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LOL.. I just logged on to the atari group.. and got a TI logo!! :)

 

And everytime I get back to the main page.. the logo changes.. I thought it was supposed to be the logo for the group I was in??

 

James

Edited by Bikerbob

MrFish might like this.

 

I'm currently doing a trade show demo for IRATA, called -dognpony-, and I need to be able to quickly plot the font I am using throughout the system as text.

 

Previously, I was doing the text in GIMP and manually drawing it over using the text editor, while this works, it's not very elegant.

 

Turns out, PLATO thought of that too,

 

In addition to charsets, PLATO has _LINESETS_, which in their description are line representations of fonts at larger sizes, and each element in a lineset can be a different size (since you can specify the bounds of each)

 

Soo, in other words, PLATO had proportional fonts, in the 1970s, too :)

 

How mind-blowing is THAT?! :)

 

Picture attached,

-Thom

 

post-9462-0-07285600-1524017946_thumb.png

 

  • Like 4

Better pics here, showing both the PTerm and Atari terminal views for linesets:

 

xbSqDcg.png

 

GmGuWGA.png

 

 

k6YiDgU.png

 

 

ZSANS6c.png

 

(p.s. Yes, I know the editor pictures are different. I modified the A positioning in between those shots.)

 

-Thom

Edited by tschak909
  • Like 4

Either re-entering text, or moving the cursor down.

 

basically, because it doesn't re-draw when the cursor moves. It's no big deal :)

 

normally when editing, you can press DATA to re-plot the display.

 

-Thom

Edited by tschak909

The menu system on IRATA.ONLINE now uses linesets for the header titles. This alone saved hundreds of words of space across multiple TUTOR blocks, and made for a much more consistent, and better looking appearance.

 

I've also now done a complementary video on Character Sets to go alongside Linesets, showing how character sets can be used to make bitmapped fonts and graphics for lessons.

 

 

-Thom

  • Like 1

Ok, I've now moved the meets to a self hosted service running on the same server as the main service:

https://meet.irata.online/demomeet This will be used starting with the demo meet, tomorrow.

 

Links on the website have been updated.

 

-Thom

@sanny I also give regular demonstrations of IRATA.ONLINE on the weekends, as well as impromptu demos to anyone who asks...the reason I do this, is because there's an awful lot about the system that isn't immediately evident from simply using it, PLATO is unlike just about anything that most in the retro community have ever seen, it was way ahead of its time.

 

-Thom

Well, there's two layers to it:

 

PLATO itself runs atop Control Data NOS 2.8.7, which runs on an

emulated Control Data CYBER 170/865 60-bit mini-super with approximately 4 MW of central memory, and 8 MW of ECS (extended core storage)

12 Control Data 885 disk packs which store approximately 524 equivalent megabytes of storage each (692 million 6-bit words)

and the usual emulated peripheral suspects, three 679 tape drives, a lp512 printer, 6612 console, and so on.. all emulated via dtcyber.

 

The hardware itself is currently a recycled Sandy Bridge PC, quad core i7 with 8GB of RAM, a SATA boot SSD (60GB), and an NVME SSD for everything else it runs:

 

* The website

* Jitsi, for meeting/videoconferencing

* The PLATO system itself via dtcyber

 

The system itself runs Debian, and is using btrfs for the underlying filesystems. Each day, twice a day, the filesystems are snapshotted to read-only snaps, and backed up.

 

I have each of the software subsystems contained in a set of docker containers, which can be transplanted to another system at a moment's notice.

 

-Thom

  • Like 6

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