michel@es.ele.tue.nl (Michel Berkelaar) (02/05/91)
I recently reported problems running Domain/Lisp 4.0 on the new series 400
workstations. I received 3 answers, 2 by Lucid people, and 1 from Apollo field
support, which I want to share with all HaPollo users. It looks as if Lisp is
very low on the HaPollo priority list, and once again, as with the
introduction of DN2500 machines running 10.2, Lisp will not be available for
quite a while on the new platform. My personal opinion is, that *all* basic
software should be ported to new machines/operating system versions *before*
they are released.
Mail from Lucid 1:
From: Jim Healy <healy@lucid.com>
To: michel@es.ele.tue.nl (Michel Berkelaar)
Subject: Re: Lisp on a 400 in 10.3
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 91 11:54:00 PST
- What is the basic problem: the new operating system (10.3) or the
architecture of the 400?
The 400 architecture. Domain/Common Lisp works fine on DN3xxx's
running SR10.3.
- Can I solve the problem, or do I need a new version of Lisp? If
so, when will it be available (Last time, when updating from
9.7 to 10.2, Apollo made us wait 6 months before they shipped a
version of Lisp compliant with 10.2)
You need a new version of Lisp. Although I don't know what dates
have been set for release, we're working on a version that will run
on the 400 series.
Jim Healy
Lucid, Inc.
Mail from Lucid 2:
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 91 17:26:24 PST
From: Leonard N. Zubkoff <lnz@lucid.com>
To: michel@es.ele.tue.nl (Michel Berkelaar)
In-Reply-To: michel@es.ele.tue.nl's message of 28 Jan 91 12:18:36 GMT
Subject: Lisp on a 400 in 10.3
Domain/CommonLISP does not yet run on the new Apollos. Contact your Apollo
representative and pester them to get you a date for a Lisp that supports this
machine.
Leonard
Mail from Apollo field support:
From: sailor_j@apollo.com
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 91 09:07:28 EST
Subject: re: Lisp on the Series 400
To: michel@es.ele.tue.nl
Cc: werner@hpbbse.hp.com, vanbaal_h@apollo.com, sailor_j@apollo.com,
shari@apollo.com
Hello Michel;
I am the field support manager for the Apollo Division.
A colleague referred your message on the net to me.
Domain/Lisp is not supported on the Series 400 hardware.
There are significant machine dependent functions in
Domain/Lisp, and a version has not been made for the
Series 400 hardware.
We apologize for any time you may have wasted trying
to run the product on the 400. The release notes for
Lisp are correct in that they do not have the 400 on
the list of supported hardware; however, it is not
explicitly stated that Lisp does not run on the 400.
Your local AE or response center should also have
this information, or can go through their support
channels to get it. I encourage you to use your
local support people, my role is to help them
to serve you better.
Best Regards,
John Sailor.
John K. Sailor | |~~~ | 270 Billerica Road
Mgr, Field Support | /|\ | Chelmsford, MA 01824
Apollo Systems/Div. of HP (ASY) | /_|_\ | (508) 256-6600 x7589, telnet 256-7589
Net: sailor_j@apollo.hp.com | \_____/ | UUCP: {decwrl!devax,mit_eddie}!apollo!sailor_j
BTW, look at the note regarding the Lisp release notes: of course the 400 is
not mentioned in them: At the time they were written there was no series 400
machine. Also note that no promise is made that Lisp will be ported at all.
Perhaps all Lisp users should do what Leonard Zubkoff suggests!!
Michel Berkelaar
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michel Berkelaar | Email: michel@ele.tue.nl
Eindhoven University of Technology |
Dept. of Electrical Engineering |
Design Automation Section |
P.O. Box 513 | Phone: ... - 31 - 40 - 473345
NL-5600 MB Eindhoven | Fax: ... - 31 - 40 - 448375
The Netherlands |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------lnz@lucid.com (Leonard N. Zubkoff) (02/06/91)
Let me elaborate on this a little more on this for the curious. Domain/CommonLISP Version 4.01 will be supporting the Series 400 and DN5500 nodes, and will no longer support SR9.7. There are not massive problems with getting the Lisp to run on the new machines; there are really only two issues. The new machines have increased the segment size from 32k to 256k. Since the old segment size was a divisor of the internal segment size we use within Lisp for memory management (64k), mapping calls were always correctly aligned to a Domain/OS segment boundary. On the new machines, just as on PRISM, this is no longer the case, and appropriate modifications to the code have been made. The second problem is that Common Lisp is an interactive environment and creates machine code on the fly, either by dynamically loading it or by compilation in memory, and so the instruction and data caches must be resynchronized when this is done. The 68040 has caches which make addition of code to do this necessary; this was almost trivial to do, as we've done it before for many of our other implementations. Unfortunately, the above two modifications are not really patchable, as are most bugs people encounter, and so a new Lisp release is necessary. I encourage anyone who wants to *seriously* use Lisp on the Series 400 or DN5500 to contact their Apollo representative and request to be a beta site. You'll get a Lisp sooner, and we'll get better beta testing of the product! Leonard N. Zubkoff Lucid, Inc.