+MrFish Posted April 14, 2018 Share Posted April 14, 2018 You ought to put the irata website address in your sig Thom. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 14, 2018 Share Posted April 14, 2018 Yeah, actually I should, shouldn't I? -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bikerbob Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 (edited) 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 April 15, 2018 by Bikerbob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 Bikerbob: if you refresh the page, you'll see it changes randomly. -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 17, 2018 Share Posted April 17, 2018 Next IRATA.ONLINE meets are on Apr 21, and Apr 22, at 10am to 12pm CDT for both days. Google Meet links on http://www.irata.online/ -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 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 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 Very interesting! I'm amazed. Truly wonderful system, and far advanced for its time. I'd definitely be interested in finding out more about linesets at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 (edited) @MrFish - Please come to a meet, this weekend, I want to show you the system. There are two meets this weekend on Google Meet -Thom Edited April 18, 2018 by tschak909 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 No time for it now; but I'm definitely interested in finding out more at some point. Totally fascinating system... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 (edited) Better pics here, showing both the PTerm and Atari terminal views for linesets: (p.s. Yes, I know the editor pictures are different. I modified the A positioning in between those shots.) -Thom Edited April 18, 2018 by tschak909 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 Looks great; but why the missing pixels? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 (edited) 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 April 18, 2018 by tschak909 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 I have made a video demonstrating linesets, and the lineset editor: -Thom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Thag Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 That's pretty incredible for so early a system, your work on this is pretty awesome. I'll try and make one of the meetups if my schedule permits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 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 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 22, 2018 Share Posted April 22, 2018 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanny Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 Just found this thread and read thru it completely. Now I'd like to register at cyber1. I'm not sure what is a good group to pick. Which groups did you select? regards, chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 I'm part of the inetd group on cyber1, atari is another good one, explorer, etc. Have you checked out http://www.irata.online/? It's a PLATO system that I run specifically for the retro computing community. -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanny Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 Will try irata.online afterwards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 @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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanny Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 Thanks for the heads-up. Will definitely try to join.... chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 I have just been asked to speak in one of the speaking slots at VCF East 2018, in May (on the 18th) about PLATO and IRATA.ONLINE, and have said yes. More details soon. -Thom 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Lange Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 I have just been asked to speak in one of the speaking slots at VCF East 2018, in May (on the 18th) about PLATO and IRATA.ONLINE, and have said yes. Cool. Looking forward to meeting you there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimarm Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 (edited) Amazing work Thom. What hardware, os, etc, does this whole thing run under on your end? Edited April 25, 2018 by jimarm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 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 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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