Symbolics LISP Engineering

My VAXstations now have REXX: Regina 3.3, the free implementation of IBM’s Restructured Extended Executor, as a kit for OpenVMS VAX 7.3, with the DCL lexical functions built in as REXX … »

My VAXstations now have SNOBOL4: the original Bell Labs SNOBOL4, the string-processing language with patterns as values, built from a 1997 public-domain C translation of its portable implementation, … »

My VAXstations now have Icon: the University of Arizona’s Icon 9.0, the interpreter, the compiler and the program library, as a kit for OpenVMS VAX 7.3. Icon is the language in which an … »

My VAXstations now have Modula-2: the Hamburg VAX-11 Modula-2 compiler, as a kit for OpenVMS VAX 7.3, which compiles itself. It is Niklaus Wirth’s language in the implementation of the DBPL … »

I’ve had this Digital Personal Workstation for about ten years, and have finally gotten OpenVMS running on it. I originally got it to try to get OpenGenera 2.0 running (under Unix), but never … »

Three weeks ago I released a kit with Emacs 19.28 and 21.2 for OpenVMS VAX 7.3. Today’s kit adds GNU Emacs 22.3 – the last Emacs with any VMS support in it – and makes it the … »

My VAXstations now run Poplog, the University of Sussex’s multi-language system: Pop-11 with its editor VED, Prolog, Common Lisp and Standard ML, all in one process. It comes as a binary kit for … »

My VAXstations now have Perl: Perl 5.8.4, as a binary kit for OpenVMS VAX 7.3 that needs no compiler on the machine it is installed on. It comes as a BACKUP saveset with a DCL installer and a DCL … »

I have been running GNU Emacs on my VAXstations under OpenVMS VAX 7.3, and today there is a kit other people can install: Emacs 19.28 and Emacs 21.2, terminal-only, side by side, with an installer and … »

I got a few of these DECserver 90TL units. They are a neat little device, with 8 RJ45 serial ports on the front, a 10Base-2 port on the top, a power port on the back and also a “hub port” … »

The VAXstations I have all connect to the outside world through a DEC MMJ port. This is a 6-pin/6-conductor cable very similar to an RJ12, but with the tab offset. Apparently Thrustmaster uses a … »

While working on these VAXen, I have discovered several tools that have been extremely useful: ODS2v2: This is a tool that allows you to read/write OpenVMS 7.3 disk images. This works nicely in my … »

Well, it’s time to try a new retrocomputing effort. I’ve recently picked up several old (late 1980s, early 1990s) era Digital VAX computers and am learning how to develop software for … »

Over the past two weeks, I set up a small Symbolics LAN, and thought I would share some of the process and findings. I will write a post about each item, but the topics already concluded cover: … »

I recently set up a LAN of my three XL Symbolics machines at home. The XL1201 which was having stability issues has been largely stabilized (thanks to help from David Schmidt). I will post more about … »

I’ve decided to participate in ProcJam 2016 this year. For a change of pace, I’m building a small roguelike in Clojure with a Unity3D front-end. This is an interesting challenge as Clojure … »

In preparation of doing some actual software engineering on Genera, I decided to take a look at the CLIM implementation on my MacIvory III Genera 8.3. There are a few steps to do first: Load System … »

One of the theories about the instability of my Symbolics XL1200 is that the CPU has no heatsink and so it is suffering from thermal problems after a while. (15-30-ish minutes) David K. Schmidt was … »

Just a quick note about how to enable telnet to your MacIvory III running Genera 8.3. First, Edit Object Site NAME (obviously, use your NAME and not mine) in the Namespace Editor and add your network … »

UPDATE: No joy. Still self-reboots. So, I put the Merlin II card back into the XL1201, connected the power and console, and powered it up. Nothing. Blank screen (which means the monitor was at least … »

UPDATE: I clipped and removed the broken capacitor. Replacing it will be the task of another day. I spent two days removing, cleaning and reseating each DIP chip on the Symbolics XL1201 Merlin II Main … »

To see if I can isolate the cause of the XL1201 instability, I am going to physically inspect the two main cards with a loupe and flashlight. If I see anything suspect, I’ll take a picture with … »

Well, after living with the default keyboard mapping for Genera under X-Windows, I decided to make an optimized one for an 87-key ANSI layout. The design goals were: Utilize all the 16 top row keys … »

Just a brief hint… After you modify the file that has your translations (e.g., sys.translations), to make the new changes active, call (load-patches). Per Site Operations guide, page 514, … »

It has taken some effort, but I finally created a reasonable (and close-to-default) keyboard layout and mapping for Genera for using a modern, 87-key “tenkeyless” keyboard under Xquartz. I … »