19 Feb
2013
19 Feb
'13
9 p.m.
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to read some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
19 Feb
19 Feb
9:16 p.m.
On 2/19/13 1:00 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to read
some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
for Interlisp-D
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp
in particular,
3101272_InterlispD_1_Oct85.pdf
3101273_InterlispD_2_Oct85.pdf
3101274_InterlispD_3_Oct85.pdf
for Smalltalk
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/smalltalk
I don't have anything currently up for Smalltalk-80, but that
information is available in many other locations.
Both systems are byte coded interpreters running in microcode on various
impementations of a 16 bit CPU (Alto, Dorado, Dandelion, Daybreak).
The CPUs were underpowered compared to the 32 and 36 bit processors that came out from
the East Coast (MIT/LMI/Symbolics) with the exception of the Dorado, which was
probably the most complicated 16 bit CPU ever built.
With the exception of the "DandiTiger (Xerox 1109)" which supported more memory
and hardware
floating point, there really wasn't any special hardware for Smalltalk or Lisp (or
Mesa).
20 Feb
20 Feb
1:46 a.m.
On 2/19/13 1:16 PM, "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 2/19/13 1:00 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
And frankly, that's what's exciting about those platforms! They were
incredibly flexible, relying on simplicity rather than complexity to offer
a broad range of expression. -- Ian
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to
read some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
for Interlisp-D
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp
in particular,
3101272_InterlispD_1_Oct85.pdf
3101273_InterlispD_2_Oct85.pdf
3101274_InterlispD_3_Oct85.pdf
for Smalltalk
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/smalltalk
I don't have anything currently up for Smalltalk-80, but that
information is available in many other locations.
Both systems are byte coded interpreters running in microcode on various
impementations of a 16 bit CPU (Alto, Dorado, Dandelion, Daybreak).
The CPUs were underpowered compared to the 32 and 36 bit processors that
came out from
the East Coast (MIT/LMI/Symbolics) with the exception of the Dorado,
which was
probably the most complicated 16 bit CPU ever built.
With the exception of the "DandiTiger (Xerox 1109)" which supported more
memory and hardware
floating point, there really wasn't any special hardware for Smalltalk or
Lisp (or Mesa).
19 Feb
19 Feb
9:42 p.m.
In article <CAMTenCFL36KNaEYgsaRFw+c1JSr6E8yKThLsmAvc591JQpBanw at mail.gmail.com>,
Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> writes:
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to read
some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
It's not the Xerox one, but this is a really good video/talk on the
Lisp Machines Inc. machine:
<http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932>
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book
<http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
9:52 p.m.
On 2/19/13 1:42 PM, Richard wrote:
In article
<CAMTenCFL36KNaEYgsaRFw+c1JSr6E8yKThLsmAvc591JQpBanw at mail.gmail.com>,
Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> writes:
"the Last Symbolics Developer, Speaks of Lisp Machines"
you REALLY do not want to mix up LMI with Symbolics...
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to
read some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
It's not the Xerox one, but this is a really good video/talk on the
Lisp Machines Inc. machine:
<http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932>
20 Feb
20 Feb
12:12 a.m.
In article <5123F412.7070208 at bitsavers.org>,
Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> writes:
Sorry, brain cramp. Yes, it's Symbolics and not LMI. Regardless, I
found the talk very informative. I watched this the last time a
Symbolics machine was up for sale on ebay.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book
<http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
On 2/19/13 1:42 PM, Richard wrote:
> In article <CAMTenCFL36KNaEYgsaRFw+c1JSr6E8yKThLsmAvc591JQpBanw at mail.gmail.
com>,
Liam
Proven <lproven at gmail.com> writes:
"the Last Symbolics Developer, Speaks of Lisp Machines"
you REALLY do not want to mix up LMI with Symbolics... Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to
read some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
It's not the Xerox one, but this is a really good video/talk on the
Lisp Machines Inc. machine:
<http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932> 
19 Feb
19 Feb
10:19 p.m.
During college, I interned with the PARC Smalltalk group (1985-86). At that time,
Smalltalk-80 was being used both on the Dorados, which were PARC-designed ECL machines,
and which I'm sure you can read more about elsewhere, and on Sun3 68K workstations.
The latter were as an OS running the stock Sun Unix distribution; I don't recall what
the former were running.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf
Of Liam Proven
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2013 1:01 PM
To: Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Xerox Smalltalk
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to read some reasonably detailed accounts of
the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk workstations and Lisp Machines?
20 Feb
20 Feb
7:37 a.m.
Since we have several stars and dandelions running Lisp, ViewPoint and GlobalView we are
searching for Xerox Smalltalk media and software distributions for a very long time.
Andreas
Am 19.02.2013 um 22:00 schrieb Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>:
Does anyone know of anywhere I might be able to read
some reasonably
detailed accounts of the operating systems of the Xerox Smalltalk
workstations and Lisp Machines?
12:27 p.m.
Andreas Holz wrote:
Since we have several stars and dandelions running
Lisp, ViewPoint and GlobalView we are searching for Xerox Smalltalk media and software
distributions for a very long time.
Was there actually a Smalltalk for the 8010/1108/1109 or 6085/1186? The
Wikipedia article says there was, but doesn't cite any reference.
While there were implementations on the Alto, Dolphin, and Dorado, I
thought they skipped from those to microprocessor-based systems (such as
the 8086-based Notetaker prototype and the 68000-based Sun workstation)
rather than putting it on the other D-machines.
Eric
4:41 p.m.
On 2/20/13 4:27 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
Was there actually a Smalltalk for the 8010/1108/1109
or 6085/1186? The Wikipedia article says there was, but doesn't cite any reference.
Yes, it came out of XSIS (Xerox Special Information Systems).
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/xsis
It (and Analyist) are quite difficult to find.
21 Feb
21 Feb
2:44 a.m.
I may be pointing out the obvious, but have you read the canonical introductions
http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-80-The-Language-its-Implementation/dp/02011…
http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-80-History-Addison-Wesley-computer-science/…
http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-80-Interactive-Programming-Environment-Addi…
http://www.amazon.com/Fumbling-Future-Invented-Personal-Computer/dp/1583482…
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
Yes, it came out of XSIS (Xerox Special Information Systems).
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/xsis
It (and Analyist) are quite difficult to find.
On 2/20/13 4:27 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Was there actually a Smalltalk for the 8010/1108/1109 or 6085/1186? The
> Wikipedia article says there was, but doesn't cite any reference.
FWIW: Xerox was trying to sell one of my customers 6085s sometime in
the late 80s.
The salesman claimed, in a smug way, that all the software was written in Mesa,
as if that was beyond our capabilities. I said "Great.", and pulled
out the ACM ToPLAS
issue about it, "We'll want to get the SDK for it as well so we can do a custom
integration with our legacy systems." They weren't willing to sell
us that. The
most they would allow was their scripting language.
And that's one of the Fumbling the Future facets. They deep-down
believed they were
selling information appliances rather than systems to integrate with the rest
of the world. We did as much as we could - ported XNS protocols and tools
on our Unix machines, wrote output drivers to emulate their word
processors (don't
ask) - but in the end they would never allow enough openness for us to build
a good integration - and we were going to buy about 50 of these systems
with associated filers.
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10 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
aswood＠t-online.de -
bob＠theatkinsons.org -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
IanK＠vulcan.com -
legalize＠xmission.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
tony.aiuto＠gmail.com