Author Archives: Eric Dorman

Self-hosting Unix System V Release 4, i386

In this post we’ll be developing a process for taking binary and source resources on the internet to create a self-hosting (i.e. can recompile itself and make a new machine) environment for Unix System V Release 4, i386. Setting Up We’ll need some things initially on linux: $ sudo apt-get install p7zip qemu On linux …

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Hacking nevermore – A TI-Explorer Lisp Machine emulator

Another interesting emulator is nevermore, a lisp machine emulator for the TI-Explorer written originally by Alastair Bridgewater. The Explorer was built by Texas Instruments, a workstation-class machine made roughly in the mid-late 1980’s. Intended for symbolic AI applications, The Explorer had the processor built on two cards in a 7-slot NuBus backplane, SCSI and SMD …

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Hacking usim – A MIT-CADR Lisp Machine emulator

Brad Parker’s usim is a nice C-language emulator for the first Lisp Machine first broadly produced, the MIT-CADR. It’s said that by 1978 upwards of 25 were produced at MIT, pretty much making it the first ‘production’ Lisp Machine. The subsequent commercial Lisp machines much of their origins from the CADR, so it’s very interesting …

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Hacking LambdaDelta, an LMI-Lambda emulator

I have spent a few days hacking around with Daniel Seagraves’ spiffy LambdaDelta LMI-Lambda Lisp Machine emulator. Oddly I’ve never seen anything out on the interwebs that demonstrates what a LMI Lambda looks like or how to use it. Note that because LambdaDelta needs telnet to talk to the SDU (System Diagnostic Unit) and telnet …

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