Talk:PLATO
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PLATO is a backronym, not an apronym. The words were invented to fit the name they had already come up with.
Last section references "interested educators ported the engine"; if you're referring to the various variants of the Tutor language, that isn't exactly porting "the engine". There were various offshoots, such as GIST's USE (?), Authorware, and CMU's version of Tutor (written by Bruce Sherwood and Dave Andersen, who had been system programmers at CERL PLATO), but PLATO itself is written in CDC assembly language - porting it has always been judged to be too difficult, except to run it on an emulator.
The only real "ports" of PLATO are NovaNET (running on a Cyber emulator on a DEC Alpha), an internal product never released, internally called NovaNET-in-a-Can, and the CYBIS system cloned from the FAA system running on a (different) Cyber emulator at cyber1.org.
Sorry, I'm sort of new to wikipedia, not sure if this is the right way to bring up issues like this. I suppose I should create an account. Contact me at sep@shout.net if you want.
- "PLATO is a backronym, not an apronym..." is exactly what I thought, until I looked up apronym which states that an apronym can be either an acronym or a backronym, as long as the meaning of the word is similar to the meaning of the phrase that forms it. So yes, PLATO is a backronym, because the phrase was invented later, but it's also an apronym. It's also a backronym for "Please Leave All Terminals On" because turning the plasma displays on and off every day wore them out more than leaving them on all night. At least at Iowa State, policy was to never turn them off, and there was a sign above all terminals to this effect, using the backronym phrase. Aumakua 04:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] Not 6600
I didn't know about the "donated" part so I can't comment on that, but the machine at the University of Illinois in 1975 definitely was not a 6600. It was a Cyber 73, a substantially less powerful machine. It's a dual CPU but single functional unit machine, unlike the multiple unit 6600. Somewhat later (as is mentioned a bit further down in the article) a second machine was added, that one a CDC 6500 -- basically the same thing as the Cyber 73.
The code inside PLATO actually shows this; it was not at all optimized for a 6600.
[edit] Fascinating Article
This is a very well-done article on an intriguing topic. I need to learn more about computer history. Superm401 | Talk 16:35, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] plasma display
I'm puzzled by the statement that the plasma display "incorporated both memory and bitmapped graphics". What memory? --Anton Sherwood 01:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
It's weak, but true. The display acts as its own screen memory, its electricaly write-only and optically read-only. The only competing no-memory graphical display tech. of the time was the Tectronix storage tube. --Pdpruyne 09:02, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Other PLATO Games
I'm a PLATO user from the 1977-1980 era and was wondering if we could add some of my personal favorites of the PLATO games to the list. The ones I remember the best are Omegaland, Galaxy, Adventure, and RobotWar. Many of us who were children as users ended up in computer science because of our early experiences with PLATO. -- artdeco
- I had access to PLATO back in 1981-82 for a few months. I played Moria, Labyrinth, Flatbush. I also played another game that I cannot remember the title. You could play as Federation, Klingon, Romulan or Orion, and you went about through space trying to destroy enemy ships.--RLent 21:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
-
- Sounds like Empire (which I never played). You can play it again on cyber1.org ! —Tamfang 21:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Vector or raster?
The original documents I used to make this article stated the terminals used a 512x512 display, which I also found several other documents referring to, the Atari one for instance. However the article now states that it used a vector display instead. I have edited it, perhaps incorrectly, to suggest that the two were the same thing.
Does anyone know the real story here? Did PLATO II/III use vector and PLATO IV raster?
Maury 21:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, if I understand the terms correctly. PLATO III used a CRT. —Tamfang 22:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
-
- So you are saying there was a change between the PLATO II and PLATO III? Maury 12:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
-
-
- I never saw PLATO II, but I assume it also used CRTs or something similar.
- I dimly remember hearing that P1 supported one user, P2 two, and P3 many. —Tamfang 20:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
-
- At age 10 or so, I once used a hacked P3 terminal to watch tv on a Sunday evening while stuck at CERL with dad. —Tamfang 20:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] So that's what The Roach Organization is...
207.179.172.217 14:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] some dates
This was posted to pad (on cyber1.org) two weeks ago by asher/cerl:
Just received my latest copy of the Physics Illinois News last week (sent periodically to U of I physics grads) and they had over 2 full pages devoted to PLATO, including a picture of Dan Alpert at a terminal as well as the PLATO lab in room 220 in Loomis. They also had an interesting timeline from 1960 - 1974 for the PLATO project that was apparently originally printed in 1974. Here is what they had:
1960 June PLATO I (one terminal)
1961 January PLATO II (two terminals)
1961 March First remote terminal (30 miles)
1961 Spring First teaching attempt using PLATO
1962 Spring First college credit for students taking a
course using PLATO
1963 Fall First stage of PLATO III completed
1964 December First on-line editing possible
1966 March PLATO III (20 terminals)
1967 Summer TUTOR author language in use
1968 March PLATO IV system design started
1968 June First time-shared authoring and student use
1968 Winter Four remote demonstrationg centers in
operationg (12 to 14 terminals in each)
1969 Summer 150 hours of instructional material developed
by this date
1970 Summer 720 hours of instructional material developed
100,000 student contact hours of use
1971 May Delivery of first Digivue display from Owens
1971 June Delivery of first PLATO IV terminal from
Magnavox
1972 Summer 1,600 hours of PLATO III instructional
material in about 70 courses with 154,000
student contact hours to date
1972 Summer 40 PLATO IV terminals in operation; intensive
PLATO IV lessone development; remote on-line
demonstrations in Canada, Europe, and USA
1972 Winter 250 PLATO IV terminals in operation at
approximately 40 locations (15 on the UI
campus and about 25 off campus)
1973 June PLATO III phased out
1973 Fall Remote on-line demonstrations in Sweden and
the Soviet Union; 1,500 hours of available
PLATO IV lesson material in 50 teaching
areas; 25,000 student contact hours between
September and December 31, 1973
1974 400 terminals in operation at approximately 70
locations (20 on the UI campus and about 50
off campus)
Note, in all the articles in this newsletter, there was no mention of Avatar or Empire. Go figure.
Oh, another interesting thing I had not seen mentioned before is that they said the ILLIAC was the system that originally ran PLATO. Back when I was an undergrad lab assistant, I actually ran across some of the original operating manuals and schematics for the ILLIAC buried at the bottom of an old filing cabinet in Loomis Lab. I kind of wish I had a copy of them now...
I found the link for the newsletter to view it online. It can be found at:
http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/alumni/PIN-current.pdf
Look at the article on the bottom of page 1 and the articles on pages 4 and 5.
- Marc
[edit] More Complete PLATO/NovaNet timeline
University of Illinois Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) Evaluation Office
PLATO/NovaNET History and Operation Overview
History
1960--PLATO project of Coordinated Science Laboratory
(CSL) begins
--Computer-Based Education (CBE) system (PLATO I)
first demonstrated
1961--PLATO II - World's first time-shared CBE
system is in use
--Computer generated graphics used in instructional
simulation
--First CBE authoring system (EE Logic)
1962--First accredited college course supported by
PLATO (EE)
1964--PLATO first supports on-line editing,
multiple classes
1965--Entire accredited college course taught solely
by PLATO (Library Science)
1966--PLATO III - Classroom-sized CBE system
(20 terminals)
1967--Computer-based Educatation Research Laboratory
(CERL) created to continue research and
development of CBE. CERL takes over PLATO from CSL
--Artificial Intelligence techniques used for
response judging
--General-purpose authoring language (TUTOR) in use
1971--First commercial version of plasma display
(invented at CERL) delivered
1972--PLATO IV - Wide-area-network CBE system in use
(250 terminals initially)
1974--Control Data Corporation installs first
commercial PLATO IV system
1975--First PLATO microprocessor terminal
1980--PLATO microcomputer classroom used for
accredited course
1982--CERL Cluster system in use --
low-cost local CBE system
1987--CERL NovaNET system in use --
low-cost central CBE system
1987--University Communications Incorporated (UCI)
begins marketing NovaNET
1988--Portal Software allows use of personal computers
for NovaNET
1991--PLATO IV system (1,997 terminals at peak)
replaced entirely by NovaNET
1993--NovaNET used for central management of local CBE
--University of Illinois begins shut-down of CERL
1994--NovaNET equipment and operation turned over to UCI.
Service
27,269,601 user-service hours delivered on CERL CBE
systems from 1961 to 1 July 1993
22,269,319 hours on PLATOs I-IV,
5,000,282 hours on NovaNET)
Over 1 million user-service hours delivered every
year from 1978 to 1993
Terminals
3,390 connected on 1 July 1993
36% at elementary/secondary schools
25% at colleges and universities
19% at community colleges
11% at business and industrial sites
5% at adult education centers
4% at CERL for research and system support
<1% at local and federal government sites
Users (On 1 July 1993)
73,827 student records (71,864 individual,
1,963 multiple-use)
7,680 instructor records
4,007 author records
Materials available to PLATO/NovaNET users (on 1 July 1993)
50,929 files
68% used for system management, data, and communication
+ 2,787 files are "bulletin board" style note files
+ 1,228 files are personal mail files for individuals
32% used for instructional material
+ about 9,371 hours of material of which about
6,107 have accredited classroom use
(Compiled by Allen Avner, 1 July 1993) The above information was the last of a series of information sheets issued by the CERL Evaluation Office during the years 1967 through 1993.
