Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: Lisp Machines and Lisp on a Chip
Message-ID: <1996Nov8.183532.27966@wavehh.hanse.de>
Organization: BSD User Group Hamburg
References: <55ii0d$315@nntp.interaccess.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 96 18:35:32 GMT
Lines: 40

rer@interaccess.com (Richard E. Robbins) writes:

>What is the current state of lisp specific hardware, either lisp machines or 
>lisp on a chip boards?  Does any vendor still make these?  Where might such 
>hardware be purchased and at what cost?  

Try to contact symbolics (see the FAQ for telephone number). They
probably still have the boards for the Macintosh (named Ivory).

>Is there a market for used lisp 
>hardware?

You can generally pick up the big old lisp machines for free or about
$150 or get Ivory boards at a price comparable to a software
environment for stock hardware.

>Have the PC and Macintosh software lisp environments passed the lisp specific 
>hardware systems in terms of price v. performance or features in general?

Performance, yes, at least CMUCL on a P6/200MHz/512KBcache is hard to
beat. The cost of such a machine is basically zero compared to Unix
workstations or Lisp machines.

Features, no, the Genera Documentation shows richer functionality for
almost every area, with the exception of "special" areas like GUI
builders, SQL connectivity and such. But on stock operating systems
you have the OS functionality in addition (Sometimes `find . -exec
grep ...` is quite handy). You'll have to decide what is more useful
for you.

>I have read the faq for this newsgroup and was hoping for more detailed 
>information.

The best idea is maybe to get a set of symbolics manuals and see what
they offer.

Martin
-- 
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Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de>  http://cracauer.cons.org
