[rescue] SYMBOLICS Information (was: Wooohhhooo XP -> 0 to BSOD )in 12min23sec

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 04:38:31PM -0700, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez wrote:
> Genera also ran on the Ivory LISP machines by SYMBOLICS, which were a
> NuBus implementation of the LISP processor and run under MacOS. There were
> also VME versions of the Ivory board for SUN hosts.... For pictures of
> these boards (and other symbolics systems): 
> http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~moeller/symbolics-info/next-generation.html

Actually, Ivory was a chipset, not full machine to my
understanding.  There was 2 different NuBus boardsets based on Ivory,
along with 2 VME boardsets for Suns, and two stand alone Ivory machines.  
 
> I always wanted to get one of these puppies! Genera has always been
> considered one of the best development environments ever (the best for
> LISP at least). And, yeah I like LISP and I am a proud SCHEME user :-)

I'm rapidly learning to love Scheme.  CommonLisp and SymbolicsLisp are but
a short jump away.  I just felt that MIT Scheme and LispMe were a bit more
mature than other free development environments for lisp like languages.

Anyway, technically Symbolics is still in business, and it is still
possible to buy machines from them.  The UX-400 (one of the VME
boards) was $700 and completely unsupported.

On the up side, the MacIvoryIIs were $600.  Keyboard and mouse (not
required but desireable) were another $200, and the supported Quadra
another $200, which would be set up and configured for you.  Or you could
supply your own Mac and take it to them to setup and configure.  It
requires 3 Nubus slots for the MacIvoryII though, plus the onboard video
is unsupported for some reason, so you also need a good video card (if it
won't do 1024x768 reportedly you will only be able to use the MacIvoryII
in text mode) in NuBus form, and ethernet in NuBus form, which radically
cuts down the number of Macs that can be supported.  If anyone is
interested, I can dig out contact info for purchases, but it can also be
found on the web.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd