Editing PLATO (computer system) (section)

== Other versions  ==
=== In South Africa ===
During the period when CDC was marketing PLATO, the system began to be used internationally. [[South Africa]] was one of the biggest users of PLATO in the early 1980s. [[Eskom]], the South African electrical power company, had a large CDC mainframe at [[Megawatt Park]] in the northwest suburbs of [[Johannesburg]]. Mainly this computer was used for management and data processing tasks related to power generation and distribution, but it also ran the PLATO software. The largest PLATO installation in South Africa during the early 1980s was at the [[University of the Western Cape]], which served the "native" population, and at one time had hundreds of PLATO IV terminals all connected by leased data lines back to Johannesburg. There were several other installations at educational institutions in South Africa, among them [[Madadeni College]] in the [[Madadeni]] township just outside [[Newcastle, South Africa|Newcastle]].

This was perhaps the most unusual PLATO installation anywhere. Madadeni had about 1,000 students, all of them who were original inhabitants i.e. native population and 99.5% of [[Zulu people|Zulu]] ancestry. The college was one of 10 teacher preparation institutions in [[kwaZulu]], most of them much smaller. In many ways Madadeni was very primitive. None of the classrooms had electricity and there was only one telephone for the whole college, which one had to crank for several minutes before an operator might come on the line. So an air-conditioned, carpeted room with 16 computer terminals was a stark contrast to the rest of the college. At times the only way a person could communicate with the outside world was through PLATO term-talk.

For many of the Madadeni students, most of whom came from very rural areas, the PLATO terminal was the first time they encountered any kind of electronic technology. Many of the first-year students had never seen a flush toilet before. There initially was skepticism that these technologically illiterate students could effectively use PLATO, but those concerns were not borne out. Within an hour or less most students were using the system proficiently, mostly to learn math and science skills, although a lesson that taught keyboarding skills was one of the most popular. A few students even used on-line resources to learn TUTOR, the PLATO programming language, and a few wrote lessons on the system in the Zulu language.

PLATO was also used fairly extensively in South Africa for industrial training. [[Eskom]] successfully used PLM (PLATO learning management) and simulations to train power plant operators, [[South African Airways]] (SAA) used PLATO simulations for cabin attendant training, and there were a number of other large companies as well that were exploring the use of PLATO.

The South African subsidiary of CDC invested heavily in the development of an entire secondary school curriculum (SASSC) on PLATO, but unfortunately as the curriculum was nearing the final stages of completion, CDC began to falter in South Africa—partly because of financial problems back home, partly because of growing opposition in the United States to doing business in South Africa, and partly due to the rapidly evolving [[microcomputer]], a paradigm shift that CDC failed to recognize.

=== Cyber1 ===
In August 2004, a version of PLATO<ref name="cyber1">{{Citation | url = http://www.cyber1.org/ | title = Cyber1}}.</ref> corresponding to the final release from CDC was resurrected online. This version of PLATO runs on a [[free and open-source software]] [[emulator|emulation]] of the original CDC hardware called Desktop Cyber. Within six months, by word of mouth alone, more than 500 former users had signed up to use the system. Many of the students who used PLATO in the 1970s and 1980s felt a special social bond with the community of users who came together using the powerful communications tools (talk programs, records systems and notesfiles) on PLATO.{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}

The PLATO software used on Cyber1 is the final release (99A) of CYBIS, by permission of VCampus. The underlying operating system is NOS 2.8.7, the final release of the [[NOS (operating system)|NOS]] [[operating system]], by permission of Syntegra (now British Telecom [BT]), which had acquired the remainder of CDC's mainframe business. Cyber1 runs this software on the Desktop Cyber emulator. Desktop Cyber accurately emulates in software a range of CDC Cyber mainframe models and many peripherals.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Hunter|first1=Tom|title=Desktop CYBER Emulator|url=http://members.iinet.net.au/~tom-hunter/index.html|website=iiNet|publisher=Tom Hunter|access-date=30 October 2015}}</ref>

Cyber1 offers free access to the system, which contains over 16,000 of the original lessons, in an attempt to preserve the original PLATO communities that grew up at CERL and on CDC systems in the 1980s.{{Citation needed | date =August 2011}} The load average of this resurrected system is about 10–15 users, sending personal and notesfile notes, and playing inter-terminal games such as ''Avatar'' and ''Empire'' (a ''Star Trek''-like game), which had both accumulated more than 1.0 million contact hours on the original PLATO system at UIUC.<ref name="cyber1" />