#PLATO
3 messages in this thread
I don't know WHERE these rumors get started! PLATO has NEVER been out of
business. Control Data Corp is no longer running the PLATO network but they
were NEVER even out of service when the change took place. Since I work at
the University of Illinois (Where PLATO and the Plasma Panel were invented)
… and the PLATO group is one of my most active clients … I'm sure I
would have noticed the gap!
As to Plato software for the Amiga … Someone else was looking for that a
few months ago. There WAS a company right in Champaign, IL that had Amiga
Software … but I think they are out of business. Bart might want to try
looking through the User List for B.J. Anderson or Brent Anderson. I don't
know if he ever found any.
There was an article in an Atari related magazine bemoaning the
loss of PLATO since the Atari 8 bit line was one of the few, if only, home
computer at the time that was able to directly access PLATO. There was
even an Atari section on PLATO for awhile. My memory of the article was
that PLATO was being "disbanded"…or at least, the Atari interest group
was being disbanded….I forget exactly which…but the tone of the article
(as I remember it) was that PLATO was going to shut down because it had
become uneconomical to run.
Is it possible that PLATO has cut back on their services at some
time in the last 2 years and/or cut back on the number of links? Something
like that that would have caused the author of the article (Art Levithian I
believe) to believe that PLATO was going bye bye?
Either he assumed the whole system was going down because the Atari section
was, or he got his facts confused. As far as I know PLATO has become
steadily more healthy over the past five years. When CDC lost the PLATO
contract there were several articles that were of the tone "Control Data
Will No Longer Operate PLATO System" and a lot of people just read the
headline and assumed that meant PLATO was not going to operate any longer.