20 Apr
2002
20 Apr
'02
5:52 a.m.
I think the
most beautiful processor I've seen is CPU card of the
Symbolics 3645. The wiring and chip layout are really nice. One thing that
always impressed me about that machine is that the disk label is in ASCII
text! Of course it has a 68000 with a decent amount of ROM space (the FEP) to
boot from...
What do you mean by "the disk label is in ASCII text"?
I've played with a Symbolics for maybe half an hour. It has a lot of cool
software, though it kept trying to connect to a ChaosNet server to download
all the docs, so there was a lot I couldn't find out. I haven't really
explored the essence of the software.
1/2 and hour with an incomplete system is not much of a demonstration...
The design of both the software and the hardware strikes me as baroque
(typical MIT "just keep adding features" hacking). Also the system as a
whole is not necessarily "self-sustaining". A friend of mine is having
trouble with his Symbolics -- his disk has bad blocks in the LISP world --
he doesn't have the "breath-of-life" tape that has to be created for each
individual disk -- there's no way for the FEP to change the bad block list
-- the software to create new "breath-of-life" tapes is not available.
If any of those problems were fixed things might be better, but in the
current situation there's no recourse (except to pay Symbolics). That's
what I mean by "not self-sustaining"
I dont think that there was a whole lot there that was not needed. A
tagged architecture 36 bit machine with paged virtual memory, ECC, capable of
executing about 5 million Lisp instructions a second was not trivial to build
in 1985...
I've read the manuals for the Xerox environment but I've never used the
actual machine. The hardware/software is less baroque but still heavily
layered (three separate LISP environments running on top of PILOT on a
variety of machines with a variety of keyboard layouts). INTERLISP's
comment handling never seemed sensible to me and it has lots of cryptic
names and messages left over from the TTY days.
The Xerox hardware is less "baroque" because is is not a "Lisp
machine" it is
a microcoded 16 bit processor with WCS. The magic is done with (very clever)
microcode but it is _much_ slower than the 36xx
The Symbolics and the Xerox WS running Interlisp
always seemed to be
the most "alive" computers I've used, which I think has something to do
with
how much the command interpreter, shell, etc knows about things...
And how interconnected they are. I would love to play wtih DEdit (or SEdit
which is the newer version) -- its generalization of "select, then act"
to multiple selections and its "one man's output is another man's
input"
mentality would be fun. I don't know much about TEdit or the Grapher but
they seem to have cult followings.
-- Derek
21 Apr
21 Apr
8 a.m.
I sent you a personal mesasge and then you replied to the list... either
your mail server is "smart" (fills in To: automatically) or you did some
extra typing. *grumble* *mutter* So we might as well bring the discussion
back to the list (i.e., yes, I realize I'm replying to the list this time).
On Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 07:52:02AM -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote:
> The design of both the software and the hardware
strikes me as baroque
> (typical MIT "just keep adding features" hacking). Also the system as a
I dont think that there was a whole lot there that
was not needed. A
tagged architecture 36 bit machine with paged virtual memory, ECC, capable of
executing about 5 million Lisp instructions a second was not trivial to build
in 1985...
I'm not convinced. I'm not saying it was trivial, I'm saying it seems
to have evolved more than being designed from the ground up. Come on,
look at the keyboard. And the software is still baroque. Powerful,
but baroque.
You can download a Interlisp/common lisp environment
from PARC that will run
under Linux (its actually an application (LFG)) but you can play with SEdit
and Tedit) ...
Do you have a URL?
-- Derek
8:25 a.m.
On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, Derek Peschel wrote:
http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/groups/nltt/medley/
I sent you a personal mesasge and then you replied to
the list... either
your mail server is "smart" (fills in To: automatically) or you did some
extra typing. *grumble* *mutter* So we might as well bring the discussion
back to the list (i.e., yes, I realize I'm replying to the list this time).
On Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 07:52:02AM -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote:
Of course it evolved, what commercial computer systems vintage 1985 did not
evolve from earlier systems? The proportion of new ideas embodied in the
36xx is probably as high or higher than many other systems of the time.
Baroque compared to what? Other Lisp environments? Other operating systems?
> The design of both the software and the
hardware strikes me as baroque
> (typical MIT "just keep adding features" hacking). Also the system as a
I dont think that there was a whole lot there
that was not needed. A
tagged architecture 36 bit machine with paged virtual memory, ECC, capable of
executing about 5 million Lisp instructions a second was not trivial to build
in 1985...
I'm not convinced. I'm not saying it was trivial, I'm saying it seems
to have evolved more than being designed from the ground up. Come on,
look at the keyboard. And the software is still baroque. Powerful,
but baroque. You can download a Interlisp/common lisp
environment from PARC that will run
under Linux (its actually an application (LFG)) but you can play with SEdit
and Tedit) ...
Do you have a URL?
-- Derek
Peter Wallace
8161
days inactive
8162
days old
2 comments
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dpeschel＠eskimo.com -
pcw＠mesanet.com