Scheme compilers

[Kalman Reti]

    Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 10:09 EDT
    From: kragen@pobox.com (Kragen)

    On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Mark Dulcey wrote:
    > Most LMI CADRs and Lambdas were sold with complete source code (all the
    > way down to the microcode!). If you can find one that is still in working
    > condition, it will probably have the source.

    If you can find one in working condition, I'm sure there are computer
    museums that would love to have it.  In fact, I'm sure there are
    computer museums that would love to have a broken one.

    How reparable are they?  I had a (much cheaper) machine of the same
    vintage that had only a couple of common failure modes (the keyboard
    encoder getting zapped with static, and a power-supply transistor
    shorting out and smoking some power-supply resistors), both of which
    could be fixed with a simple replacement of a couple of parts costing
    less than $10.

    I know the LispMs all used lots of custom chips.  Did the custom chips
    die often?

The older Symbolics Lispms (CADR, LM-2 and 364x/7x) had almost no custom chips.  The
G-machines (362x, 363x, 365x) had some custom gate arrays, and the Ivory again
had very few custom chips (apart from the Ivory processor itself).

I know people still running 3640/3670 era machines.  There are customers still
on maintenance with 3620/3650 and Ivory machines.

    (I know, "often" doesn't mean much in the computer world, where the
    MTBF for most non-mechanical hardware is 10-20 years.  But surely there
    are people here who worked with 10-20 CADRs for more than a year.)

    Kragen

    -- 
    <kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
    I don't do .INI, .BAT, .DLL or .SYS files. I don't assign apps to files. I 
    don't configure peripherals or networks before using them. I have a computer 
    to do all that. I have a Macintosh, not a hobby. -- Fritz Anderson