001 - Overview

CYBIS (CYber-Based Instructional System) started life as PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) and was developed at CERL (Computer-based Education Research Laboratory) at the University of Illinois.

Later PLATO became a commercial product marketed by CDC. The rights to the PLATO name were sold and CDC rebranded the product CYBIS. Eventually University Online which became VCampus acquired CYBIS from CDC. VCampus is no longer in business and its assets (including CYBIS) now belong to Nat Kannan, its former CEO.

Through the efforts of Tom Hunter, Paul Koning, and Mike Cochran a copy of CYBIS is available for hobbyist use under the condition that it won't be resold or used for any commercial purpose whatsoever. This condition applies to the CYBIS software, tools and course content.

In late 2022, the idea to re-build and enrich the CYBIS Release 1 distribution was given some new life. Several members of the hobbyist community have come together to update the work initially started by Tom Hunter.

That work is being done here, on Retro1.Org!

Building on the cornerstone works of many: Kevin Jordan, Dale Sinder, William Schaub, Paul Koning, and others, CYBIS Release 2 is underway!

Construction of CYBIS/R2 is a very labor intensive activity. The great work done by Kevin Jordan and William Schaub in building the “ready to run” CYBIS on NOS 2.8.7 is our starting point. This work can be taken much further.

• The automation built into the NCC distribution addresses many of the needs to get CYBIS (Release 1) up and running. The final result is adequate for hobbyists who are trying to learn the basics of navigating NOS, CYBIS and the various subsystems. But there are many aspects of the installation that remain undone from the perspective of present-day operations.

• Moreover, the ability to move from the Release 1 configuration to any other configuration is cumbersome, slow and extremely error prone.

The journey to address and fix these issues is chronicled here with the objective of enabling all enthusiasts to network their systems together, wherever they may be. The Nostalgic Computing Center shows that this can be done, elegantly.

This work involves a variety of procedures which are infrequently used, but illustrate how things work internally. For purposes of conservation, we “show our work” so future enthusiasts can see for themselves, how it can be done.

During the journey, many new tools and artifacts have been, and will be created. The means by which some of these original artifacts (documents, manuals, images, tapes and ad-hoc references) have been stored and maintained placed many obstacles in the path of enthusiasts/hobbyists/returning contributors. This documentation attempts to create a coherent guide from which future participants can draw essential knowledge.

Wherever possible, they will be linked into the documentation here along the way. All of this work is a testament to the passion of the community and is being done without compensation or reward of any kind other than to keep a legacy alive. The Retro1.Org community helps each other contribute, refine and enhance these articles because “it takes a village.”