What's a Lisp Machine?

From: Buck Savage <hhacker_at_gte.net>
Date: Sun Dec 6 11:32:43 1998

I spoke with Chuck Fry, an old friend who once worked for Symbolics,
and he gave some additional information regarding the Lisp engines
produced at Symbolics.

The Macintosh SBC was called the MacIvory. He gave some specifics
about which of these devices which a computer collector might want,
and this information will come in a later posting. Still, he said that the
company is still in business, having been bought out by some individual
but, that it is apparently nothing more than a maintenance operation.

Still, when I get the telephone number of this person (he has an AOL
account, as I understand), I will call him and see if he is aware of the
availability of some MacIvory's and what one might cost.

Chuck noted that the MacIvory worked only for nubus Mac's and that it
had a tendency to crash MacOS. He said that the TI product was more
resilient in hardware than MacIvory but, the condition was just the
reverse for software executed on the respective machines. That is,
the TI did not crash so often but, the applications were not so well
developed or capable.

William R. Buckley
Received on Sun Dec 06 1998 - 11:32:43 GMT