Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

(ifis.uni-luebeck.de)

52 points | by ghosthamlet 2138 days ago

5 comments

  • jlarocco 2137 days ago
    A few weeks ago I picked up an old copy of "LISP Lore: A Guide to Programming the LISP Machine," at Goodwill of all places. It was definitely an interesting platform.
    • mrbill 2137 days ago
      I bought a used copy at great expense a few years ago.. only for it to show up on the Internet Archive as an ebook a few months later.
  • catpolice 2137 days ago
    My company still uses a Symbolics Lisp machine! Granted, they use it as a coffee table in the lobby.
    • ethagnawl 2137 days ago
      Do you have any photos of this table you could share?
    • mrbill 2137 days ago
      A friend of mine worked for a company in College Station, TX. They still had a few Symbolics boxes around, wouldn't get rid of them because the owner had paid so much for them new.. but they were, yeah, being used as stands for the coffee machine, tables, etc.
  • ghosthamlet 2138 days ago
    Repository for various lisp machine related projects: http://www.unlambda.com/

    Resurrecting the MIT CADR: https://lm-3.github.io/

  • Y_Y 2137 days ago
    Is there any modern project to produce something like the Lisp machine OS?
  • cat199 2137 days ago
    also: dear symbolics, just open source it already..
    • mrbill 2137 days ago
      A lot of the IP is tied up in probate and the guy who owns the rights to most of it died a couple of years ago.

      There's an emulator and ways to run it on a 64-bit *nix system if you know where to look..

      There's a lot of effort "behind the scenes" to save/preserve/document as much of the stuff as possible.

      • ScottBurson 2137 days ago
        Andrew Topping died a dozen years ago. Surely the IP is out of probate by now?
        • mepian 2137 days ago
          In 2012 Kalman Reti, the last Symbolics hardware and software engineer, mentioned that John C. Mallery (of CL-HTTP fame) acquired the IP from the probate and was thinking about open-sourcing everything. That was a while ago, so I guess the new owner changed his mind or he is too busy with his cybersecurity business. I wonder if there is a way to convince him to do the right thing.