Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/10/refurb-weekend-symbolics-macivory-lisp.html

by rcarmo • 2 years ago

182 99 2 years ago

oldvcr.blogspot.com

gjvc2• 2 years ago

I have one of these! I will read this article closely for guidance.

floren5• 2 years ago

I wish these weren't so unobtanium... I've been slowly gathering sources and information in the hopes of maybe writing a book about the Lisp Machines, and as part of that I'd like to spend time hands-on with the real hardware, but it's hard and expensive to find the damn things.

throw16180339• 2 years ago

The Open Genera version for the Alpha is a lot easier to obtain. There's also a bootleg version that ported the Alpha assembly to C. It apparently run on Linux x64 at some point. IIRC, it depends on some removed X11 features, so it may be difficult to run on a current OS.

floren5• 2 years ago

Yeah, you need an old Linux version IIRC because it depends on a particular NFS version... I think it's important to get a feel for how the actual hardware felt, though.

nxobject2• 2 years ago

Another thing you might choose to do is run another (closer) descendant of one the last MIT AI Lab versions of Lisp machine system software, pieced together from tape backups of the AI Lab. Like Plan 9, the community seems to have spun itself its own living distro, still running on MIT CADR simulators. [1], [2].

[1] https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/

[2] https://metebalci.com/blog/cadr-lisp-machine-and-cadr-proces...

lproven8• 2 years ago

Howto:

https://gist.github.com/oubiwann/1e7aadfc22e3ae908921aeaccf2...

db48x2• 2 years ago

https://archives.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html

linguae• 2 years ago

Same here; I've been fascinated by Lisp machines for the past decade, but they are very difficult to get a hold of, and when they do show up for sale, they are prohibitively expensive. When I went to the now-defunct Living Computer Museum in Seattle back in 2019, I saw that there were no Lisp machines available, though I did get to see and use other rare machines such as the Xerox Alto, the Apple Lisa, and the original NeXT cube (I'm glad I finally got to add one to my collection a few years ago). MIT CADR has been made open source for quite some time (https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/), and I'm glad that Xerox Interlisp-D is now open source (https://interlisp.org/). However, the holy grail of Lisp machine environments, Symbolics Genera, is still not available as FOSS. Funnily enough, this is fitting since Richard Stallman's frustrations with Symbolics was one of the catalysts behind his starting the GNU Project.

One of the interesting "what could have been" moments of computing history is Apple's exploration of Lisp in the late 1980s and during the first half of the 1990s. Such projects include:

- Apple's original plans for the Newton, which included an OS written in Lisp.

- The Dylan programming language, which I've heard can be thought of as Scheme with the Common Lisp Object System. Dylan was originally designed to be the official language used to develop Newton apps. Originally Dylan had an S-expression syntax, but this was changed to a more Algol-like syntax due to the prevailing opinion among many that an Algol-like syntax would be easier for C/Pascal/C++ programmers to adopt. However, the Newton ended up using a C++-based operating system, and NewtonScript, which wasn't based on a Lisp, was created as the language for developing Newton apps.

- SK8 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SK8_(programming_language) ), which was dubbed "HyperCard on steroids," was written in Common Lisp.

In an alternate timeline, we could've been using Apple devices built on a Lisp foundation. This is probably the closest we've gotten to Lisp machines on the desktop, as opposed to specialized AI workstations that cost five figures in 1980s dollars.

Then again, things worked out well for Apple after the NeXT purchase. The OpenStep API (which became Cocoa) and Objective-C was (and still is) solid infrastructure than can be thought of as a "pragmatic Smalltalk" desktop, though in recent years I feel Apple has been moving on from NeXT influences and is doing its own thing now with Swift.

neilv3• 2 years ago

had an S-expression syntax, but this was changed to a more Algol-like syntax due to the prevailing opinion among many that an Algol-like syntax would be easier for C/Pascal/C++ programmers to adopt.

They can be forgiven, at the time. Now we have evidence that thinking is wrong. Today we have half of everyone and their dog, as Web programmers, using a syntax originally chosen by very technical systems programmers. (Bell Labs researchers -> C -> Oak -> Java -> JavaScript.)

Almost no Web developers are systems programmers, and this is just a poor syntax for the work, and needlessly cryptic, but they can pick up even this bad syntax just fine.

Now we know that, whether you use curly braces, parentheses, whitespace, or something else is not the barrier to learning a programming language. It's one of the most absolutely trivial things about it to learn.

Knowing this, the next time I hear someone say "We can't use this syntax, because it will just totally break people's brains, even though the higher grammar, semantics, libraries, domain frameworks, and everything else are different anyway, and are orders of magnitude harder to learn, we need to make it look superficially like something it's not, because people are full of poo"... I'm ready to appropriate the Lily Allen song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUHqFhnen0U

debit-freak2• 2 years ago

but this was changed to a more Algol-like syntax due to the prevailing opinion among many that an Algol-like syntax would be easier for C/Pascal/C++ programmers to adopt

Did this not cripple macros?

detourdog3• 2 years ago

I still have my Dylan development kit from Appple. I was also into Sk8.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

Additionally, Java (and .NET for historical reasons), also benefit from that Objective-C / NeXTStep linage.

The C++ like syntax was a kind of honey trap for C++ devs, the actual runtime and language semantics are closer those from Smalltalk/Objective-C, hence why Strongtalk and SELF JIT research did fit so well into Hotspot.

reikonomusha• 2 years ago

I know someone in the US with Symbolics hardware (actual Lisp machines and MacIvory) as well as TI MicroExplorer for quiet sale. Email is in profile.

amszmidt6• 2 years ago

Much of the user experience of the Lisp Machine was just the console. Users would seldom interact directly with the actual hardware which would be in some lab or hall.

You had special key sequences so you could even hard reboot the machine if it got stuck. Both the CADR and Lambda have simulators that work very well and are Free Software.

You won’t be missing out much by using a simulator. :-)

lispm5• 2 years ago

A Symbolics MacIvory or a TI MicroExplorer would typically sit at/under/on the desk.

privong• 2 years ago

I've been slowly gathering sources and information in the hopes of maybe writing a book about the Lisp Machines

I would love to hear more about this. I have a friend whose mother-in-law was involved in a startup that was selling software for LISP Machines back in the day. She's told me a little about it but I am seeing if I can get more info.

Would you be willing to keep me in the loop if you ever do get around to writing a book? Email is: accounts5 [at] [HN username, minus g].com

the-smug-one• 2 years ago

Cathode Ray Dude on YouTube had a video with a guy calling himself tr0n(?) showing off his Symbolics machine. I can't find the video, but it's out there and it's good.

mepian• 2 years ago

Here's that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY8ACu24nGs

p_l10• 2 years ago

trinitr0n is a very knowledgeable person when it comes to symbolics lisp machines, indeed.

pdw2• 2 years ago

This is wild:

Portable Genera, an official port of the VLM to Intel and ARM done under contract for existing customers. While this version isn't publicly available as of this writing, it's still actively developed.

nxobject2• 2 years ago

So many mysteries: which customers, and which customers with the capacity to pay not only for an ongoing service contract but a port? Some unknown wealthy benefactor? Someone managing 30 year-old ICBMs?

bombcar• 2 years ago

Obviously we now know what OpenAI is really running on.

shrubble• 2 years ago

There were some financial giants that used Symbolics for fraud detection; possibly it just makes sense to keep it running than to rewrite it. I remember American Express being a large customer, from what I read.

amszmidt6• 2 years ago

The jury is still out of how much official this is, seeing that the legal situation for Genera is a quagmire.

Wilder is that the MIT Lisp Machine branch is also being actively developed, and it has a clear legal situation today. To the point that there are several (simulated) CADR's on the Chaosnet talking to each other over the Internet. :-)

pdw2• 2 years ago

Is https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/ the project you're referring to?

rjsw• 2 years ago

When I was working on trying to update the CADR software, I found it helped to check in to a VCS all the versions of a particular source file over the previous version, what was your reason for going back to checking them in separately?

msie• 2 years ago

I remember bumping into a Lisp Machine in the 90's. It was at my university, SFU. A door to a storage room at the rear of the computing science lab was left ajar and I took a look inside. Imagine my delight when I saw a Lisp Machine that towered over me! We had NeXT machines and SUN workstations in the lab so I imagine the Lisp Machine was mothballed.

skibz• 2 years ago

Emacs got rewritten separately for the Lisp machine as EINE (EINE Is Not EMACS), parallel with Multics Emacs also written in Lisp, and an improved EINE later became ZWEI (ZWEI Was EINE Initially).

These recursive acronyms are causing a stack overflow in my brain.

Very well played.

munchler• 2 years ago

The clever part isn't just the recursion. These translate (almost) as "one" and "two" in German.

javajosh2• 2 years ago

Indeed. Erbsenzähler comment: "eine" is the singular "a" for a feminine object, "zwei" is actually just "two". "Ein" is "one".

throwaway19972• 2 years ago

Kind of crazy how right RMS was. Nothing killed the lisp machine quite like IP law.

ngcc_hk• 2 years ago

Not as dramatic but buying Casio ai-1000 a Lisp calculator due to discussion here got me nowhere so far. Finally get a similar Casio hoping to develop serial driver so to communicate with it … this kind of project expand even the owner may have to ask. Why?

Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated

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