classics Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Was the cartridge or software for the Plato system ever released? Going through this collection I found 2 disks (4 sides) labelled 'Plato Educational System Master'. They dont do anything when booted, I assume they need the cartridge to work. They seem to be the real thing though, going through them with a hex editor I can see Control Data copyrights and such. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gury Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 http://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n3/platorising.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 (edited) Steve, It was actually released as The Learning Phone a year after the initial announcement. Too little, too late again... We need to upload the cartridge dump as well (though it doesn't seem to work on emulators). Control Data released the following disks as well but they were just adapted from PLATO, they didn't require anything else: Basic Number Facts Computer Literacy - Introduction Decimals Fractions French Vocabulary Builder German Vocabulary Builder Physics - Elementary Mechanics Spanish Vocabulary Builder Whole Numbers For the moment, only a cracked version of Physics - Elementary Mechanics is available online but the others were definitely released. Could you see any release date on your disks? You may have some sort of beta as the PLATO network shut down its activities pretty quickly... -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Edited March 22, 2006 by www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted March 22, 2006 Author Share Posted March 22, 2006 (edited) There is a lot of educational stuff in here, I think I've seen at least two of those. I just came across the Krell SAT prep disks too. Steve Edited March 22, 2006 by classics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crash Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I may have a Learning Phone cart around here somewhere, if it is needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I may have a Learning Phone cart around here somewhere, if it is needed. There may be two revisions actually... The screenshot on our site was taken from the cartridge that is attached. Note that it doesn't seem to work on emulators. It tries to detect something I believe... Eric explained this to me but my technical knowledge is so feeble I forgot what he told me -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com The_Learning_Phone.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I also have a Learning Phone cart. Complete with a bright red label (it actually hurts the eyes). I can dump it if need be. On an interesting side note, I believe this is the only Atari 8-bit cartridge I've ever seen with a 1985 copyright. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I also have a Learning Phone cart. Complete with a bright red label (it actually hurts the eyes). I can dump it if need be. This is the commercial version most people have so the dump should be the same. Now if it displays the following text on boot-up, you have a prototype and I don't think the image is floating around anywhere... On an interesting side note, I believe this is the only Atari 8-bit cartridge I've ever seen with a 1985 copyright. Doesn't AtariWriter (revision C) look like this? Not sure it's from 1985 though... There's an Eastern Front (1941) with that weird red label as well. -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Interesting. There is a live Plato System running. / Here is the link: http://www.cyber1.org/ I wonder if we could get the PLATO software working on an Atari, and use it along with APE's Internet modem to connect to the cyber1 system? This would rock! They have Empire and probably many other games installed.... Also interesting: http://www.platopeople.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I also have a Learning Phone cart. Complete with a bright red label (it actually hurts the eyes). I can dump it if need be. This is the commercial version most people have so the dump should be the same. Now if it displays the following text on boot-up, you have a prototype and I don't think the image is floating around anywhere... On an interesting side note, I believe this is the only Atari 8-bit cartridge I've ever seen with a 1985 copyright. Doesn't AtariWriter (revision C) look like this? Not sure it's from 1985 though... There's an Eastern Front (1941) with that weird red label as well. -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com I have some cassette programs I recently got from Englnad that are in bright red cases. I think Atari released all of this around the same time, soon after the XE hit the market. I think my cassettes were actually part of an Atai computer bundle sold in the U.K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Going through this collection I found 2 disks (4 sides) labelled 'Plato Educational System Master'. Can you turn these into ATR images and release them? Maybe with the cart ROM, this will work.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathtrappomegranate Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I have some cassette programs I recently got from Englnad that are in bright red cases. I think Atari released all of this around the same time, soon after the XE hit the market. I think my cassettes were actually part of an Atai computer bundle sold in the U.K. You're right, these were sold as pack-in games by Atari UK. The cassette inlay cards are red, and they obviously spent very little on the printing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JackFlack Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 I have this Plato Prototype. Labeled #12 dated 2-28-84 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pengwin Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 I just found this on eBay if anyone is interested. Although I found it via ebay.co.uk, the seller is in Oregon http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/The-Learning-Phone-A...1QQcmdZViewItem Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormtrooper of Death Posted August 18, 2017 Share Posted August 18, 2017 Mega necro bump. Today I read about the Plato system on facebook. Then after some google-fu, i discovered that Plato was also available for our Atari 8bit computers. Very interesting. Multi player Dungeon crawling, education services, ancient text-chat, etc. I just bump this topic of AtariAge, because I've never heard about it before and i think that some fellow Atarians never knew this aswell. (as this topic is 10+ years old). Here is a wikipedia article with a lot of information about the old PLATO network system (running from 1960 !!! to 2006) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted August 18, 2017 Share Posted August 18, 2017 http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-learning-phone-_6486.html Allan 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted August 19, 2017 Share Posted August 19, 2017 Re posting for archival: (I removed it from the Hooked on 8Bit Carts Thread last year since no one was been able to get it to run) plato.xex This is a CartCopy image that I tool back in 83-84 from a real / hacked? cart. It won't run without the correct modem and possibly a disk too? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted February 6, 2018 Share Posted February 6, 2018 Atari's PLATO terminal has been resurrected: Active thread here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/196354-ataris-plato-cartridge-question/ -Thom 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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