I suspect. Even my PLATO IV (Magnavox, 1971) is not the
oldest, but only the first mass-produced machine. The earliest ones date to
about 1961 and there are probably only two or three still in existence, if
we're lucky enough to have that many. A precursor to these would be Norman
Crowder's Auto-Tutor, vintage about 1958, which has characteristics very
similar to the PLATO terminals (though it is not a computer terminal, it
operates on filmstrip media), and PLATO's mechanisms are said to have been
influenced by this machine.
It's one of the mid-70s Magnavox plasma displays I'm looking for...
Say, are you able to connect to NovaNET with the magnavox terminal? if
so, we should meet for a game of Empire or Avatar some time (although
I'm sure you'll wipe me out).... or maybe a more civilized game of chess...
Regards,
-doug quebbeman