22 Jun
2007
22 Jun
'07
11:01 a.m.
Hi,
Liam Proven said:
I never cease to be amazed by the level and depth of
knowledge of
obscure machines on this list. Knowledgeable discussions of machines
I've never even heard of in 20y in the business and a good while
longer as a hobbyist.
So I thought I'd ask a question on a slightly different tack.
What are the most bizarre, way-out or just plain *different* machines
that folks have seen?
[Snip]
What else was there? What other machines -
general-purpose desktop (or
desk-side or whatever) computers were there that Thought Differently?
Forth machines, sometimes with Forth implemented in hardware. Source
and object code in 1K blocks paged from blocks on disk, no other OS.
I think Forth Inc. have some history on their site:
http://www.forth.com
The Rekursiv. "Everything is an object" managed by a tagged object
manager in hardware. Virtual address space with objects paged in and out
of single-level storage as required. Google for Harland, Gunn, Pringle
& Beloff's original paper from 1986, it's online somewhere.
Lisp machines of course.
Smalltalk?
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!