4 ms·

Got one of these myself (in a IIci with a Daystar accelerator and an 8-24-GC video card, 8MW of memory, standard Genera patched for Y2K). It was quite expensive

Got one of these myself (in a IIci with a Daystar accelerator and an 8-24-GC video card, 8MW of memory, standard Genera patched for Y2K). It was quite expensive to source and to rehabilitate. Lisp machines are a bit hard to get used to, and I definitely don't claim to be a Lisp deity, but their interfaces demonstrate a great deal of thought and orthogonality that's profoundly missing from a lot of modern UI. Under the hood the MacIvory implements a Front-End Processor to mimic their workstations. It's a multistage boot: boot the Mac, start the FEP ("Breath of Life"), start Genera. Oddly, while the FEP on real Symbolics boxes is a 68K, the MacIvory CPU handles it directly, sort of like a bootloader. There's a nice memory dump here: http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html

p_l 7y ago
The FEP on 3600 was 68k - on Ivories FEP is normal Ivory program started from ROM. The MacIvories and UX-series embeddable systems run FEP from their ROMs, but both FEP and OS on those use "Embedded" hardware model, where they use a memory-based buffer to provide "stream" used to communicate with "Life Support" software. The VLM (Ivory rev5) systems, aka OpenGenera, don't have proper FEP (only a lisp debugger image) and in their case the LifeSupport application contains an embedded CPU implementation and implements loading of world files directly (thus bypassing the main purpose of FEP)
jmorrison 7y ago
I have one whose enclosing/host Mac II no longer boots (I changed the CMOS battery, which was the cause last time, but no joy). No local Apple/Mac repair shop I can find will even look at it. Does anybody know a boutique, antique computer repair service?
- progman32 7y ago
  In what general area do you live?
  - jmorrison 7y ago
    MA/NH, USA.
    - cbm-vic-20 7y ago
      You might want to reach out to the guys at the Rhode Island Computer Museum. It's worth a trek down there anyway to get a tour of their warehouse. http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/ http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/
- mietek 7y ago
  The electrolytic capacitors in your Mac II are most likely dead and need to be replaced. It is reasonably easy to do if you are at all handy with a soldering iron. There are also many people that offer recapping as a service. Try asking on 68kMLA. https://68kmla.org https://68kmla.org

p_l 7y ago

The FEP on 3600 was 68k - on Ivories FEP is normal Ivory program started from ROM. The MacIvories and UX-series embeddable systems run FEP from their ROMs, but both FEP and OS on those use "Embedded" hardware model, where they use a memory-based buffer to provide "stream" used to communicate with "Life Support" software. The VLM (Ivory rev5) systems, aka OpenGenera, don't have proper FEP (only a lisp debugger image) and in their case the LifeSupport application contains an embedded CPU implementation and implements loading of world files directly (thus bypassing the main purpose of FEP)

jmorrison 7y ago

I have one whose enclosing/host Mac II no longer boots (I changed the CMOS battery, which was the cause last time, but no joy). No local Apple/Mac repair shop I can find will even look at it. Does anybody know a boutique, antique computer repair service?

progman32 7y ago
In what general area do you live?
- jmorrison 7y ago
  MA/NH, USA.
  - cbm-vic-20 7y ago
    You might want to reach out to the guys at the Rhode Island Computer Museum. It's worth a trek down there anyway to get a tour of their warehouse. http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/ http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/
mietek 7y ago
The electrolytic capacitors in your Mac II are most likely dead and need to be replaced. It is reasonably easy to do if you are at all handy with a soldering iron. There are also many people that offer recapping as a service. Try asking on 68kMLA. https://68kmla.org https://68kmla.org