> just port the damn software. That's what Open Genera does. Symbolics wrote an emulator for the Ivory architecture, which allowed people to use much of the OS

> just port the damn software. That's what Open Genera does. Symbolics wrote an emulator for the Ivory architecture, which allowed people to use much of the OS on a DEC Alpha under Unix. > I maintain that 90% of those who irrationally praise that old system this much did never even work a single hour with one of them Possibly true, though I have. I know both its pros and cons (and it conses a lot). > They don't, but they just can't keep from creaming all over any forum where the LISP machine is mentioned at all. Darn I need my morning coffee, I'm cranky. I think you have a point here. I think its useful to have alternative approaches preserved and some people have influenced by it and implemented slightly similar stuff on current software (see for example MCCLIM for Common Lisp, which is a portable reimplementation of some of the UI management and graphics substrate of the Symbolics Lisp Machine OS). It did not catch on, since much of that is very exotic and complex at the same time. But those have probably never had the opportunity to format a disk in Lisp, read a Unix tape via a Lispm tape drive or copy a file via anonymous FTP onto a Lispm. It's not the fault of the current generation - they haven't had the chance to actually work with such computers (since the whole thing was mostly dead after the early 90s) and all in all they were very rare (roughly 10000 Lisp Machines in various forms were built) and the whole experience was very expensive - thus only affordable to companies and well funded research. This makes it more mythical and mysterious. Then also the commercial systems have't been 'freed' yet - their source code is not available under an open source / free software license - only the old MIT code has been made available - but that is really ancient. It's the same with the old Lispm keyboards - the layout is cool, but using it for typing? Who has ever typed with the old mechanical keyboards from the 80s and would do that today? There are only a few...