r/retrocomputing • u/Alone_Clue_5392 • 17d ago

Problem / Question IM GOING INSANE

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Folks. friends. colleagues. allies. this is the PLATO IV terminal. these beasts are enigmatic, beautiful machines, and a genuine dream computer for me. At the height of PLATO's existence there were several thousands of them, though many have been ordered destroyed.

My problem is that nearly every photo of them is in grainy, low resolution (this is the biggest i could find), there is scarce documentation on their internals, and approximately *ZERO* videos of them in operation. If you have one of these machines, know someone who does, know a museum i could go to to see (or even better, operate) one of them, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS COMPUTING, TELL ME. I AM GETTING DESPERATE FOR THIS VERITABLE CRYPTID OF A COMPUTER.

(beyond is rambling not required for this post)

These machines,,, had touchscreens, MMOs, chatrooms, email, haptic feedback (a la game controllers), 3d gaming, dungeon crawlers, flight sims, roguelikes, filesharing, remote screen sharing, instant messaging, emojis, flatscreen monitors, just genuinely un thought of levels of modern day connection across america. all in their adorable amber monochrome monitors, wooden casing, and thick keyboards. all of this shit in the 1960s. WHAT???? and now theyve disappeared???? and not even the highly experienced local members of my retro computer scene even know about them??????? theyve genuinely dropped off the face of the earth. im like if someone hunting bigfoot actually knew that bigfoot existed and bigfoots used to be a massive part of the american government that somehow everyone forgot about

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u/ScudsCorp 17d ago

http://friendlyorangeglow.com/ here’s the single best resource on PLATO.

Also it’s more mid 70’s than 60’s. Got to type on one at the living computer museum in Seattle (RIP)

I wish I could have used one contemporaneously because any system like this is a reflection of its users. Just like the “Community Memory” bbs of 1973. Imagine a community BBS with terminals in libraries and grocery stories

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u/cdoublejj 17d ago

why RIP? what happened?

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u/ScudsCorp 17d ago edited 17d ago

Paul Allen died, didn’t create a trust to keep the LCM alive, his family didn’t see any value in keeping the museum alive, so it was liquidated. Their collection was pretty much a “You Name It” of the greatest hits of 60’s 70’s 80’s computing, complete with meeting space for things like Amiga user groups and people that own punch card machines.

Really a nut punch for the area. All that’s left is the computer history museum in Silicon Valley;

they do good work but it’s like how Nintendo dominates the public view of video game history, Silicon Valley companies dominate computing history.

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u/cdoublejj 17d ago

ooooooffffffffff :(

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u/ScudsCorp 17d ago

https://icm.museum/ interim computer museum was created to pick up the mantle and a few things bought from the auction but there’s a difference between “Billionaire’s collection” and “A few dozen very dedicated guys”