PLATO and learning models (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Jerry Weiss]

On Jul 15, 2016, at 9:34 PM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 6:47 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I remember, around the same time, the Tektronix 4010.  But that was
>> far less flexible; it could only draw, not erase, unlike the PLATO terminals.
> 
> The 4010 can erase just fine. The problem is that it can't do
> selective erase, only
> full-screen erase, and erasing is a slow operation.
> 
> Tektronix had other models that could do both storage and refresh
> graphics, but they were even more expensive. The refresh capabilities
> tended to be fairly limited.


The PLATO IV terminals had a 512x512 addressable pixels, local charset memory (Font)
and the ease and power of TUTOR to support them. It still amazes me how much
work and fun we extracted from the limited cpu, memory, storage and communication 
bandwidth we had.  

Oh and those keyboards.  Best damn ones I’ve ever used. 

Jerry