[LispM] Lisp Machines

[dave linenberg]

Hello All,

This is a recount of my adventure in buying a Lisp Machine...

I too had heard about the legendary Lisp Machines, and decided I wanted
one when I saw it on E-Bay.   I thought I could get it cheaply, but to
no avail.

(My background is Mechanical / Aerospace engineering, but I have been a
programmer on the trading floor of a bank for the past 6 years.  I
discovered Lisp a year and a half ago, and have been using CMUCL and
the  Franz trial version for Linux.)

I was outbid by Daniel (cyberdine), (I wish you the best of luck, Daniel
- let me know how it goes!! ) - so I ended up driving down to Dave
Schmidt's place in Burke, Virginia, to buy one directly from him, 3 days
ago.

I spent the day building an XL1200 with him,  (we started at 9 in the
morning and ended up at about 9:30 at night!!!).  This was a great
experience -  seeing his shop, testing memory chips, and selecting only
good processor boards and input output boards so that no tests failed.
Between pizza and beer and his good hospitality, we talked Lisp and Lisp
Machines.  For example, I was shown each of the system boards, how to
determine the proper voltage readings across certain resistors, how to
insert the boards, and problems with parts most likely to induce
errors.  The machine and the monitor can be taken apart and serviced,
unlike today's disposable computers.

For 3500$ with a 90 day working guarantee, and ALL software on
CD-ROM (genera 8.3, CLIM 2.1, all layered products, and lots more), a
CD-rom, a scsi disk, an esdi disk (for redundancy and paging), a
monitor, keyboard, mouse,  I think this is the way to go.  ( The parts
all look spanking brand new, and are put through a battery of tests, so
you can be assured you will have some reliability as well as a good
clear monitor ).   The price may seem expensive, but after spending the
day with Dave, I think that even a very cheaply acquired machine might
take a bit of money (possibly $700-$1000 minimum) to get it into good
working order.

Additionally, I think just hanging out with Dave, learning about the
internals of the machines,  and being in a room full of maybe 20-30 or
more symbolic's machines, and loads of spare parts,  for a day was well
worth it.

The only issue with the machine is that it comes with no hard copy
manuals (though all the documentation is viewable on line), as Dave has
only a couple of sets of manuals for his own use.   I did manage to get
the Genera Workbook, and Genera concepts manual, as well as a bunch of
promotional Symbolics brochures from Dave.  I hope to get some manuals
soon.

Additionally, the machines are heavy, and fragile(from a shipping point
of view) .  You DONT want to drop this 100 pound baby, for fear of
damaging the system boards.  I was lucky enough  to be a 4 hour drive
from Dave's workshop, so I drove the machine back home.  There are
shippers who specialize in fragile things like antiques, so maybe this
is how I would ship it, if I had to.

Anyway, I have started playing with my XL1200, and am having a lot of
fun.

Dave Linenberg
dlinenbe@home.com