| cyber1.org : : courtesy of VCampus Corporation |
What is cyber1.org?Cyber1.org is a group of people dedicated to the preservation of the world's first computer-based community, PLATO. Cyber1.org is made possible by the VCampus Corporation, who graciously donated rights to their CYBIS software system. Cyber1.org thanks VCampus and their CEO Nat Kannan not only for their generosity, but also for having the wisdom to preserve one of the most important pieces of computer history. PLATO is a computer-based educational system created at the University of Illinois Control Systems Laboratory. The idea was first discussed at the University in 1959, in a long series of meetings led by Chalmers Sherwin. At these meetings it was concluded that computer-based education should not be pursued. However, the director at the time, Daniel Alpert, got together with Donald Bitzer to see if Don could quickly come up with a prototype that could serve as proof-of-concept. This prototype, running on an Illiac-I, became PLATO. The project was subsequently funded in 1960 by government money from the Joint Services Program. The lab grew and became the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). PLATO eventually spawned a variety of commercial ventures, starting in 1975 with Control Data Corporation (CDC), a mainframe computer manufacturer founded in 1957. The complicated histories of the various branches of the PLATO tree are beyond the scope of this website. One of the branches became CYBIS, a product of VCampus; another branch is owned by PLATO Learning, the company that retains the right to the PLATO name; a third became NovaNET, now owned by Pearson Education. Our system, cyber1, is a branch off of the CYBIS tree. What is cyber1?Cyber1 is the name for our mainframe-based CYBIS system. To those familiar with PLATO, CYBIS, or early NovaNET, cyber1 will feel like coming home again. Cyber1 runs on top of NOS, the CDC mainframe operating system, generously contributed by BT Consulting & Systems Integration Services (formerly Syntegra). NOS in turn runs on top of DtCyber (watch out, this is a link to a .pdf), a software emulation of a CDC Cyber mainframe, created by Tom Hunter. On our dual opteron Tyan Thunder K8W production machine, DtCyber runs on Suse Linux 9.1 for AMD64. Our backup is a Mac G5 running Mac OS X Panther, an operating system based upon BSD. System StatusThe system is UP. Total registered users = 1405 What is the purpose of cyber1.org?The purpose of cyber1.org is to create a community—a living archive—on our system, cyber1. The goals of this community are:
Some ways for a typical user to accomplish the above goals are the following: Become proficient with and use the system communication tools: notes, pnotes, notesfiles, and term-talking. Browse through the notesfiles on a regular basis, and get involved in discussions. If there are 30 of us, and every user writes a note or two per day, pretty soon we'll have quite a cool little community. If you are an old PLATO/CYBIS/NovaNET programmer or courseware developer, you hold a special place on cyber1. Please contribute to chronicle. Chronicle is a notesfile where each base note corresponds to a lesson. If you were the author of, or associated with, a certain file or group of files, e.g. 0mcalc11, notes, or empire, start a note that records any information, stories, problems, etc. that were associated with the development of that little piece of history. Don't worry if it is boring. Entertainment is not the primary purpose of this notesfile. History is full of records that were thought boring or mundane by those doing the recording. Because the goal is to create the community on the system itself, this website, www.cyber1.org, will remain small and simple. How to join the systemObtaining a sign-on (i.e. a log-in) is free, but not anonymous, and requires that you fill out a registration form. You must read and agree to the end-user-agreement. After you submit the form, you will be contacted within the next week, depending upon how busy we are, via email, telephone, fax, or snail mail. You will be receiving your name, group, and password information. If you are not contacted within a week, please email us. It is quite likely that we attempted to contact you but something got in the way, like a spamfilter. Registrations are most commonly processed on Saturday mornings. We suggest that you sign on immediately and change your password if you obtained it via email. System RequirementsYou will need our client, pterm, various versions of which can be downloaded below, and a connection to the Internet. The connection need not be fast as long as it is steady; a 14.4 modem will suffice. If you are behind a firewall or a router running NAT and are having difficulties connecting, remember that we are using port 5004 (just tcp; udp is not used). Pterm will not work on Mac OS 9. If you have a special need such as only being able to connect via SSH, explain your situation and we'll see what we can do. InstallationWindows users:Download pterm v4.19.1 installer. Run the installer and follow the instructions. Report problems in the notesfile 'ptermdev' on the system. If you cannot connect, check firewall settings. Typical routers will permit outbound connections, but the default settings on some software firewalls do restrict outgoing traffic on unknown ports. So check port 5004. Unix (including Linux):You have various options which we will call A through E: A. Here is a b2zipped tarball of v4.16 containing an executable pterm built on redhat 9 for redhat 9 or higher. B. Here is an rpm of pterm v4.16 for i386 built on redhat 9 for redhat 9 or higher, including fedora.. C. Here is an executable pterm v1.23 made on redhat 8 (a pretty old glibc). Make the file executable with the command chmod a+x pterm D. If you prefer, you can also compile the latest pterm source (for linux, unix, etc.) yourself: 1. Obtain the code from the Subversion server. You need to have Subversion installed. (Look on http://subversion.tigris.org/ if you don't already have it.) Get the sources with this command: svn co svn://akdesign.dyndns.org/dtcyber/trunk E. If that doesn't work, you can check for an uploaded executable pterm that fits your system from down below. Make sure that X is running. Note that pterm also accepts arguments such as ip address and port number, although doing so is not necessary. For example, from the command line you could type "pterm cyberserv.org" or pterm 70.232.147.67. Mac OS X users:Version 4.17 is a disk image, so just download the file and click on it. One potential problem is that Expose uses F9 and F10 (data and stop on PLATO). You can easily remap the keys used in Expose by going into 'System Preferences" and then clicking the Expose icon. Cross-Platform (java):This is a beta: Java Pterm v0.5. You will need the java runtime environment if you don't already have it installed. True-Type Fonts:Paul Koning and Adam Baum made some TrueType versions of PLATO fonts. These are not necessary for pterm but their significance is discussed on the system in the notesfile =ptermdev, note 90, dated 10/17/2006. The ones made of pixels were made by Paul, the other two by Adam. Here they are as individual downloads: PlatoAscii.ttf, PlatoMicro.ttf, platopixels.ttf, platopixelsbold.ttf Pterm to PLATO Key ConversionsPLATO keyboards had lots of weird old keys. To reproduce these keys in pterm, you can either use the Function keys (those keys with F1-12 along the top of modern keyboards), OR you can type control-first letter of the old PLATO key, OR alt-first letter of the old PLATO key. For example, to use the PLATO ‘back’ key on cyber1, you could either use the ‘F8’ key, control-b, or alt-b.
For applications that use the shifted digits as they appear on the PLATO keyboard for various purposes (for example, in the editor, shift-0 gets you to part 10 of the file), use control-digit. Control with any non-letter will give you whatever is on the PLATO keyboard in the shift position of that key. For example, control = is ). Nearly all of these can be shifted (which is why + and - are accessible via the numeric keypad—that's how you can reach the shifted forms). TERM and FONT are the same shifted or not because those correspond to shifted keys (shifted ANS and MICRO respectively) on the PLATO keyboard. If you are new to PLATO, we suggest first learning F6 through F10, as these will cover the majority of keyboard conversion hassles. Maybe jot them down on a paper and put it next to your keyboard until you have them memorized. ScreenshotsThese screenshots are on a separate page
because they are not tiny. FAQQ: Can I get my old sign-on back? A: It is amazing how attached people can become to their s/o's, isn't it? The answer is: sometimes, halfway. Cyber1 most likely has different groups than the system you were on long ago. However, assuming someone else hasn't grabbed your name already, we can probably accommodate your request for a specific name. Q: Why does cyber1.org want names and phone numbers? A: To build trust, mainly. The Cyber1.org community is trusting you with free access to a system that represents alot of time, money, and hard work. A good community needs everyone to be responsible for their actions, and there are legal reasons for the system to not be anonymous. Nor were author signons given out anonymously in the past—typically they were given to employees, teachers—all people for whom their companies had on file far more information than our short registration form contains. Cyber1 has a privacy policy, which can be read in the end user agreement. Q: Are there old games on cyber1? A: Yes. Gaming was always an important piece of the system and PLATO was a pioneer in the now $32 billion computer gaming industry. Also, one of the stated goals of cyber1.org is to have fun. Q: What is cyber1.org's relationship to NovaNET and U of I? A: Cyber1 has no relationship with NovaNET and is not based upon any NovaNET code. But we do look forward to working with the NovaNET people in the future. NovaNET has a production system that is still in use, which may make them understandably reticent about working with a .org such as us. Cyber1 has no formal relationship with the University of Illinois, although we are talking to them, and there is a good deal of respect given that PLATO originally came from UofI. Q: What or who is Controlfreaks? A: Controlfreaks is a group of old Control Data aficionados started by Doug Quebbeman, Jeff Woolsey, Kent Olsen, Walter Spector, and Bill McDermith. Tom Hunter, a member of Controlfreaks, made the emulator, DtCyber, that runs cyber1. Linksplatopeople.com - Brian Dear has been keeping the PLATO community going for many years cray-cyber.org - log in to a real cyber Steve Kraus' pictures - cool old pics of the heart of CERL spasim challenge - Who made the first multiplayer 3-D virtual reality game? thinkofit.com - David Woolley's very informative article on PLATO, a must-read University of Hawaii - neat to see how PLATO fit into the history of a university computer room CDC 6600 Supercomputer - retro photo Gary Brown's pics are just bitchin DonateCyber1.org currently runs on a wealth of goodwill from a variety of people, none of whom are very wealthy. It would be downright splendid to receive contributions, and we'd love to be able to thank our contributors publicly. Donations can be given via a credit card to our paypal account, thankyou@cyber1.org. Simply browse to paypal, and when it asks for an account to send the money to, put in thankyou@cyber1.org. Donations can also be mailed as a check to:
Please let us know if you do NOT want us to publicly credit your contribution on cyber1. We are looking into creating a non-profit organization to ensure the stability and future of cyber1.org. Before doing so we would like to obtain some committed backing from successful individuals and companies in the high-tech arena, many of whom had their start either with PLATO/CYBIS/NovaNET or with ideas that were born in P/C/N. Upload a compiled ptermIf you downloaded the source for pterm, have successfully compiled and tested the executable, and it is not already listed in the installation section above, by all means please attach it to an email and send it to: support@cyber1.org. Obviously, let us know exactly what OS and what hardware platform you built it on, and whether or not you are open to being emailed by a small number of potential users of your executable. No OS/hardware combo is too esoteric for us. pterm for Sun Sparc, built on Solaris
9 with gcc-3.2.3, donated by Dave Dennis (dmd/cerl) Contact usComments or questions? Email us at support at cyber1.org CreditsCYBIS System: VCampus Desktop CYBER: Tom Hunter NOS 2.8.7: BT ---------------- Oubliette: Jim Schwaiger, John Gaby, Bancherd DeLong, Jerry Bucksath Avatar: Bruce Maggs, Andrew Shapira, David Sides; later work by Tom Kirchman, Greg Janusz, Mark Eastom, Kevin Maxson, Chris Alix, John Hegarty, Felix Ortony Empire: Chuck Miller, Gary Fritz, John Daleske, Silas Warner, Jim Battin Moria: Kevet Duncombe, Jim Battin ---------------- Friends at VCampus: Nat Kannan, Christopher Nelson, Deborah Colella, Pam Hess Friends at Syntegra: Thomas Kennedy, Jim Kubiak, Joann Swoboda Email: Jim Hickstein Website Design: Wil Voss (wil at cyber1.org) Legal: McQuaid Bedford & Van Zandt LLP Consultants: Steve Peltz (steve at cyber1.org), David Frye Group s (5/1/07): Mike Cochran, Bill Galcher, Paul Koning, Steve Peltz, Paul Resch, Joe Stanton, Steve Williams, Steve Zoppi Programming lead: Paul Koning (paul at cyber1.org) Network: Mike Cochran (mike at cyber1.org) |