[comp.lang.lisp] lispmachine

eliot@mind.UUCP (Eliot Handleman) (12/08/87)

I'm trying to acquire a lispmachine for our department (which, despite
the header, is music) at minimal cost. Could someone point me in the
right direction - bear in mind we have an exceedingly tight budget.
Thanks in advance,

Eliot Handelman
-- 
Eliot Handelman 
Woolworth Center for Musical Studies
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

fritzson@bigburd.PRC.Unisys.COM (Richard Fritzson) (12/08/87)

In article <1437@mind.UUCP> eliot@mind.UUCP (Eliot Handleman) writes:
>I'm trying to acquire a lispmachine for our department (which, despite
>the header, is music) at minimal cost. Could someone point me in the
>right direction - bear in mind we have an exceedingly tight budget.

As far as I know, a Xerox 1186 is still the lowest cost "lisp machine"
around. It is slower than the others, but the superior environment
makes up for the slowness (well almost). But, if I were on a limited
budget, and wanted a standalone lisp development environment, I'd consider a 
Macintosh II, with lots of memory, a very large screen and Coral Lisp.

I think your total outlay would be much less than what you would pay for any 
Lisp machine. The Coral environment seems decent enough and it has some
Mac development frills that are unlike any I've seen on Lisp machines. And,
you would have one of the best standalone personal computers you can get.

I've got no affiliation with any of these companies. I'm just a satisfied
Xerox user and a Macintosh admirer.

-- 
	-Rich Fritzson
	 ARPA: fritzson@prc.unisys.com
	 UUCP: {sdcrdcf,psuvax1,cbmvax}!burdvax!fritzson

kaplan@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu (12/11/87)

re:  Small LispMachines

It depends what you want to do.  A Mac-II is a neat idea.  you can also get
MacScheme and run that on a small mac.  You could get a mac SE and put 4meg
of memory on that.  Do you care WHAT lisp you use (ie do you want to run
other people's code already written in (say) common lisp or do you want to
write your own.  

(A free plug for MacScheme (and I have no connection with semantic
microsystems):  The new release (1.5) with compiler is due out very soon
(like january next year?) and will be VERY fast)