
Symbolics Lisp: Using the DEC Alpha as a Programmable Micro-Engine (1993) [pdf] - kristianp
http://pt.withington.org/publications/VLM.pdf
======
reikonomusha
OpenGenera on Alpha runs amazingly faster than any of the real iron Symbolics
hardware, including the NuBus MacIvories that got embedded in old Macs like
the Quadra. You can also put plenty of memory and disk into one of these often
server-grade machines. The negative? You don’t get to use the amazing
Symbolics keyboards. You have to deal with Tru64 UNIX. You have to run
everything through X.

AFAIK, the unofficial x86 port of OpenGenera is an emulator for Alpha which
emulates the Lisp machine, and all together it’s still much faster.

I had the pleasure of figuring out how to get X keyboard codes from a Linux
box into the emulated Genera. What a pain! As far as I know, the “world
building” code has been lost so it’s not even possible to bootstrap a Genera
system from scratch. (You can dump worlds from memory of an existing Genera
system though.) I _think_ this limitation made it difficult to change some
hard coded constants, like the size of the communication buffer which was
essentially shared memory between the running Genera system and the host
operating system.

I wish this software could be preserved properly, instead of sitting under a
rain cloud of uncertain legal standing. I don’t remember exactly how the story
goes, but Symbolics software fell into the hands of Andrew Topping, who died,
and whose estate went to John Mallery (at one time famous for writing a Lisp
HTTP web server than ran the White House website), and he had held onto the IP
rights since, with no indication of selling or releasing it.

(Common Lisp historians / Symbolics enthusiasts, please correct any errors
I’ve made. :))

~~~
lispm
> the unofficial x86 port of OpenGenera is an emulator for Alpha which
> emulates the Lisp machine

You can run the official Open Genera emulator in an Alpha/Tru64 UNIX emulator
on top of an Intel CPU.

But the 'unofficial' port is actually a direct port of the Open Genera
emulator to 64bit x86.

~~~
armitron
Which Alpha/Tru64 UNIX emulator do you have in mind?

~~~
lispm
[http://www.emuvm.com](http://www.emuvm.com)

~~~
armitron
The 'basic' version of this costs 400 euro a year.

alphavm_free which was removed by the creator - probably because he wanted to
increase sales of his basic offering - can still be found on the Internet
however.

------
kryptiskt
This link is to an extended abstract. Is the full paper available?

~~~
wolfgke
> This link is to an extended abstract. Is the full paper available?

The website of one of the authors is

> [http://pt.withington.org/](http://pt.withington.org/)

Just ask him. :-)

~~~
crististm
The website contains the same abstract.

I find it strange that the author would not publish the paper on his website
but would submit it to random people that ask for it on email.

~~~
wolfgke
> I find it strange that the author would not publish the paper on his website
> but would submit it to random people that ask for it on email.

I don't know whether he will submit it to random people who ask for it. But he
will probably be able to answer whether a non-abstract version exists. :-)

------
WallWextra
The most pleasant thing about this is how the lisp machine's instruction set
turned out to be a good bytecode for interpretation. Calling it "microcode"
seems risible today, but I don't know if it was as ridiculous in 1993.

~~~
pjmlp
Not at all, it was pretty common even during the 60 and 70's, e.g. Burroughs
and Xerox PARC systems.

