PLATO Term Program

[+9640News]

I came across a disk in my archives today that I do not recall having ever seen.  It does not have a PHD tag on it, and looks to be a copy of something probably produced by Texas Instruments to connect to the Plato Main Frames

 

It is a Plato Term Program.

 

On the disk label:

 

PLATO - TERM

TERM PGM to CONNECT

TO PLATO MAIN FRAMES

(302) 451 1577

(217) 333 6436

 

It has a TI Logo label that looks like the label was made on a dot matrix printer.

 

There are three files on the disk, UTIL1, UTIL2, UTIL3 that load from Editor/Assembler.  It has a few menu items to establish a phone/modem connection with the default at 300 baud.

 

The first phone number above is no longer good.  The second number was busy when I called it.

 

Anyone ever hear of it, etc?  I do recall when I received the disk that the individual that provided me the disk was nervous about using it being unsure of what it may do, etc.

 

I've got a telnet modem, and I wonder if I had the URL for the previous Plato emulator someone wrote if it would work, etc.  I just do not know the URL....

 

Beery

 

 

 

[brain]

You and this guy HAVE to connect:

 

https://irata.online/

 

PLATO is an educational online tool, very popular in Unis in the 1980s (and a bit into the 90s).  Thomas CherryHomes.

 

https://hackaday.io/project/105351-irataonline

 

Please reach out to him, as he would love to see the old PLATO term used with his emulator of PLATO...

 

Jim

 

[tschak909]

I have tested the TI PLATO terminal, it implements an earlier version of CDC's ASCII protocol, that is no longer compatible. It will not work with any of the current CYBIS installations correctly, which is another reason I ported PLATOTERM to the TI99.

 

-Thom

[+arcadeshopper]

I came across a disk in my archives today that I do not recall having ever seen.  It does not have a PHD tag on it, and looks to be a copy of something probably produced by Texas Instruments to connect to the Plato Main Frames
 
It is a Plato Term Program.
 
On the disk label:
 
PLATO - TERM
TERM PGM to CONNECT
TO PLATO MAIN FRAMES
(302) 451 1577
(217) 333 6436
 
It has a TI Logo label that looks like the label was made on a dot matrix printer.
 
There are three files on the disk, UTIL1, UTIL2, UTIL3 that load from Editor/Assembler.  It has a few menu items to establish a phone/modem connection with the default at 300 baud.
 
The first phone number above is no longer good.  The second number was busy when I called it.
 
Anyone ever hear of it, etc?  I do recall when I received the disk that the individual that provided me the disk was nervous about using it being unsure of what it may do, etc.
 
I've got a telnet modem, and I wonder if I had the URL for the previous Plato emulator someone wrote if it would work, etc.  I just do not know the URL....
 
Beery
 
 
 

I tested this with the wifi modem and Thomas's setup. It didn't work well. The platoterm he ported that uses TIPI works well. Use that

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[+9640News]

8 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

I tested this with the wifi modem and Thomas's setup. It didn't work well. The platoterm he ported that uses TIPI works well. Use that

Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk
 

Thanks for the feedback people.  I thought I had came across a piece of software that was a rarity.

 

Beery

[+Ksarul]

Actually, it was a good find, Beery. There weren't many copies of it out there until the IRATA project came to be. Many thanks for bringing attention to it again, as it may point more folks to the IRATA PLATO servers.

[Omega-TI]

TIPI users have it the easiest!  

As seen on his webpage...

 

[+arcadeshopper]

Thanks for the feedback people.  I thought I had came across a piece of software that was a rarity.
 
Beery

The disk is rare grin most of us just had a disk image

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[Airshack]

On 12/6/2019 at 7:46 AM, INVISIBLE said:

TIPI users have it the easiest!  

As seen on his webpage...

 

So I got on PLATO using the link above. Having difficulty navigating around. Looks like I'm in Atari hell with these menu options such as "Press HELP for..."

 

Any way to do this easier with the TI? 

 

Is it time for me to learn to load the mouse driver?

[Omega-TI]

TIPI + MOUSE = AWESOME!

I highly recommend a wireless model

[tschak909]

@Airshack the TI version has the keys mapped thusly:

https://github.com/tschak909/platoterm99/blob/master/README.md <-- scroll to bottom

 

If you, or anyone else can think of better key mappings, let me know. It's a bit of a challenge to cram all the keys on there.

 

-Thom

[+arcadeshopper]

So I got on PLATO using the link above. Having difficulty navigating around. Looks like I'm in Atari hell with these menu options such as "Press HELP for..."
 
Any way to do this easier with the TI? 
 
Is it time for me to learn to load the mouse drive?

It doesn't need a driver just plug in a USB mouse to the pi Thom posted the key definitions in another post

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[Airshack]

11 hours ago, tschak909 said:

@Airshack the TI version has the keys mapped thusly:

https://github.com/tschak909/platoterm99/blob/master/README.md <-- scroll to bottom

 

If you, or anyone else can think of better key mappings, let me know. It's a bit of a challenge to cram all the keys on there.

 

-Thom

Thanks Thom!  
 

Went to the github link. Googled around and couldn’t figure out the definition of CYBIS System. Apparently it’s a platform running PLATO? Is this something emulating a CDC Cyber mainframe?

 

Also...”IRATA.ONLINE develops PLATOTerm for dozens of platforms.”

 

  Is suppose somehow this PLATOTerm is not necessary with the TIPI link:

 

CALL TIPI(“pi.http://ti99.irata.online/plato”)

 

Wondering how that works without getting too technical?

[+arcadeshopper]

Thanks Thom!  
 
Went to the github link. Googled around and couldn’t figure out the definition of CYBIS System. Apparently it’s a platform running PLATO? Is this something emulating a CDC Cyber mainframe?
 
Also...”IRATA.ONLINE develops PLATOTerm for dozens of platforms.”
 
  Is suppose somehow this PLATOTerm is not necessary with the TIPI link:
 
CALL TIPI(“pi.http://ti99.irata.online/plato”)
 
Wondering how that works without getting too technical?

that's the ti version of plato term with that link

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[Airshack]

19 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

that's the ti version of plato term with that link

Huh. On another AtriAge link I saw someone working on an EA5 program to access PLATO via 99/4. Must have been an earlier effort?

 

 

 

[+arcadeshopper]

Huh. On another AtriAge link I saw someone working on an EA5 program to access PLATO via 99/4. Must have been an earlier effort?
 
 
 

there was an ancient Plato term program that was mostly incompatible with the new system has it only supported seven even one and very slow rs232 communications...

Of course without knowing what post you're talking about you could easily be talking about the new program that Thom was creating in the last year to access his telnet based system

He wrote it in c using GCC and it works with only the TIPI telnet connectivity

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[Airshack]

Got it all working along with the amazing mouse support! THX guys! 

[Airshack]

26 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

Of course without knowing what post you're talking about you could easily be talking about the new program that Thom was creating in the last year to access his telnet based system

This: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/282705-need-help-debugging-platoterm-tipi-routines/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-4505877

[+arcadeshopper]

This: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/282705-need-help-debugging-platoterm-tipi-routines/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-4505877

Yes that's the new one written in c

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[tschak909]

Yeah, sorry, to clear it up:

 

PLATOTERM is _very_ cross platform, the same code is compiled to over two dozen different targets. (which I had to split into different repos due to different toolchains and slightly different massaging for different C dialects, it is a decision I now regret I should have tried to keep it all in one repo)

 

Meanwhile, I had started advertising IRATA.ONLINE as being ready to go, and was trying to drum up enthusiasm for help on other platforms... in this process, I found an old thread on AA with the TI version of the Central PLATO terminal software. @arcadeshopper tried it out, and I subsequently managed to set up Win994 to tcpser and managed to get the Central PLATO software to connect. 

 

I immediately saw that TI's version of the software was meant for an earlier version of the protocol, which used an explicit TI/99-4A system type, which had long since been re-used for a newer system (the Atari terminal type that was specified in Atari's Learning Phone software was also subsequently re-used). This caused a variety of rendering issues I could not work around, so after a few days of investigation, the Central PLATO software was set aside.

 

I had done the ports to the C64, then to the Atari, and Apple ][, when I found @Tursi's ti-lib and the gcc-9900 fork, which generated TI99 binaries, and after a quick glance over the library, realized I could quickly do a bring-up, and within 24 hours of opening emacs, had a working display in win99. I was amazed.

 

I had originally written to the RS232 libraries in libti99, which were very thin wrappers around the 9902 UARTs in the TI 2xRS232 module, and was able to make this work in win99, it allowed me to make the implementation usable. However, while it worked in win99, which hooks its 9901 implementation up to the windows serial port system (which has a considerable FIFO in front of it), the 9902's literally can only hold onto one other byte than the one being immediately shifted out, and thus I was dropping characters left and right, even at 1200bps. I tried to resolve this by polling the serial port every single chance I could get throughout the code, but was not successful. So the serial port version was left as is..

 

I had started a quick TIPI port, and was able to get it partially working while working with Ron Klein's TIPI setup, but I needed to get an actual 99/4A with a 32K+TIPI to complete the port, so ordered all the bits and pieces...accidentally blew out the CPLD by plugging in the GPIO the wrong way, and so @arcadeshopper / @jedimatt42 sent another..whoops  and with that, had gotten everything up, and was able to do the TIPI port, and it worked so well, that I added the mouse support as the last major piece to it. It was published and now here we are.. the TIPI version is the official version.

 

The key mappings were an interesting challenge (boy howdy), and there is always room for improvement, in fact I should have mapped some more of @arcadeshopper's suggestions. I'll get back to it at some point, if somebody else doesn't take over this fork of the code.

 

(this is actually one of the big reasons I do everything as free software, I know full well I can't be and do everything, so I want others to be able to make it better)

 

Thanks to all of the TI community who were supportive in getting this up.

 

(for those wondering, yes, this was a caffeine induced ramble)

[Airshack]

6 hours ago, tschak909 said:

the TIPI version is the official version.

 

The key mappings were an interesting challenge (boy howdy),

Caffeine induced or not, this clears up a lot. Thank you for the detailed description. I understood enough of that to let you know that my giant humble cup of gratitude flowith over! THANK YOU!

 

Cheers to GregArcadeShopper, Tursi and JediMatt for helping out as well. Thank you. Impressive as usual with you guys! 

The key mappings look reasonable. Mapping not all of Arcadeshopper’s suggestions was a shrewd move as he’s usually only right about half the time.  

[Airshack]

Getting onto IRATA.ONLINE is especially exciting after just finishing this book on the subject:

 

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777XSZKW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_B-sKEb6V1J5TS

[tschak909]

Brian spent a decade writing that book. I was fortunate to spend some time with him before my lecture that I gave at VCF West (the story of how I got there is rather insane, due to a flight delay snafu, I didn't sleep for almost 36 hours before I gave the lecture... you can see it here

 

Brian is a cool guy, and rightfully a little bitter about how the computing history establishment has marginalized PLATO to a footnote. It was through this conversation, and the conversations of others involved with the CHM, VCF etc that I came to understand that even in the field of computing history, politics abounds.)

 

After the lecture, Kevin Savetz, Jason Scott (@textfiles) and another guy I can't remember his name all piled into Jason's rented car, and we all went zipping around Mountain View and Palo Alto, getting lost in a marshalling yard, and me laughing through it all because I was unbelievably punch drunk.)

 

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by tschak909

[+arcadeshopper]

Funny I had no idea about Plato except for the TI cartridge version until someone shared the rs232 version a while back. I still didn't know anything about it when you started talking on all the forums about irata then I stumbled upon a podcast interviewing Robert Woodhead and he described his years of using Plato and basically failing out of college because of how addicting it was and how groundbreaking the tech was at the time. With high resolution terminals well before we had 256x192 on our TI's..

All gone by the time I got to college..

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[Airshack]

2 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

With high resolution terminals well before we had 256x192 on our TI's.

Yep! They had sweet orange 512*512 plasma screens back in 1964! The same year BASIC came out.

 

wiki:  “The monochrome plasma video display was co-invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson for the PLATO computer system.^[46][47] The original neon orange monochrome Digivue display panels built by glass producer Owens-Illinois were very popular in the early 1970s because they were rugged and needed neither memory nor circuitry to refresh the images.”