3 ms·

This is not an “early” CADR, it is just a CADR. By ‘81 they were heavily used at the AI lab and as gumby mentions, they aren’t fragile little machines. No run

This is not an “early” CADR, it is just a CADR. By ‘81 they were heavily used at the AI lab and as gumby mentions, they aren’t fragile little machines. No running (real) CADRs exist, unless you consider the two FPGAs on my desk. For a CADR simulator you can check https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3 https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3 — I managed to restore the last system version for it last year or so, and we are continuing hacking adding and fixing things. E.g. you can run the simulator against the Global Chaosnet and talk to other LispMs and ITS machines (simulated or not). And some of us do run it 24/7 as a file server for other LispMs.

shrubble 3y ago
That is amazing serendipity since I was thinking of buying PDP10 replica, which runs ITS...thank you!
JonChesterfield 3y ago
> No running (real) CADRs exist, unless you consider the two FPGAs on my desk You've instantiated a lisp machine on an FPGA? That's superb. Have you put any information about that online?
- amszmidt 3y ago
  Everything is on the LM-3 project web site (https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3 https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3). :-) The current HDL implementation though only works on a unobtanium FPGA board. We are slowly working on porting it over to something that can actually be bought these days. Help needed if you are keen on HDL hacking.
anthk 3y ago
On that Lisp, I'll guess adapting something like Macsyma would be a no-no because of the constriained specs, right?
- amszmidt 3y ago
  One of the initial reason for the Lisp Machine project back then was to run Macsyma, since the PDP-10 was too constrained, and a multi-user system that meant you had to share resources. So MACSYMA runs well on the CADR :-)
- gumby 3y ago
  Ha, look at the specs of the PDP-10 (a KA-10 originally!) on which it was developed. About 1/4 MIPS with IIRC up to 256 K words of memory!
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Which is yet another reason to show most embedded boards nowadays do just well with managed languages, it is only a matter of culture and urban myths preventing many people to do so.

shrubble 3y ago

That is amazing serendipity since I was thinking of buying PDP10 replica, which runs ITS...thank you!

JonChesterfield 3y ago

> No running (real) CADRs exist, unless you consider the two FPGAs on my desk You've instantiated a lisp machine on an FPGA? That's superb. Have you put any information about that online?

amszmidt 3y ago
Everything is on the LM-3 project web site (https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3 https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3). :-) The current HDL implementation though only works on a unobtanium FPGA board. We are slowly working on porting it over to something that can actually be bought these days. Help needed if you are keen on HDL hacking.

anthk 3y ago

On that Lisp, I'll guess adapting something like Macsyma would be a no-no because of the constriained specs, right?

amszmidt 3y ago
One of the initial reason for the Lisp Machine project back then was to run Macsyma, since the PDP-10 was too constrained, and a multi-user system that meant you had to share resources. So MACSYMA runs well on the CADR :-)
gumby 3y ago
Ha, look at the specs of the PDP-10 (a KA-10 originally!) on which it was developed. About 1/4 MIPS with IIRC up to 256 K words of memory!
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Which is yet another reason to show most embedded boards nowadays do just well with managed languages, it is only a matter of culture and urban myths preventing many people to do so.