Hi All,
I was hoping someone could give me some leads on finding an
old Symbolics Lisp Machine or MacIvory Nubus card. I've done
a bunch of searches but all the references have been '97 or
earlier. Thanks very much for any info!
Regards,
John Francis
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You might try sending this to the SLUG exploder:
····@ai.sri.com (the Symbolics Lisp Users' Group list)
This is not the most active group, but it should get you what you want.
Hi All,
I was hoping someone could give me some leads on finding an
old Symbolics Lisp Machine or MacIvory Nubus card. I've done
a bunch of searches but all the references have been '97 or
earlier. Thanks very much for any info!
Regards,
John Francis
From: Christopher R. Barry
Subject: Re: Looking for a Lisp Machine...
Date:
Message-ID: <87iud89ium.fsf@2xtreme.net>
·········@my-dejanews.com writes:
> I was hoping someone could give me some leads on finding an
> old Symbolics Lisp Machine or MacIvory Nubus card. I've done
> a bunch of searches but all the references have been '97 or
> earlier. Thanks very much for any info!
From what I hear, the final generation Ivory machines take over 8
hours to compile a program that my 200MHz Intel machine can compile in
3 minutes. You can get a nice 533MHz 21164 Alpha with Digital Unix for
$4000 if you shop around and then grab an Open Genera CD for $5000 or
so (except I hear that they will no longer sell the Open Genera CDs in
anticipation of the 2.0 release to occur Real Soon Now).
Christopher
In article <··············@2xtreme.net>, ······@2xtreme.net (Christopher R. Barry) wrote:
> ·········@my-dejanews.com writes:
>
> > I was hoping someone could give me some leads on finding an
> > old Symbolics Lisp Machine or MacIvory Nubus card. I've done
> > a bunch of searches but all the references have been '97 or
> > earlier. Thanks very much for any info!
>
> From what I hear, the final generation Ivory machines take over 8
> hours to compile a program that my 200MHz Intel machine can compile in
> 3 minutes.
I don't think it usually takes that long. Also the compiler
is not the fastest.
But on a Lisp machine - ****THE*** environment for
incremental development - how often do you compile whole
programs?
An extreme example is CL-HTTP. I guess the development version
for it hasn't been compiled for several months - current
patch level is 67.106. I think, on my MacIvory, I have never
compiled CL-HTTP, too.
> You can get a nice 533MHz 21164 Alpha with Digital Unix for
> $4000 if you shop around and then grab an Open Genera CD for $5000 or
> so (except I hear that they will no longer sell the Open Genera CDs in
> anticipation of the 2.0 release to occur Real Soon Now).
I think Open Genera 2.0 is available.
--
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig
In article <··············@2xtreme.net>,
Christopher R. Barry <······@2xtreme.net> wrote:
>·········@my-dejanews.com writes:
>From what I hear, the final generation Ivory machines take over 8
>hours to compile a program that my 200MHz Intel machine can compile in
>3 minutes.
Even during my stint as a Symbolics employee in the late '80s, the
compiler was known to be suboptimal, specifically on macro calls that
expanded into other macro calls. Essentially, every macro had to be
expanded twice, and if you figure in recursive macro expansion, it gets
pretty sluggish in a hurry.
And how fast was the fastest XL1200? I don't recall the number, but it
certainly wasn't in hundreds of MHz.
For all that, the development environment was so nice that one of my
colleagues still uses one as his primary program development machine.
> You can get a nice 533MHz 21164 Alpha with Digital Unix for
>$4000 if you shop around and then grab an Open Genera CD for $5000 or
>so (except I hear that they will no longer sell the Open Genera CDs in
>anticipation of the 2.0 release to occur Real Soon Now).
I was under the impression that Symbolics's software development was
essentially in limbo. Are they active again?
-- Chuck
--
Chuck Fry -- Jack of all trades, master of none
······@chucko.com (text only please) ········@home.com (MIME enabled)
Lisp bigot, mountain biker, car nut, sometime guitarist and photographer
The addresses above are real. All spammers will be reported to their ISPs.
In article <············@shell5.ba.best.com>, ······@best.com (Chuck Fry) wrote:
> And how fast was the fastest XL1200? I don't recall the number, but it
> certainly wasn't in hundreds of MHz.
I think the processor would be **roughly** (really) comparable
to a 50Mhz Motorola 68030 running Lisp.
> For all that, the development environment was so nice that one of my
> colleagues still uses one as his primary program development machine.
Maybe it's the keyboard, too. Absolutely cool. :-)
> > You can get a nice 533MHz 21164 Alpha with Digital Unix for
> >$4000 if you shop around and then grab an Open Genera CD for $5000 or
> >so (except I hear that they will no longer sell the Open Genera CDs in
> >anticipation of the 2.0 release to occur Real Soon Now).
>
> I was under the impression that Symbolics's software development was
> essentially in limbo. Are they active again?
A little bit. Open Genera is the current software product.
--
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig
> And how fast was the fastest XL1200? I don't recall the number, but it
> certainly wasn't in hundreds of MHz.
I recall that the XL1200 was approximately 20MHz, the XL400 was approximately
5MHz, and the 36xx was approximately 4MHz. I don't know the clock speed of a
LM-2/CADR or any of the LMI or TI machines.
An interesting comparison. In 1982, I bought one of the first 3600s. It had
2MW memory and a 454M Fujitsu Eagle. Was about the size of a refrigerator and
cost about $105K. Last week I bought a cluster of ten rack-mount Dell
PowerEdge 6350s. Each with four 450MHz Xeons, 1G memory, and a 9G Cheetah.
Almost exactly the same size and price as the 3600 from 17 years ago. But
3600 times the compute power, 640 times the memory, and 200 times the disk
space.
Jeff (http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/qobi)
"Christopher R. Barry" wrote:
> ·········@my-dejanews.com writes:
>
> > I was hoping someone could give me some leads on finding an
> > old Symbolics Lisp Machine or MacIvory Nubus card. I've done
> > a bunch of searches but all the references have been '97 or
> > earlier. Thanks very much for any info!
>
> From what I hear, the final generation Ivory machines take over 8
> hours to compile a program that my 200MHz Intel machine can compile in
> 3 minutes.
Was the physical memory of the two machines comparable? I suspect that
such a big
factor was predominantly due to paging. Many Symbolics users were
running at
virtual to physical ratios in the 100s which in my experience flat out
doesn't work
on any other systems.
> You can get a nice 533MHz 21164 Alpha with Digital Unix for
> $4000 if you shop around and then grab an Open Genera CD for $5000 or
> so (except I hear that they will no longer sell the Open Genera CDs in
> anticipation of the 2.0 release to occur Real Soon Now).
>
> Christopher
Open Genera 2.0 is available (and has been for about two months).
Performance
on a 500MHz Alpha 21164 system is about 3-4 times an XL1200. On the
newer
21264 systems, it should be nearly twice that.
From: Christopher R. Barry
Subject: Re: Looking for a Lisp Machine...
Date:
Message-ID: <87k8xja3g8.fsf@2xtreme.net>
K�lm�n R�ti <····@ai.mit.edu> writes:
[...]
> Open Genera 2.0 is available (and has been for about two months).
Are you guys ever going to update your web page to reflect this
information (and maybe even provide some product info other than a
screenshot of the login screen)?
K�lm�n R�ti <····@ai.mit.edu> was inspired by Eris to proclaim:
> "Christopher R. Barry" wrote:
>
> > ·········@my-dejanews.com writes:
> >
> > > I was hoping someone could give me some leads on finding an
> > > old Symbolics Lisp Machine or MacIvory Nubus card. I've done
> > > a bunch of searches but all the references have been '97 or
> > > earlier. Thanks very much for any info!
> >
> > From what I hear, the final generation Ivory machines take over 8
> > hours to compile a program that my 200MHz Intel machine can compile in
> > 3 minutes.
This would be entirely beside the point. If he wanted fast compilation and
speedy response he'd use a modern machine. What I think he's looking for is
the same sort of thing that I'm looking for in my continual quest for a
LispM -- the experience.
[snip]
> Open Genera 2.0 is available (and has been for about two months).
> Performance
> on a 500MHz Alpha 21164 system is about 3-4 times an XL1200. On the
> newer
> 21264 systems, it should be nearly twice that.
Is it possible to get a nifty Symbolics keyboard connected to an Alpha
running OG2? This would complete the experience nicely.
BTW, does anyone know where I might get my hands on a VME-bus Ivory? I
have this ancient SparcStation 1 that doesn't do anything, even have
a cg3 8bit on it, but I don't have any software to run on it so I thought
of turning it into a Sun Ivory -- cheaper than buying a Mac...
--
<crippenj at saturn math uaa alaska edu> Kallisti! <james at cryptology org>
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········@saturn.math.uaa.alaska.edu (James A. Crippen) writes:
> BTW, does anyone know where I might get my hands on a VME-bus Ivory? I
> have this ancient SparcStation 1 that doesn't do anything, even have
> a cg3 8bit on it, but I don't have any software to run on it so I thought
> of turning it into a Sun Ivory -- cheaper than buying a Mac...
Ranier Joswig suitably admonished me for thinking that a SparcStation 1 was
a VME bus. I've had it for long enough, you'd think that I'd remember that it
was an Sbus system. Foo.
--
<crippenj at saturn math uaa alaska edu> Kallisti! <james at cryptology org>
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GCS/MU/O d?(--) s: a--(?) C+++(++++)>$ UBLOS*+++(++++)>$ P+>+++ L+++>$ E++++
W-- N++ o+ K+++>++++ w--- O- M- V--- ···@ ··@ Y+ PGP>+++ ···@ 5? X? R* !tv
b++++ DI++++ D--- G++>++++ e* h* r--- y-- NT{-} A48 HH++++>* PP+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------