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I worked for about four years on Symbolics machines in the AI summer of the mid 80's. We were, perhaps, lucky in that I don't remember them breaking down at all
by chris_st 5y ago
I worked for about four years on Symbolics machines in the AI summer of the mid 80's. We were, perhaps, lucky in that I don't remember them breaking down at all, and our service guy was competent and entertaining.
I remember when the generational GC was released. Before that, we just used to reboot at the end of the day... but the generational GC just worked, and we didn't have to worry about memory (so much). Our rep installed the GC thermometer (that showed in the overscan area so you didn't lose any screen real estate), and that really showed the difference.
And, by the way, it was Zmacs, not Emacs on the Symbolics.
- p_l 5y agoRefrigerator size suggests to me one of the very early models, which in fact could have been much more problematic than any of the latter. I seem to recall being warned in case of "free to good home" 3600 about how delicate it was.
- pinewurst 5y agoI had a 3630 which was a somewhat wide deskside tower, no louder than a deskside Sun 3. I never had any service problems other than a somewhat dubious tape drive.
- p_l 5y ago3630 was second generation design, a so-called "G-machine" (vs. "L-machine" of previous models), and I believe it already shipped with Ephemeral GC from start. I was advised that if possible, grab the boards necessary to upgrade 3600 to 3670 to have much easier life ;)
- Animats 5y agoYes, the Symbolics 3600. In the later models, Symbolics apparently got their hardware act together, but I never used any of those. There was a period in early workstations where we had one or two of everything, and finally settled on Sun workstations. The early 1980s were a time of great hardware creativity, and many dead ends.
- convolvatron 5y agothe early 3600s were actually wire wrapped. we had a fair number of field repairs.