TOPIC: Plato (computer system)

I've recently become interested in the (very old) Plato computer system which was a multi-user educational system with a strong online community and lots of good games from the 60s until the early 90s. I found out that MatserEd actually had the pleasure of using it when it was still semi-popular at University of Illinois Urbana Champagne.

I have only used it fairly recently but have enjoyed playing around with it.

Has anybody else used the system out of curiosity? I ask because there are a lot of RPGs on there.

So I will chime in and say if anyone wants to play one of the first multiplayer dungeon crawls out there Avatar is a great game. Happy to talk about it with anyone who is interested.

There is a video here about Plato and about 9 minutes in you can see Avatar:


If we get a few people I would even consider playing it again because it is much better playing in a good group over a voice chat channel (like Discord).

Ed

So is there some net service version we can telnet into/is there some form of emulator?

I am pretty sure I played Oregon Trail on one circa 1982 at SIU!

Picc wrote: So is there some net service version we can telnet into/is there some form of emulator?

The original system was mainframe-based, however now there is an online service called Cyber1 that offers free accounts upon request. It is the last remaining Plato system out there.

For access you use a program called pterm (runs on a variety of OSs but was admittedly tough for me to compile on Linux but eventually I succeeded) which emulates the original Plato terminals. It also offers colors which the original never had.

This should help:

www.control-data.info/CybisRelease.html

www.cyber1.org/pterm.asp
Main menu has request a login

Ed

Yup - my highschool had access to UIUI's (or maybe it was Fermilab's...) PLATO in the early 90s.

Playing avatar at night on Plato terminals in the summer of 1982 at u of I got my grad school career off to a sleepy start. 😀. Fortunately the allure of the orange graphics wore off in a few months.

dave maltbie wrote: Playing avatar at night on Plato terminals in the summer of 1982 at u of I got my grad school career off to a sleepy start. 😀. Fortunately the allure of the orange graphics wore off in a few months.

Well you can always come back!

Avatar is a fun RPG.

Ed