🚀 go-pugleaf

    Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 22:16 EST
    From: Jon Buller <jonb@metronet.com>

    I saw a Symbolics machine running a while ago, and I've always
    kinda wanted one.  I have an unused MacII, and was thinking about
    trying to aquire a MacIvory system.  Having never dealt with a Lisp
    machine before, other than hearing great things about them on
    comp.lang.lisp and reading some of the papers from the MIT AI lab,
    I have a few questions.

    First, are they really hard to come by, or are people unloading
    them on a semi-regular basis.  And how much do they go for roughly.
    Do I need to get two or three as spares?  And what about software
    and documentation?

    Would it be cheaper/easier/better to get a TI Explorer? (They made
    Mac boards too didn't they?)  This is on my hobby/education budget,
    not the home equity loan plan, and I don't really have the space
    for a refrigerator sized system, let alone it's power requirements,
    even if it were free.

    Any suggestions?  Should I just give it up and run CMUCL on an old
    SPARCStation, or MCL on the mac?

Just addressing this last question, it depends upon what you are after.

Do you want to develop real-life software to sell/disseminate to customers?
Then MCL on the Mac is a good platform and gives you fairly easy access to
modern technologies (e.g. Quicktime).

Or do you want to build highly dynamic, complex software for personal use?
In this case I'd pick the MacIvory, for its vastly superior debugging
and code learning features (e.g. trap-on-call, which I use daily and which, to
my knowledge, doesn't exist on any other platform), usable large virtual
memory, object-oriented database, etc.  Unfortunately, since it only runs
under old Mac platforms, some of the newer technologies are unavailable
with this option.

    Jon Buller