wang@ai.toronto.edu (Huaiqing Wang) (05/24/89)
Does anyone have any experience with using Symbolic MacIvory Lisp boards?
Specifically, we want to know:
- what the board's performance is like (e.g. is it slow?)
- can zeta-lisp software and the window software on the Lisp machines
be run directly on MacIntoshes using the MacIvory board or is
there any incompatability?
- what price did you get the boards for?
- what release (e.g. 6.0 or 7.2) are you running using the board?
- what are your overall comments on the boards.
Also, do you know of any Lisp boards that run on Sun workstations?
Any comments about Lisp boards would be greatly welcome.
Please return e-mail to:
wang@ai.utoronto.cabds@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry D Smith) (05/25/89)
In article <89May24.104032edt.11713@neat.ai.toronto.edu> wang@ai.toronto.edu (Huaiqing Wang) writes: >Does anyone have any experience with using Symbolic MacIvory Lisp boards? > >Specifically, we want to know: > - what the board's performance is like (e.g. is it slow?) > - what release (e.g. 6.0 or 7.2) are you running using the board? > - what are your overall comments on the boards. > We've been using a MacIvory since Beta test. The board's speed is roughly that of a Symbolics 3620, ie, slow, but Symbolics has recently announced an upgrade that is about 2x faster. In any case, i/o is terrible since the ivory board uses 40 bit words and must pass them over a 32 bit bus to the Mac. This requires dissambling the words and reassembling them at the Mac end. Trying this with large bitmaps is horribly slow. Also, there is no real color support right now, and the system is VERY sensitive to different color monitors (most won't work). The Ivory uses Genera 7.4I, which allows it to make use of the Mac file system and Nu-bus. On the positive side, the development environment is far and away the best thing other than a Symbolics machine. Symbolics has implemented the entire Genera environment, including dynamic windows, the window debugger, and the window inspector. Right now, the only thing that can compete is a Sun 4 running SPE 1.1(Beta) and Lucid 3.0. (I haven't used Allegro CL/Composer yet, so I can't make comments about it other than I believe it doesn't have any direct color support, which Lucid 3.0 does.) I hope this helps.
tjan@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Bosco Siaufung Tjan) (06/06/89)
In article <54603@linus.UUCP> bds@mbunix (Smith) writes: >environment is far and away the best thing other than a Symbolics >machine. Symbolics has implemented the entire Genera environment, >including dynamic windows, the window debugger, and the window >inspector. Right now, the only thing that can compete is a Sun 4 >running SPE 1.1(Beta) and Lucid 3.0. (I haven't used Allegro >CL/Composer yet, so I can't make comments about it other than I >believe it doesn't have any direct color support, which Lucid 3.0 >does.) > Check out microExplorer from TI. It supports almost all the development systems on a standard lisp machine, and is much faster in comparison. Bosco Tjan Phone (612) 626-1071 AI Instructional Lab Email tjan@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu University of Minnesota (Twin Cities)
rjb1@GTE.COM (Richard J. Brandau) (06/07/89)
In article <13365@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU>, tjan@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Bosco Siaufung Tjan) writes: > Check out microExplorer from TI. It supports almost all the development > systems on a standard lisp machine, and is much faster in comparison. I don't want to start a Lisp Machine Holy War, but... faster than what? Can the uExp really beat the model 2 MacIvory? (Anyone have the Gabriels?) Price is another matter, though. But then, so is development environment (without which, I guess we'd all use Suns). -- Rich Brandau