17 Sep
2020
17 Sep
'20
10:18 p.m.
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)? I
know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star, and
Lisa out there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are emulators
for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them and
been archived?
Mike
17 Sep
17 Sep
10:37 p.m.
would early gui include hmi systems
On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 9:19 PM Michael Kerpan via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines
got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)? I
know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star, and
Lisa out there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are emulators
for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them and
been archived?
Mike
18 Sep
18 Sep
9:35 a.m.
On Sep 17, 2020, at 10:18 PM, Michael Kerpan via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)? I
know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star, and
Lisa out there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are emulators
for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them and
been archived?
Mike
One system that could be considered a GUI, or at least the beginnings of one, is the PLATO
system. Emulations of that are alive and well, in particular the system described at
cyber1.org.
paul
9:51 a.m.
Michael Kerpan wrote:
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines
got me
wondering: how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or
emulated at all)? I know that there are more or less functional
emulations of Alto, Star, and Lisa out there, but what about the
various LISP machines
There are emulators for the CADR Lisp machine and a lot of software has
been preserved. There's no emulators for the CONS, but I claim it would
be interesting to attempt one.
Now NLS and TX-2 emulators, that would be something.
2:23 p.m.
On Thu, 17 Sep 2020, Michael Kerpan via cctalk wrote:
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines
got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)? I
know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star, and
Lisa out there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are emulators
for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them and
been archived?
Mike
Mame can emulate the Apollo Domain machines,
https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Apollo
Regards
--
Jacob Dahl Pind | telefisk.org | fidonet 2:230/38.8
3:30 p.m.
Also available on MAME is HP VUE on the 9000/360 and 370 and not a super
early GUI but quite breathtaking is Irix on the SGI Indy. Directions to set
up both are all over the web.
Ray
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:23 PM jacob--- via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2020, Michael Kerpan via cctalk wrote:
Something in another recent thread about LISP
machines got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)?
I
know that there are more or less functional
emulations of Alto, Star, and
Lisa out there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are
emulators
for some of these systems out there, has any
software to run on them and
been archived?
Mike
Mame can emulate the Apollo Domain machines,
https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Apollo
Regards
--
Jacob Dahl Pind | telefisk.org | fidonet 2:230/38.8
21 Sep
21 Sep
3:46 a.m.
I have an SGI Indy that some idiot (tm) (okay, it was me) put Linux on.
Anyone have any way to undo my mistake? (: I'd like to get the thing
running properly again, if it even still powers up. I imagine the HD is
probably knackered by now anyway.
On Fri, 18 Sep 2020 at 20:30, Ray Jewhurst via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Also available on MAME is HP VUE on the 9000/360 and
370 and not a super
early GUI but quite breathtaking is Irix on the SGI Indy. Directions to set
up both are all over the web.
Ray
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:23 PM jacob--- via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
and
--
Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow"
Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net
--------
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift
On Thu, 17 Sep 2020, Michael Kerpan via cctalk
wrote:
> Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me
wondering:
> how many early graphical systems are well
emulated (or emulated at
all)?
I
> know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star,
and
Lisa out
there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are
emulators
> for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them been
archived?
Mike
Mame can emulate the Apollo Domain machines,
https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Apollo
Regards
--
Jacob Dahl Pind | telefisk.org | fidonet 2:230/38.8
12:06 p.m.
Well, CD images are available on the Web for both IRIX 5.3 and 6.5.
Various manuals, including installation guides seem to be available at
http://irix7.com/techpubs.html
As long as you have a CD drive (which you would have needed to install
Linux), you should be good to go, though certain bits and pieces like
the compilers probably need license keys to work properly.
Mike
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 3:46 AM John Many Jars via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have an SGI Indy that some idiot (tm) (okay, it was me) put Linux on.
Anyone have any way to undo my mistake? (: I'd like to get the thing
running properly again, if it even still powers up. I imagine the HD is
probably knackered by now anyway.
On Fri, 18 Sep 2020 at 20:30, Ray Jewhurst via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Also available on MAME is HP VUE on the 9000/360
and 370 and not a super
early GUI but quite breathtaking is Irix on the SGI Indy. Directions to set
up both are all over the web.
Ray
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:23 PM jacob--- via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
and
--
Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow"
Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net
--------
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift On Thu, 17 Sep 2020, Michael Kerpan via cctalk
wrote:
> Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me
wondering:
> how many early graphical systems are well
emulated (or emulated at
all)?
I
> know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star,
and
Lisa out
there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are
emulators
> for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them been
archived?
Mike
Mame can emulate the Apollo Domain machines,
https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Apollo
Regards
--
Jacob Dahl Pind | telefisk.org | fidonet 2:230/38.8
20 Sep
20 Sep
5:17 p.m.
There's also the windowing system used on the AT&T 3B1 (AKA Unix PC, AK PC7300),
which I think was called MGR. It may have also been ported to other systems as well.
When I had one of these machines it was adequate, although terribly slow on a 512K
system.
There's a writeup, with images, here:
http://toastytech.com/guis/unixpc.html
and apparently an emulator here:
https://www.philpem.me.uk/code/3b1emu
I have a parted-out 7300 in my closet, but I'm not sure I have all the pieces. Part
of me thinks I should dig it out and revive it, part of me thinks I should let sleeping
dogs lie...
-mike
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Michael Kerpan via
cctalk
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2020 7:19 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Exploring early GUIs
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)? I know that there
are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star, and Lisa out there, but what about
the various LISP machines or the early workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming
that there are emulators for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on
them and been archived?
Mike
21 Sep
21 Sep
4:11 p.m.
On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 3:24 PM Mike Begley via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
There's also the windowing system used on the
AT&T 3B1 (AKA Unix PC, AK
PC7300), which I think was called MGR. It may have also been ported to
other systems as well. When I had one of these machines it was adequate,
although terribly slow on a 512K system.
MGR was not the Unix PC's native GUI environment; I'm not sure what that
was named. MGR was an open source environment that could be installed on
the Unix PC. For best performance, it was necessary to replace a PAL chip
on the motherboard ("VIDPAL") to allow user-space access to the frame
buffer. The native GUI environment did not require or benefit from that.
The linked photos are of the native GUI environment.
Since the Unix PC was developed by Convergent, and the SVR2 it runs is
derived from Convergent CTIX, I suspect that the native GUI environment was
from Convergent as well. It might be derived from
Convergent WGS/Desktop,
but I've never seen that.
5:21 p.m.
On 9/21/20 4:11 PM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 3:24 PM Mike Begley via cctalk
<
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR
bill
There's also the windowing system used on the
AT&T 3B1 (AKA Unix PC, AK
PC7300), which I think was called MGR. It may have also been ported to
other systems as well. When I had one of these machines it was adequate,
although terribly slow on a 512K system.
MGR was not the Unix PC's native GUI environment; I'm not sure what that
was named. MGR was an open source environment that could be installed on
the Unix PC. 
6:38 p.m.
MGR was not
the Unix PC's native GUI environment; I'm not sure what that
was named. MGR was an open source environment that could be installed on
the Unix PC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR
7:11 p.m.
On 9/21/20 6:38 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:
Almost looks like a SunView ancestor.
Here's a bit more taken from the posting to comp.sources.unix.
-----------------
MGR - C Language Application Interface
Stephen A. Uhler
Bell Communications Research
MGR (ManaGeR) is a window system for Unix that currently runs on Sun
Workstations. MGR manages asynchronous updates of overlapping windows and
provides application support for a heterogeneous network environment,
i.e., many different types of computers connected by various
communications media. The application interface enables applications
(called client programs) to be written in a variety of programming
languages, and run on different operating systems. The client program can
take full advantage of the windowing capabilities regardless of the type
of connection to the workstation running MGR. This document describes the
C interface library for MGR which provides a set of macros and functions
that implement the stream protocol. This library provides client programs
written in C with a function call interface to MGR. The library provides
the lowest level access to MGR functions and represents a one to one
mapping to the underlying stream protocol.
-------------------
bill
MGR was not the Unix PC's native GUI environment;
I'm not sure what that
was named. MGR was an open source environment that could be installed on
the Unix PC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR 
7:20 p.m.
On Sep 21, 2020, at 3:38 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Almost looks like a SunView ancestor.
It was the first GUI for Linux, back in ?92. Once X-Windows was able to support my video
card I moved to that. Then in ?94 I had to move to a laptop with only 4MB RAM, so I used
MGR until a version of X-Windows was released that would work well with only 4MB RAM. In
both cases, I was mainly after the DVI viewer for TeX, and multiple terminal windows.
Then again, even today, the main reason I use X-Windows is for multiple terminal windows.
:-) Between ?92 and roughly ?96, X-Windows drove all my RAM purchases, after that it was
graphics software and web browsers.
Zane
MGR was
not the Unix PC's native GUI environment; I'm not sure what that
was named. MGR was an open source environment that could be installed on
the Unix PC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManaGeR 
12:29 a.m.
Hello all,
The Amiga 1000 with AmigaDos and Workbench was released in late
1985. AmigaDos is based on Unix and Workbench is based on X-windows.
GOD Bless and Thanks,
rich!
On 9/21/2020 11:24 PM, Chris Hanson via cctalk wrote:
On Sep 21, 2020, at 3:38 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Almost looks like a SunView ancestor.
I?m
pretty sure SunWindows/SunView predates MGR by 2-3 years.
? Chris
6:02 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 11:29:14PM -0500, Richard Pope via cctalk wrote:
The Amiga 1000 with AmigaDos and Workbench was
released in late 1985.
AmigaDos is based on Unix and Workbench is based on X-windows.
Er, no.
The Amiga's operating system is a pre-emptive multitasking microkernel which
uses asynchronous message-passing betwen subsystems, which is not the Unix way
of doing things at all. Unix provide libraries of synchronous procedure calls
which block the caller until the job is done.
Although "AmigaDOS" appears prominently in the terminal as one boots Workbench,
that's only the filesystem and command-line shell. Due to time pressure, they
bought in TRIPOS and filed off the serial number. TRIPOS is a fairly clunky
thing written in BCPL that never sat well with the rest of the system, but it
was quite probably the only DOS they could buy in which worked in a concurrent
environment. TRIPOS is the reason why disks were slow on the Amiga.
The other bit that got reduced from a grander vision was the graphics, which
became blocking libraries rather than device drivers. The window manager ran as
its own thread which gave the illusion of responsiveness.
The "X Window System" (not X-windows or other misnomers) is an ordinary[1] Unix
process which provides low-level primitives for a windowing system. "Workbench"
is just an ordinary AmigaDOS process which provides a file manager. You can
even quit it to save memory, and the rest of the GUI still works. They are not
the same thing or "based" on each other at all.
[1] Well, some implementations are setuid root or have similar elevated
privileges so they can have unfettered access to the bare metal and thus
tantamount to being part of the kernel, but that's basically corner-cutting
by a bunch of cowboys and it is possible to do this sort of thing properly
without introducing a massive security hole.
2:53 p.m.
New subject: Amiga Roots, TRIPOS - Off Topic, was Re: Exploring early GUIs
Forking this thread as we are now way off the original and very cogent topic, which I
would like to see continued. (Very valid to ask about good emulations of early GUI systems
like Apollo, LispMs, PERQ, Xerox D* etc)
Peter?s mentions of TRIPOS (which was used on a Sage IV for Amiga Lorraine bring-up) has
me renew my ask:
If anyone has media for TRIPOS for the Sage/Stride systems please reach out.
On Sep 22, 2020, at 03:02, Peter Corlett via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
?On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 11:29:14PM -0500, Richard Pope via cctalk wrote:
The Amiga 1000 with AmigaDos and Workbench was
released in late 1985.
AmigaDos is based on Unix and Workbench is based on X-windows.
Er, no.
The Amiga's operating system is a pre-emptive multitasking microkernel which
uses asynchronous message-passing betwen subsystems, which is not the Unix way
of doing things at all. Unix provide libraries of synchronous procedure calls
which block the caller until the job is done.
Although "AmigaDOS" appears prominently in the terminal as one boots
Workbench,
that's only the filesystem and command-line shell. Due to time pressure, they
bought in TRIPOS and filed off the serial number. TRIPOS is a fairly clunky
thing written in BCPL that never sat well with the rest of the system, but it
was quite probably the only DOS they could buy in which worked in a concurrent
environment. TRIPOS is the reason why disks were slow on the Amiga.
The other bit that got reduced from a grander vision was the graphics, which
became blocking libraries rather than device drivers. The window manager ran as
its own thread which gave the illusion of responsiveness.
The "X Window System" (not X-windows or other misnomers) is an ordinary[1]
Unix
process which provides low-level primitives for a windowing system.
"Workbench"
is just an ordinary AmigaDOS process which provides a file manager. You can
even quit it to save memory, and the rest of the GUI still works. They are not
the same thing or "based" on each other at all.
[1] Well, some implementations are setuid root or have similar elevated
privileges so they can have unfettered access to the bare metal and thus
tantamount to being part of the kernel, but that's basically corner-cutting
by a bunch of cowboys and it is possible to do this sort of thing properly
without introducing a massive security hole.
20 Sep
20 Sep
9:01 p.m.
On Sep 17, 2020, at 19:18, Michael Kerpan wrote:
Something in another recent thread about LISP machines
got me wondering:
how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or emulated at all)? I
know that there are more or less functional emulations of Alto, Star, and
Lisa out there, but what about the various LISP machines or the early
workstations (Sun 68K, Apollo, etc) Also, assuming that there are emulators
for some of these systems out there, has any software to run on them and
been archived?
Something in the "early graphical" space that I think may be difficult or
impossible to emulate: the Culler-Fried Online System. I think it was built around an IBM
360 and operated at one site (UCSB) late 1960s into 1970s with the goal of running a
particular educational/research application programming environment, CHM has one of the
dual keyboards, and I am not at all certain that software exists. Not so early to
timesharing (late 1960s) but using storage scopes for graphical output terminals.
Al has a couple manuals in <http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univOfCalSantaBarbara/>. So we
can get some idea of what it was like.
-Frank McConnell
1404
days inactive
1408
days old
19 comments
17 participants
participants (17)
-
abuse＠cabal.org.uk -
bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com -
cmhanson＠eschatologist.net -
fmc＠reanimators.org -
healyzh＠avanthar.com -
ian.finder＠gmail.com -
jacob＠dahl-pind.dk -
john＠yoyodyne-propulsion.net -
lars＠nocrew.org -
mechanic_2＠charter.net -
mjkerpan＠kerpan.com -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
raywjewhurst＠gmail.com -
spacewar＠gmail.com -
spam＠hell.org -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
tdk.knight＠gmail.com