A while back some may remember a discussion about Mastery
Development. They made a networking system for Apple // computers, this
mail from someone unrelated to the list summarizes it (he maintained such
a network at a school here. This is technically a private mail, but
nothing confidential shared in this excerpt...plus I posted it the last
time around.)
- The Apples use a system developed by Mastery Development in Redmond, WA.
- I have one hard drive (250M, I think) that holds the applicaitions and
- "digital lockers" for the student accounts. There are tons of MECC and
- public domain drill & kill appz, learning games, some very
- generic/filtered 'Net news, and an e-mail account for every student.
- It's very basic, but a good way to get younger students ready for some
- computer usage. (I've just had an interruption of about 1.5 hours, so
- I'm trying to reconstruct my thoughts:). Every night at 12:42 a.m. the
- IIGS server calls into the main server at MD in Redmond to up/down-load
- news, e-mail, and other items. It's not real time, but it serves the
- purpose for now - until I get the school to upgrade to iMacs and get
- RoadRunner:).
Anyway, what had happened since was the company went belly up,
and in effect stranding its customers. Apparently the system was designed
to lock up each year, and to reactivate it, customers would have to pay
for a key disc. As I recall the thread ending, with the company gone,
there would be all these dead, unworkable Mastery Development networks
around the nation.
Fast forward to this weekend. I hit a local Goodwill and find
some parts with ID tags from the school, among them a IIGS with a
TranswarpGS board and a note about it acting up. So I thought I'd ask the
guy if he remembers (since his contract with the school ended a while
back,) what the problem was. And in the conversation the Mastery
Development thing came up and he mentions:
- Yes, the company kicked the proverbial bucket, but not before selling
- a "perpetual" disk to keep the system running for the life of the
- computers. There was no more technical support, no more Apple //e
- e-mail server, no database of schools and people -- just the
- individual school's server and workstations.
So if you happen up on the Mastery Development system, I guess
you won't have a completely useless, locked system. You just won't have
outside systems to communicate with.
--
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