| http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/6085/daybreak/Daybreak_Te... "The central processor is a microprogrammed, 16-bit general purpose computer consisting of approximately 170 ICs of various sizes and complexity. It resides on a 10.9-inch by 16-inch printed wiring board assembly (PWBA), referred to as the Mesa Processor Board (MPB), located in slot 3 of the backplane." "Four 2901C LSI chips that make up the core of the central processor. The 2901C is a 4-bit processor; the four chips are cascaded to provide a 16-bit processor. Supporting the 2901C are four register sets (U, RH, IB, and Link), a four-bit rotator, and four emulator registers (stackP, ibPtr, pe16, and MInt)." Symbolics and TI had a more advanced processors: The Symbolics Ivory is a 40+8 bit specialized microprocessor. The TI MegaChip was a 32bit microprocessor for Lisp, also marketed as the first microprocessor with around 1 M transistors. Both companies had developed chip design software in Lisp to create these microprocessors. > But essentially, I think I can say uncontroversially, the ascent of Common Lisp was highly political, and most certainly not customer driven. DARPA was the biggest "customer" and asked for a unified Lisp when delivering military applications. At that time many applications came with its own customized Lisp dialect. That was the reason why they invested so much money into a Common Lisp definition and later in the standard. They also invested probably close to a billion USD into hard and software projects. In the early days a research project could ask for money and when they did it in Lisp, they got a Lisp Machine for free (funded by DARPA, like the rest of the project). "In April 1981, after a DARPA-sponsored meeting concerning the splintered Lisp community, Symbolics, the SPICE project, the NIL project, and the S-1 Lisp project joined together to define Common Lisp. " > Until it can address the host operating system's windowing layer, rather than running in a single window, it will remain a curiosity. In Symbolics Genera one can open multiple X11 windows and for example allocate specific activities (applications) to them. A TI explorer had a port of the interface designer, where one could interactively design Macintosh windows with the logic on the Lisp machine. Action!, the worlds first dynamic interface builder - 1988 https://vimeo.com/62618532 The software was written in Common Lisp and ran on an embedded TI MicroExplorer Lisp Machine inside a Mac II. |