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Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

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Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#61
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbolics sold ISO Pascal, C, Ada, Prolog and Fortran compilers for it. I've used TeX and the original MIT X11 server on a Lisp Machine.

My Zeta-C compiler predated Symbolics C by almost two years. One customer said they'd run millions of lines of code through it.

So Symbolics' announcement of their vaporware C compiler didn't cost you all your sales?

Good to hear that.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering most of the Internet was developed under UNIX machines, the alternate universe would be almost unrecognizable, for good or bad.

It is a bit more nuanced than that, ARPANet was a lot of DEC machines, USC and USC-ISI had a number of DEC-10's on the network. Usenet was however primarily a bunch of UNIX (or UNIX like) machines. They traded in their modems for nifty connections to the Internet and carried a lot of the same protocols with them. Much of the Internet protocols were developed in college labs with the ability to 'plug in' different UNI…

The folks doing systems research weren't about to settle for something like Haskell, precisely because it's way too hard to do systems work in it. C is the way it is for a reason.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#63

I've managed today to boot OpenGenera in a Linux VM. It took me a couple of weeks but it finally works. I intend to have a look myself at what the fuss is all about. If you're interested, here are some pointers to relevant resources (snap4.tar.gz image works as advertised): http://www.advogato.org/person/johnw/diary/12.html http://www.cliki.net/VLM_on_Linux http://libarynth.org/vlm_on_linux The opengenera tar-ball ca…

It would be great if someone (anonymously) could get a working OpenGenera VM and upload the image so that people could skip all these steps and try it out immediately.

you are aware that this is proprietary software and that there is a legal owner?

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#64
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be great if someone (anonymously) could get a working OpenGenera VM and upload the image so that people could skip all these steps and try it out immediately.

you are aware that this is proprietary software and that there is a legal owner?

Who is the legal owner? I never heard what the final resolution of the probate process was.

EDITED to add:

Oh, I guess David Schmidt owns all of it now [0]: Symbolics is currently a privately held company which acquired the assets and intellectual property of the old public company called Symbolics, Inc.

[0] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Zeta-C compiler predated Symbolics C by almost two years. One customer said they'd run millions of lines of code through it.

So Symbolics' announcement of their vaporware C compiler didn't cost you all your sales? Good to hear that.

It was a problem, as I recall, but not nearly as big a problem as the fact that people stopped buying the machines :-)

Actually, it turned out -- though I never managed to communicate this to potential users -- Zeta-C and Symbolics C served different use cases. Symbolics C was best for porting entire C programs; Zeta-C was best if you had a library written in C and wanted to call it from Lisp.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#66
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are aware that this is proprietary software and that there is a legal owner?

Who is the legal owner? I never heard what the final resolution of the probate process was. EDITED to add: Oh, I guess David Schmidt owns all of it now [0]: Symbolics is currently a privately held company which acquired the assets and intellectual property of the old public company called Symbolics, Inc. [0] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/

I bought my MacIvory from David Schmidt about 4 years ago. At that time, it was my understanding that David only owned the maintenance contracts from Symbolics as well as the ability to sell Symbolics hardware. The intellectual property for Genera was owned by John Mallery (http://www.csail.mit.edu/user/926)

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#67
post #49

The real ergonomics of the LispM were due to the wonderful Microswitch keyboards, which have never been equalled since. To use one was a kind of revelation into the the apotheosis of keyboard use. (The old, original Tom Knight AI Lab keyboards were even slightly more wonderful; the later Microswitch LispM keyboards never quite equalled the originals in terms of tactilely satisfying feel.) (For a long while after leav…

Those were nice keyswitches, but the modern Cherry MX is also excellent. I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite between the two of them. The Cherries have a lighter touch and a little "snap", both of which I like.

I'm still going on a vintage Model M. Heavy touch, satisfying clank on each stroke.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#68

I've managed today to boot OpenGenera in a Linux VM. It took me a couple of weeks but it finally works. I intend to have a look myself at what the fuss is all about. If you're interested, here are some pointers to relevant resources (snap4.tar.gz image works as advertised): http://www.advogato.org/person/johnw/diary/12.html http://www.cliki.net/VLM_on_Linux http://libarynth.org/vlm_on_linux The opengenera tar-ball ca…

What's the fuss all about? A lot, but please bear in mind the time this was developed. We are now in 2014. We are talking about something about 30 yrs old. A good way to really compare is to go compare with an Apple ][.

/sad

I think multimedia computing, as introduced by Amiga did more for AI, speaking in terms of games, than the Lisp Machines. I do think the jack of all trades approach is useful for sharing data across computers and professions.

It's sad to see the demise of the professional multimedia computer to tablets and tablet-laptops.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#70

Site's down, here's a pastebin of the text: http://pastebin.com/6kkCTgjg Neither archive.org nor Google Cache have this. Weird. Video from article: http://vimeo.com/83886950 Image 1: http://i.imgur.com/r62FSfE.jpg Image 2: http://i.imgur.com/xsxutc3.png Image 3: http://i.imgur.com/zL9DFbr.png

Another video showing Symbolics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk

That was a great intro video. Pretty amazing stuff.
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