LISP implementations on small machines

[Jay Jaeger]

On 10/4/2019 6:43 AM, David via cctalk wrote:
> 1976, UCSD. So I was using your Lisp.
> 
> I got a position on the UCSD Pascal project half way through that year (reunion in just 2 weeks). So I’m very familiar with the p-code and how all that works as well.
> 
> In 1978 I discovered Unix on a 780 in the 4th(?) floor lab and made the switch from Pascal to C. Been a hard core Unix developer ever since. As a result my name appears in almost all Apple products in the legal section.
> 
> 	David
> 
>> On Oct 3, 2019, at 11:16 PM, Stan Sieler <sieler at allegro.com> wrote:
>>
>> David...where did you use Lisp on a B6700?
>>
>> Bill Gord and I wrote the first INTERLISP interpreter for the B6700 back around
>> 1974-1975, on a DARPA contract, at UCSD.  (At the start, it was to implement BBNLISP,
>> but the name changed during the project :)
>>
>> DARPA found that researchers using INTERLISP (or others) on Dec PDP10s (and similar) were hampered by the limited address space (256K virtual memory).  The B6700 offered a significantly larger address space (and many other features, of course :)
>> (I know our LISP got distributed to other Burroughs sites in those days,
>> just like our STARTREK and Bob Jardine's SOLAR.)
>>
>> Danny Bobrow (with Xerox PARC at the time) came and helped us get started.
>> I met Warren Teitelman ... he had no idea that the cover of the INTERLISP manual was an homage to his last name.  (See: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp/Interlisp_Reference_Manual_Oct_1974.pdf <http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp/Interlisp_Reference_Manual_Oct_1974.pdf> )
>>
>> We got our system up and running, including DWIM and other packages, and were told ... oops, DEC figured out how to expand the amount of virtual memory on the PDP-10, so we don't need to buy Burroughs mainframes now!
>>
>> Our INTERLISP was a full interpreter, and also had a compiler to LISP p-code, which might have inspired UCSD Pascal's p-code (Ken Bowles was our boss). 
>>
>> I believe I have the source, in Burroughs ALGOL.
>>
>> As a side bonus, I got to interact with Danny, and people from PARC and BBN as we were watching other UCSD Computer Center people put the B6700 on the ARPANET.  (I think we were something like the 25th computer.)
>>
>> Stan Sieler
>>
>>
> 
> 

FYI there is a Burroughs 5500 simulator out there that runs ALGOL just
fine.  Let me know if you want a pointer to the developer.

JRJ