I love this quote (from Interlisp-D: Overview and Status):
"Interlisp is a very large software system and large software systems are not easy to construct. Interlisp-D has on the order of 17,000 lines of Lisp code, 6,000 lines of Bcpl, and 4,000 lines of microcode."
Here's my idea: stick a bunch of NVRAM DIMMs into a big server box, along with some ordinary SDRAM. So, say, you get a machine with the first, say, 16GB of RAM is ordinary RAM, and then the 512GB or 1TB of RAM above that in the memory map is persistent RAM. It keeps its contents when the machine is shut off.
That is it. No drives at all. No SSD. All its storage is directly in the CPU memory map.
Modify Interim or Mezzano to boot off a USB key into RAM and store a resume image in the PMEM part of the memory map, so you can suspend, turn off the power, and resume where you were when the power comes back.
Now try to crowbar SBCL into this, and as many libraries and frameworks as can be sucked in. All of Medley/Interlisp, and some kind of convertor so SBCL can run Interlisp.
You now have an x86-64 LispM, with a whole new architectural model: no files, no disks, no filesystem. It's all just RAM. Workspace at the bottom, disposable. OS and apps higher up where it's nonvolatile.
~wavy lines~~ I've never used this in anger, but I owned a second-hand Xerox Daybreak for a while to play around with. Later, there was a some freely available project (I've now forgotten) that used Interlisp running on an emulator running on a DEC Alpha, and so I added some minor bits to NetBSD's Ultrix compatibility.
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[ 13.1 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] thread"Interlisp is a very large software system and large software systems are not easy to construct. Interlisp-D has on the order of 17,000 lines of Lisp code, 6,000 lines of Bcpl, and 4,000 lines of microcode."
So large. :)
http://www.softwarepreservation.net/projects/LISP/interlisp-...
That said… we need the “lisp machine” of the future more than we need a recreation.
Totally agree.
Here's my idea: stick a bunch of NVRAM DIMMs into a big server box, along with some ordinary SDRAM. So, say, you get a machine with the first, say, 16GB of RAM is ordinary RAM, and then the 512GB or 1TB of RAM above that in the memory map is persistent RAM. It keeps its contents when the machine is shut off.
That is it. No drives at all. No SSD. All its storage is directly in the CPU memory map.
Modify Interim or Mezzano to boot off a USB key into RAM and store a resume image in the PMEM part of the memory map, so you can suspend, turn off the power, and resume where you were when the power comes back.
https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano
https://github.com/mntmn/interim
Now try to crowbar SBCL into this, and as many libraries and frameworks as can be sucked in. All of Medley/Interlisp, and some kind of convertor so SBCL can run Interlisp.
You now have an x86-64 LispM, with a whole new architectural model: no files, no disks, no filesystem. It's all just RAM. Workspace at the bottom, disposable. OS and apps higher up where it's nonvolatile.
I fleshed this out a bit here:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/new_type_of_c...
And here...
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/26/starting_over_rebooti...