From slug-distribution-owner Mon Jan 4 23:13:23 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150188>; Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:13:11 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Mon, 4 Jan 93 19:32:34-PST Received: from ELCAPITAN.AI.SRI.COM by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA13056 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Mon, 4 Jan 93 19:29:41 PST Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 22:30:00 -0500 From: Mabry Tyson Subject: Symbolics 3600: A decade of performance To: slug@ai.sri.com Message-Id: <19930105033001.1.TYSON@ELCAPITAN.AI.SRI.COM> Darwin, a Symbolics 3600 (S/N 102), was brought to life December 28, 1982 (As I recall, it and S/N 101 were delivered during the year-end break.) The machine is in daily use by one of our staff (who has used it for years). As with George Washington's ax, most of its pieces have been replaced over the years (it got an IFU so all its processor cards were changed and its I/O was upgraded so the I/O and I/O paddle cards were changed) but: 512K Memory (P/N 170002, Serial 117) in LBus slot 01: Octal Base address: 2000000 Manufactured on 12/13/82 as rev 1, functions as rev 1, ECO level 0. The original quote (dated 12/7/81, based on price lists of 4/81 and 11/81) was for $57,750 for the basic 3600 (w/ 256K words of main memory, 80mb drive) with another $7,000 for another 80mb drive. As I recall, before delivery the amount of memory was upgraded to 512K words (price list: $9,000) and we got an Owl drive (160mb for $4,400 if replacing the 80mb drive). The price list also had Pascal ($10K), C ($12.5K), and Fortran 77 ($12.5K). Symbolics has had hard times for the past few years but it made a worthy product a decade ago. It is interesting that it is still usable. The Sun 1 came out about that time. I don't know of any that are still in use. I hope that Symbolics can somehow thrive during the next decade. From slug-distribution-owner Tue Jan 5 12:52:33 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150195>; Tue, 5 Jan 1993 12:52:21 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Tue, 5 Jan 93 09:13:50-PST Received: from rsoft.rsoft.bc.ca by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA18950 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 09:11:05 PST Received: by rsoft.rsoft.bc.ca (/\==/\ Smail3.1.22.1 #22.11 rmail) id ; Tue, 5 Jan 93 09:11 PST Message-Id: Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 12:11:00 -0500 To: slug@ai.sri.com Subject: May Symbolics thrive... From: Scott_Busse@mindlink.bc.ca (Scott Busse) Interesting stuff, Mabry. I also am amazed at how enduring these platforms are (mine's a 3650). The '50 is not sooo old, but considering what else came out in '87 or so, it's a heck of a package, especially considering the great software. Although it will probably be quite a long time before this machine is retired, I'm looking forward (as an S-Products graphics user) to a porting of the system to a unix box (he ducks the barrage of projectiles..:). The relatively brutish power now being achieved there can certainly be put to good use in the graphics field, and perhaps in other areas traditionally ruled by the Lisp machine, the Symbolics Lisp machine in particular(?) I'd be interested to hear of anyone's thoughts-experiences-insights into this possible direction. Would it be possible to re-created the XL1200's magic on a unix workstation? Has anyone heard of any moves toward the porting of the S-Products (I know it's Nichimen's game now) to the SGI? Should I be feeling a general ill will towards me for even suggesting this? :) Scott p.s. By XL1200, I mean XL1200 and Genera, of course. From slug-distribution-owner Tue Jan 5 16:44:29 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150196>; Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:44:19 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Tue, 5 Jan 93 13:11:14-PST Received: from gatech.edu by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA23025 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 13:08:28 PST Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu by gatech.edu (4.1/Gatech-9.1) id AA24128 for slug@ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 16:10:48 EST Received: from pravda.cc.gatech.edu by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA09744; for slug@ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 16:08:23 EST Received: from kant.gatech.edu (kant.cc.gatech.edu) by pravda.cc.gatech.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA25688; Tue, 5 Jan 93 16:08:04 EST Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:07:00 -0500 From: Richard Billington Subject: May Symbolics thrive... To: slug@ai.sri.com In-Reply-To: Message-Id: <19930105210737.1.BUFF@kant.gatech.edu> No question, the environment is what makes these machines worth continuing to run. Hats off to the hardware boys who did the original design, though. I wish all computer hardware was as well engineered. It gets real boring waiting for file i/o to complete on my 3670, but the alternative makes me cringe. I remember people used to complain about getting dumped into some frightening place called "the cold load stream" - I guess getting dumped to the unix monitor prompt (which has only a small set of possible actions, most of which mean booting the machine, none of which will help you figure out why your there) is more understandable to some. But, of all the things that may go by the board in my lisp/computer life someday soon, its the keyboard I'm sure to lose, and miss mightily. I'm a lousy typist and this one fits my fingers like no other. Plus I like the arrangement of the "cording" keys (c-m-h-s). From slug-distribution-owner Tue Jan 5 17:40:29 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150194>; Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:40:22 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:08:47-PST Received: from mail.think.com by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA24104 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:06:17 PST Received: from Think.COM by mail.think.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 17:06:13 -0500 Received: from OCCAM.THINK.COM by Early-Bird.Think.COM; Tue, 5 Jan 93 17:06:09 EST Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:06:00 -0500 From: Barry Margolin Subject: May Symbolics thrive... To: Richard Billington Cc: slug@ai.sri.com In-Reply-To: <19930105210737.1.BUFF@kant.gatech.edu> Message-Id: <19930105220604.0.BARMAR@occam.think.com> Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:07 EST From: Richard Billington I remember people used to complain about getting dumped into some frightening place called "the cold load stream" - I guess getting dumped to the unix monitor prompt (which has only a small set of possible actions, most of which mean booting the machine, none of which will help you figure out why your there) is more understandable to some. Don't get me wrong, I love my Lispm. But Unix doesn't crash down to the monitor prompt nearly as often as Genera dumps you into the cold load stream. It's really annoying for me these days, since the cold load stream is on a different console (I use an X terminal as my normal console), and I get dumped into it pretty often (whenever X errors happen (I have one of the best X terminals on the market, and it never crashes Unix applications, so I'm forced to assume the Lispm is doing something wrong) -- I finally got tired of it and ADVISEd the X error function so it always ignores the error). But, of all the things that may go by the board in my lisp/computer life someday soon, its the keyboard I'm sure to lose, and miss mightily. I'm a lousy typist and this one fits my fingers like no other. Plus I like the arrangement of the "cording" keys (c-m-h-s). Yes, I definitely miss that. barmar From slug-distribution-owner Tue Jan 5 18:39:42 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150194>; Tue, 5 Jan 1993 18:39:36 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:51:06-PST Received: from lucid.com by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA25185 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:48:26 PST Received: from oakland-hills.lucid ([192.31.212.153]) by heavens-gate.lucid.com id AA09296g; Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:48:07 PST Received: by oakland-hills.lucid (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA04059; Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:40:42 PST Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:40:42 -0500 From: york%oakland-hills@lucid.com (Bill York) Message-Id: <9301052240.AA04059@oakland-hills.lucid> To: barmar@Think.COM Cc: buff@cc.gatech.edu, slug@ai.sri.com In-Reply-To: Barry Margolin's message of Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:06 -0500 <19930105220604.0.BARMAR@occam.think.com> Subject: May Symbolics thrive... Reply-To: York@lucid.com Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:06 -0500 From: Barry Margolin Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:07 EST From: Richard Billington I remember people used to complain about getting dumped into some frightening place called "the cold load stream" - I guess getting dumped to the unix monitor prompt (which has only a small set of possible actions, most of which mean booting the machine, none of which will help you figure out why your there) is more understandable to some. Don't get me wrong, I love my Lispm. But Unix doesn't crash down to the monitor prompt nearly as often as Genera dumps you into the cold load stream. [reasonable complaints about robustness of Genera X software removed] -- I finally got tired of it and ADVISEd the X error function so it always ignores the error). Try THAT with one of your Unix X clients! From slug-distribution-owner Tue Jan 5 20:57:01 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150194>; Tue, 5 Jan 1993 20:56:57 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Tue, 5 Jan 93 16:54:06-PST Received: from linc.cis.upenn.edu by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA27406 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 16:52:10 PST Received: from KAPPA.CIS.UPENN.EDU by linc.cis.upenn.edu id AA05772; Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:51:59 -0500 Return-Path: Received: by kappa.cis.upenn.edu id AA00274; Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:51:58 EST Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 19:51:58 -0500 From: qobi@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Posted-Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:51:58 EST Message-Id: <9301060051.AA00274@kappa.cis.upenn.edu> To: York@lucid.com Cc: barmar@think.com, buff@cc.gatech.edu, slug@ai.sri.com In-Reply-To: Bill York's message of Tue, 5 Jan 93 14:40:42 PST <9301052240.AA04059@oakland-hills.lucid> Subject: May Symbolics thrive... Reply-To: Qobi@central.cis.upenn.edu Come on you guys. Have any of you really tried to use Lucid/GNUEmacs/ILisp/CLIM on a SPARCstation ELC or better (with at least 32 megabytes). I have been using such for almost a year now, writing tens of thousands of lines of code and find that the SPARCstation configuration is hands down better than anything Symbolics ever produced. The SPARCstation configuration is at least twice as fast as an XL1200 on the average and at least ten or twenty times faster than a 3640. For some things (like compiling source files using the development mode compiler and dynamic GC), the SPARCstation configuration is two orders of magnitude faster than an XL1200 (yes an XL1200). And it costs one fifth as much. And my ELC is a generation out of date. A SPARCstation-10, an RS6000, a MIPS R4000 or a DEC Alpha should make an XL1200 seem like a PDP-8. Ah, the development environment you say makes all the difference. But have you really tried Lucid/GNUEmacs/ILisp/CLIM? I'm not talking about Unix and C++. I'm talking about CommonLisp. Now don't tell me about hacking networking and window system internals since Unix provides all of that as a black box and most research and applications development work is not about doing operating system development. I find that at least 85% of all the wonderfull features of Genera that I used on a daily basis are available on my SPARCstation. And the ones that weren't there when I came along (like m-sh-C) I implemented myself. (If people are interested, I might be able to convince UPenn to allow me to release my implementation of m-sh-C for GNUEMacs/ILisp). The remainder are more than made up for by the blazing speed. I was one of the first 3600 users. Back in 1982 I purchased two 3600s sight unseen, one of the first commercial organizations to do so. I didn't touch another brand of computer for ten years as I had the great fortune of having a Symbolics to work on everywhere I have been for the past ten years. So with great trepidation I faced the decision to switch to SPARCstations little over a year ago. It took me a few months to port several of my most current research projects totalling a few tens of thousands of line of code. Now in retrospect, if I was given the opportunity to switch back, even if you gave me a free XL1200 that was twice as fast, I wouldn't do it. Yes, every now and then I curse out my Unix machine for doing something in a brain damaged fashion and wish that the whole world did the right thing like Symbolics. But all I have to do to get over it is remember how I had to twiddle my thumbs when I typed L and my machine paged and GCed for the next few minutes. Really, try switching, I promise you that you'll never go back. I pity those poor souls still using 36xx machines. I wish I still could and I don't need your pity, thanks. Speed sometimes has a blinding effect. Remember that the memory a typical 36xx was ~4X2MW or 8Mbyte. They did run a *lot* better with more memory. Symbolics made one fundamental mistake. They ignored performance. They focussed their energy on making a whole operating system (ignoring all of the other things like Fortran/Pascal/C/Ada compilers, Joshua, Statice, Concordia, the S-products) when the real valued added of the their system was the Lisp development environment. Back in 1982 not only was the 3600 the best Lisp development environement, it also was the fastest Lisp execution vehicle as well as the one with the highest performance/price ratio. If they would have stuck to those three marketing goals: highest Lisp performance, highest performance/price ratio, and best LISP development environment, the areas of their unique strength, and did not attempt to reinvent the wheel of file systems, tape backup systems, network systems, window systems, etc. and instead leveraged off of other peoples work in those areas, they would probably still be in business today---and I would probably still proudly be using their products. They still are in business. I think the error was to hope to compete with RISC and not consult with RISC folk to add tagged features. RISC is a bit of self fulfilling prophecy - you get performance on what you empirically use as target code. IMHO, of course, Albert Boulanger aboulanger@bbn.com From slug-distribution-owner Tue Jan 5 23:12:46 1993 Received: from IU.AI.SRI.COM ([128.18.60.10]) by relay.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <150196>; Tue, 5 Jan 1993 23:12:37 -0500 Received: from Sunset.AI.SRI.COM by IU.AI.SRI.COM via SMTP with TCP; Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:07:05-PST Received: from KARIBA.BBN.COM by Sunset.AI.SRI.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA06004 for slug@iu.ai.sri.com; Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:04:16 PST Message-Id: <9301060304.AA06004@Sunset.AI.SRI.COM> To: Qobi@central.cis.upenn.edu, slug@ai.sri.com In-Reply-To: qobi@unagi.cis.upenn.edu's message of Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:51:58 EST <9301060051.AA00274@kappa.cis.upenn.edu> Subject: May Symbolics thrive... From: aboulang@BBN.COM Sender: aboulang@BBN.COM Reply-To: aboulanger@BBN.COM Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 22:01:31 -0500 Source-Info: From (or Sender) name not authenticated. Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:51:58 EST From: qobi@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Posted-Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 19:51:58 EST Reply-To: Qobi@central.cis.upenn.edu Come on you guys. Have any of you really tried to use Lucid/GNUEmacs/ILisp/CLIM on a SPARCstation ELC or better (with at least 32 megabytes). I have been using such for almost a year now, writing tens of thousands of lines of code and find that the SPARCstation configuration is hands down better than anything Symbolics ever produced. The SPARCstation configuration is at least twice as fast as an XL1200 on the average and at least ten or twenty times faster than a 3640. For some things (like compiling source files using the development mode compiler and dynamic GC), the SPARCstation configuration is two orders of magnitude faster than an XL1200 (yes an XL1200). And it costs one fifth as much. And my ELC is a generation out of date. A SPARCstation-10, an RS6000, a MIPS R4000 or a DEC Alpha should make an XL1200 seem like a PDP-8. Ah, the development environment you say makes all the difference. But have you really tried Lucid/GNUEmacs/ILisp/CLIM? I'm not talking about Unix and C++. I'm talking about CommonLisp. Now don't tell me about hacking networking and window system internals since Unix provides all of that as a black box and most research and applications development work is not about doing operating system development. I find that at least 85% of all the wonderfull features of Genera that I used on a daily basis are available on my SPARCstation. And the ones that weren't there when I came along (like m-sh-C) I implemented myself. (If people are interested, I might be able to convince UPenn to allow me to release my implementation of m-sh-C for GNUEMacs/ILisp). The remainder are more than made up for by the blazing speed. I have used exactly this config -- blech. Try to fix some of the handshaking problems with a foreign editor to lisp. (I can do this but the man hours you take trying to fix things up when you have code to write.) Try to debug optimized code! I like speed, but at what price? (One can do some amazing speed hacking on the Symbolics if you get into the non Commonlisp level.) We really *still* need tags. The debugger can drive you up a wall. Try to debug with several processes talking to you at once -- all in the same window! (This is better now in some lisp-emacs interfaces to be fair.) CLIM streams don't like interacting with the debugger still. FFI's can do a lot of copying of data because the representation of data is different in C and tagged lisp (Allegro or Lucid)/GNUEmacs/ILisp/CLIM is still pretty brittle. I was one of the first 3600 users. Back in 1982 I purchased two 3600s sight unseen, one of the first commercial organizations to do so. I didn't touch another brand of computer for ten years as I had the great fortune of having a Symbolics to work on everywhere I have been for the past ten years. So with great trepidation I faced the decision to switch to SPARCstations little over a year ago. It took me a few months to port several of my most current research projects totalling a few tens of thousands of line of code. Now in retrospect, if I was given the opportunity to switch back, even if you gave me a free XL1200 that was twice as fast, I wouldn't do it. Yes, every now and then I curse out my Unix machine for doing something in a brain damaged fashion and wish that the whole world did the right thing like Symbolics. But all I have to do to get over it is remember how I had to twiddle my thumbs when I typed