The PLATO Diaspora

Today the PLATO name is owned by Minneapolis-based TRO, Inc., but TRO no longer runs any mainframe PLATO systems. Control Data's PLATO has been renamed CYBIS. Control Data Systems supports about a dozen CYBIS systems at university and government sites. There might still be some former Control Data customers running PLATO on their own.

IMSATT Corporation, a Control Data spin-off based in Falls Church, Virginia, has recently begun offering a CYBIS-based service called Homer. It is targeted at home users and is available over the Internet.

At the University of Illinois, where it all began, PLATO has been renamed NovaNET. The U of I system racks up about 1.5 million hours of use per year, and is now operated by a private company, University Communications, Inc., of Tucson, Arizona.

The CYBIS systems still use the original PLATO Notes software. On NovaNET, a team headed by Dale Sinder rewrote Notes in 1991. Among the new features are multi-page notes and better search capabilities. But all of the key features of PLATO Notes, including the star structure of its notesfiles, have been kept.

Personal Notes has also been replaced on NovaNET. The new version uses a star structure to provide a level of organization that was never possible before. Each user's mailbox now looks and works much like a group notesfile, with the user as its director and write-only access for everyone else. The new Personal Notes also sends and receives Internet e-mail..