> I would guess that less than 20% of the core SYSTEM is essentially the same (but often quite a bit enhanced). For the rest of the software, I would think it's even less.
ZWEI, TV and SI makes up the majority of the base system which is far more than "20%" percent, which is ignoring EH, WINDOW, and anything else that is essentially processor agnostic.
The target processor is not that important from the users point of view, to the point that Lambda and CADR shared the exact same source code, and microcode. The Explorer I was essentially a Lambda. Much was "feature" protected with #+/#- to the point where many of the systems worked on Genera as well.
So that seems at par with the CPU architectures that Symbolics made, which is "just" a change to the compiler .. and not the overall system .. which is what was being discussed. But yes, Symbolics did design hardware done by Symbolics and made sure it worked on their system .. not sure what your point is other than giving an incorrect view of history and what Symbolics actually did to the Lisp Machine system parts (Symbolics work was much more interesting when it came to other systems like the 3D stuff and what not).
ZWEI is no longer in the base system. EH does not exist, a Window system does not exist. Dynamic Windows is in the base system.
> The target processor is not that important from the users point of view
It's important for the operating system and the processor was used for very different machine hardware: standalone workstations, headless systems, embedded in a Mac, embedded in a SUN, embedded in a network switch, ...
> Lambda and CADR shared the exact same source code, and microcode.
But not the 3600, which was a 36 bit architecture and not the Ivory, which was a 40 bit microprocessor. A lot of the core routines were different on a 3600 and an Ivory machine. The VLM was even different, running on a 64bit microprocessor, implementing the emulator in C and assembler. There is low-level functionality which has two or three different implementations.
The Ivory machines could be very different from a LAMBDA and a CADR, for example as an embedded CPU in a very different host machine (Mac & SUN). That had a lot of consequences for the operating system.
> ZWEI is no longer in the base system. EH does not exist, a Window system does not exist. Dynamic Windows is in the base system.
Nobody will use Genera without Zmacs or the error handler (aka Debugger)…
System 200 ran in the CADR and 3600. Using the same code base, with different microcode. With just bunch of #+ and #-.
And no, the target is not that important that it makes up “80% of the system”.
Your going into tangents and constantly raising neg things not being discussed, we aren’t talking about the host architecture but about the Lisp Machine system which is mostly agnostic of the target CPU. And between those two, Genera and the MIT system, are essentially the same when it comes to the base layer. To the point you can take the Dynamic listener or even DW and have it running on a MIT system without much work.
Genera 9 (which started development just a few years ago going of a system that hadn’t been touched for 30 years and under dubious legal situation) is essentially Genera 8.5 with several fixes.
Genera was carefully designed to keep compatibility with the MIT system. And that is one of the reasons why feature and code are so similar.
> Nobody will use Genera without Zmacs or the error handler (aka Debugger)…
Nobody will run Genera without TCP/IP and a lot of other stuff.
The error handler is not the same anymore.
> you can take the Dynamic listener or even DW and have it running on a MIT system without much work
I think that's pure fantasy.
> Genera was carefully designed to keep compatibility with the MIT system.
I don't think that was a goal, given that the MIT system was not relevant anymore and the vendors all had their own forks. TI converted much of the old code to Common Lisp with a translator. Symbolics wrote most new code in Common Lisp.
Without an extensive implementation of Common Lisp incl. CLOS, basically nothing runs on the old system.
The times of a few conditional reader macros was soon over.
Does Portable Common LOOPS (PCL) run on the MIT Lisp Machine?
> Nobody will run Genera without TCP/IP and a lot of other stuff.
Plenty of people still do, e.g. on a Ivory or 36xx machines.
> I think that's pure fantasy.
I ported the Dynamic Listener (with large parts of DW) a bunch of years back to run on MIT System 78.
> ... MIT system was not relevant anymore ...
I realise you like to raise Symbolics to the skies, but to say that the MIT system, which then was continued by LMI was "not relevant" is just making up history. Both systems where still heavily used until the demise of Symbolics, and LMI and portability was absolutely one goal since breaking peoples code was not considered nice.
> Does Portable Common LOOPS (PCL) run on the MIT Lisp Machine?
No idea, LOOP on the MIT Lisp Machine is the standard Loop, feel free to port it though -- patches welcome as they say.
ZWEI, TV and SI makes up the majority of the base system which is far more than "20%" percent, which is ignoring EH, WINDOW, and anything else that is essentially processor agnostic.
The target processor is not that important from the users point of view, to the point that Lambda and CADR shared the exact same source code, and microcode. The Explorer I was essentially a Lambda. Much was "feature" protected with #+/#- to the point where many of the systems worked on Genera as well.
So that seems at par with the CPU architectures that Symbolics made, which is "just" a change to the compiler .. and not the overall system .. which is what was being discussed. But yes, Symbolics did design hardware done by Symbolics and made sure it worked on their system .. not sure what your point is other than giving an incorrect view of history and what Symbolics actually did to the Lisp Machine system parts (Symbolics work was much more interesting when it came to other systems like the 3D stuff and what not).