I'm a CS student who has recently fallen quite in love with Lisp.
I've become interested in the old Lisp machines.
While I'm broke now, I do have vague plans to go about acquiring a
Symbolics LispM or an Alpha system with open genera.
I've googled about a fair bit, but I still have some questions.
1) *Is* there an x86-64 port in the works? If so is there anything
close to a plausable ETA on that? $1000 for an educational license &
an off the shelf Imac is a lot easier to stomach than $3000+ for a
full modern(ish) system from symbolics.
2) What are the noticeable differences between OG on Unix and a "real"
Lisp Machine. I've heard about the Symbolics systems having a Lisp
dialect as their assembly, and that sounds pretty darn sweet. How
much does emulation capture the experience. Will I still be able to
use Zmacs to drill all the way down to the very base of the (emulated)
system?
3) Is there anything like a Genera users group in the NYC area? Is
there somehow a Lisp Machine in the region to which I could gain some
access?
4) What kind of resources are out there for someone wanting to play
with Interlisp in 2007? I'm curious about that one too, though I know
finding a working Xerox system is out of the question for someone who
isn't majorly in the antique computer collection hobby.
Thank you, and I'm sorry if I'm asking for information that's
available from somewhere I haven't but should have found.
- Carter
> 1) *Is* there an x86-64 port in the works? If so is there anything
> close to a plausable ETA on that? $1000 for an educational license &
> an off the shelf Imac is a lot easier to stomach than $3000+ for a
> full modern(ish) system from symbolics.
A little bit of googling will help you find what you seek.
On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:53:08 -0000, ············@gmail.com" <···········@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) *Is* there an x86-64 port in the works? If so is there anything
> close to a plausable ETA on that? $1000 for an educational license
> & an off the shelf Imac is a lot easier to stomach than $3000+ for a
> full modern(ish) system from symbolics.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/36dec685b1232bc7
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Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
In article <························@w5g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
············@gmail.com" <···········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a CS student who has recently fallen quite in love with Lisp.
> I've become interested in the old Lisp machines.
>
> While I'm broke now, I do have vague plans to go about acquiring a
> Symbolics LispM or an Alpha system with open genera.
>
> I've googled about a fair bit, but I still have some questions.
>
> 1) *Is* there an x86-64 port in the works? If so is there anything
> close to a plausable ETA on that? $1000 for an educational license &
> an off the shelf Imac is a lot easier to stomach than $3000+ for a
> full modern(ish) system from symbolics.
I wouldn't hold breath. There is a port, but currently there
is no entity that would put time and/or money into it to
make a releasable version. There is some thinking though,
how to achieve that (let me be very vague here).
You can look at the CADR emulator, for which also a lot
of the source is available. True, it is quite old.
> 2) What are the noticeable differences between OG on Unix and a "real"
> Lisp Machine.
The noticeable difference is that the real system talks
with Lisp directly to the hardware. There is nothing else.
I have a NXP1000, which is a very tiny machine (pizza box
with is not very crowded insided). It talks via Lisp directly
to things like Ethernet and SCSI II chips. So you 'see'
the driver software and its data structures, which is in Lisp.
Other machines have 'real' frame buffers plus the software
to drive it. Another difference is that 'real' machines
had a hardware bus (some with lots of slots) and there
were lots of extension cards for those machines
(frame buffers, CAD buffers, network cards, memory,
processors, interfaces, networking, ...). All the driver
software for those was in Lisp and you can assemble
machines with multi-kilowatt power usage. A 3675 had
14 expansion slots. So there was a lot of hardware
involved. Another difference is that the 'real' machine
has a Symbolics console (b&w screen + keyboard and mouse).
That alone makes a big difference. Typical setups
had an additional CAD buffer and a color graphics screen.
So you had/have to deal with a lot of (then) expensive hardware.
In the 80s a 3675 with a good amount of hardware
(disks, tape, memory, graphics, ...) and software would
have been in the $200000 range. Smaller machines were
used to get for $30000.
> I've heard about the Symbolics systems having a Lisp
> dialect as their assembly, and that sounds pretty darn sweet. How
> much does emulation capture the experience. Will I still be able to
> use Zmacs to drill all the way down to the very base of the (emulated)
> system?
The emulator runs the machine instructions and provides
a few thinks like network and disk access.
Above that all is Lisp. User interface is mostly done via X11.
>
> 3) Is there anything like a Genera users group in the NYC area? Is
> there somehow a Lisp Machine in the region to which I could gain some
> access?
>
> 4) What kind of resources are out there for someone wanting to play
> with Interlisp in 2007? I'm curious about that one too, though I know
> finding a working Xerox system is out of the question for someone who
> isn't majorly in the antique computer collection hobby.
Here is an emulator-based application (grammar workbench):
ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/lfg/
>
> Thank you, and I'm sorry if I'm asking for information that's
> available from somewhere I haven't but should have found.
>
> - Carter
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