Symbolics was a manufacturer of
LispMachines. Still highly collectible, and easy to buy for under $1000USD.
Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum:
Symbolics was a maker of Lisp Machines. They are still selling a software emulation running on DEC Alpha systems. The emulation is called
OpenGenera.
The operating system is called
GeneraOs. Genera is completely written in Lisp - networking, graphics, device drivers, applications - everything. Some systems are still running on the Internet. The operating system provides for example TCP/IP, DNS client and server, mail client and server, X11, and many more Internet-based services. In fact the company Symbolics was the first organization ever to have a domain name - symbolics.com in 1985. A popular application is CL-HTTP, a web server written in Common Lisp. The author of CL-HTTP is John Mallery from the MIT AI Lab.
There was another operating system for Symbolics' Lisp Machines called Minima. It was developed for real-time systems like AT&T's ATM switches.
Symbolics built their own microprocessor - the Ivory - specially optimized to run Lisp software. Ivory-based machines were for example:
- XL400, a workstation with a VME bus and a megapixel console with mouse.
- XL1200, a workstation with a VME bus and a megapixel console with mouse. Symbolics also created high-end graphics cards for the XL1200 called FrameThrower.
- XL1201, a pizza box workstation with megapixel console.
- UX400, a VME bus card for SUNs.
- UX1200, a VME bus card for SUNs.
- MacIvory I, a set of NuBus card for Macs.
- MacIvory II, a set of NuBus card for Macs.
- MacIvory III, a NuBus card for Macs. One very large Nubus card (plus a daughter card) had space for the Ivory processor and 8MW of memory.
- NXP1000, a pizza box machine without console. Used via X11.
Typical applications for these machines:
- large and complex ArtificialIntelligence software development environments like KEE or KnowledgeCraft.
- AI applications like the credit card transaction checking software from AmericanExpress, Cyc, Metal, ...
- documentation authoring with Concordia, the first large-scale commercial HyperText system.
- 3D graphics with the S-Graphics suite. Used in computer games, movies and tv spots. Later S-Graphics has been ported to SGIs and NT machines. IZWare sells a system called Mirai, which is a rewrite.
- 3D CAD applications like ICAD.
- ECAD systems for chip design.
- ComputerAlgebra with Macsyma.
- Image Processing with Scope.
- Neural Network development with Plexi.
- Frontends to super computers like Thinking Machine's Connection Machine.
CategoryLisp