lisp for 11s?

[hush]

hey all, i have been spending the past few months programming in common lisp, and have fallen in love with the language. unfortunately it seems that based on my research there is not much available for the 11 (with the exception of XLISP in RPM: http://mim.stupi.net/rpmpkg?PKG=XLISP), which i find hard to believe. is it just that nothing has been recovered and/or archived?

i am a fairly devout RSX11 user, but do not mind using BSD or RT11 if i can get some hacking done there. :)

thanks in advance!

[Johnny Billquist]

What's wrong with xlisp?

But no, I have not actually seen many other lisps for the PDP-11. A
friend of mine wrote a LISP runtime system for RSTS/E, and I think I
have that one somewhere.

I also remember seeing a lisp called NIL LISP for the PDP-11 back in the
80s, but I have no idea if I could locate it now if needed.

However, I should also point out that none of these are common lisp, and
I don't think you'll ever find a common list implementation that could
be squeezed into a PDP-11.

Johnny

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--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[Johnny Billquist]

By the way, speaking of xlisp on RSX. I have done some extensions to it,
making it really easy to write code that talks over the internet, as
well as some more functions to interact with the OS. It's actually
pretty neat and nifty. Feel free to ask about anything around it.

Johnny

[David Bakin]

NIL, a very nice implementatoin (from MIT), was VAX, not -11.

[hush]

looks like i sleepily responded directly to johnny... nothing wrong with XLISP, i was just curious if there was something a little closer to what i’m familiar with, like scheme or MACLISP :) is there any documentation for XLISP that you could toss my way?

[Johnny Billquist]

I'm almost 100% sure I saw a version running on a PDP-11 in the early
80s. But I don't believe I have a copy, nor do I know where any could be
found today.

But if someone can prove me wrong, then I guess I must have confused
myself somehow.

Johnny

> <http://mim.stupi.net/rpmpkg?PKG=XLISP>), which i find hard to believe.

> >> is it just that nothing has been recovered and/or archived?
> >>
> >> i am a fairly devout RSX11 user, but do not mind using BSD or
> RT11 if
> >> i can get some hacking done there. :)
> >>
> >> thanks in advance!
> >>
> >> --
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> it, send
> >> an email to pidp-11+u...@googlegroups.com
> >> <mailto:pidp-11+u...@googlegroups.com>.
> >> To view this discussion on the web visit
> >>

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/2467b0ab-2b88-4f1b-b360-a9f43687f4e8n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/2467b0ab-2b88-4f1b-b360-a9f43687f4e8n%40googlegroups.com> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgi <https://groups.google.com/d/msgi>
> >
> d/pidp-11/2467b0ab-2b88-4f1b-b360-a9f43687f4e8n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <http://40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.

> >
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
> || on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>

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[Johnny Billquist]

And I just responded to hush as well. :-)

Anyway, MACLISP was/is for PDP-10, and not likely to ever be able to run
on a PDP-11.

As for XLISP, the RPM package includes some documentation. But if anyone
wants to ask about things, I'm happy to help. After all, I ported the
thing to RSX, and extended it in various ways.

Johnny

> <http://mim.stupi.net/rpmpkg?PKG=XLISP>), which i find hard to

> believe.
> >> is it just that nothing has been recovered and/or archived?
> >>
> >> i am a fairly devout RSX11 user, but do not mind using BSD
> or RT11 if
> >> i can get some hacking done there. :)
> >>
> >> thanks in advance!
> >>
> >> --
> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> Google
> >> Groups "[PiDP-11]" group.
> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails
> from it, send
> >> an email to pidp-11+u...@googlegroups.com
> >> <mailto:pidp-11+u...@googlegroups.com>.
> >> To view this discussion on the web visit
> >>

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/2467b0ab-2b88-4f1b-b360-a9f43687f4e8n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/2467b0ab-2b88-4f1b-b360-a9f43687f4e8n%40googlegroups.com> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgi <https://groups.google.com/d/msgi>
> >

> d/pidp-11/2467b0ab-2b88-4f1b-b360-a9f43687f4e8n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <http://40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.

> >
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
> || on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>

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[Clem Cole]

Paul McJones has the best History of LISP that I know: https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/, which has as complete a list of LISP implementations and pointers to their sources when possible.

There are several PDP-11 LISP which the Harvard LISP ( https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/other/#Harvard_LISP_ ), the MIT LISP  ( https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/other/#MIT_PDP_11_LISP_ ) and XLISP (https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/embedded/#XLISP_ ) being three for the 11.

My own experience was that the 16-bit address space of the PDP-11 tended to be an issue when trying to run LISP, which I suspect is why the language was originally more popular on the PDP-6 / PDP-10s and later Vaxen.  However, in the latter case of targeting the 32-bit Vax, UCB Franz LISP ( https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_family/#Franz_Lisp_ ) and MIT's NIL ( https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_family/#NIL,_S-1_Lisp_ )  - where both children of the MIT MacLISP family from the 6/10 ( https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_family/ ) - although Richard Fatemate (who had his hand in all three) bootstrapped Franz from the 16-bit Harvard LISP for UNIX.

If you want to work with any of them, you can build and run a Vax or PDP-10 simulator from OpenSIMH.org. FWIW: Oscar's PiDPs use a modified simh based simulators for his kits (note there is a plan to bring the extensions Oscar needs so he can realign in the future, but its a lower priority than some of the other more urgent issues the Opern SIMH team is currently addressing - for instance, Paul K's recent release of getting V3 and V4 back in line which the first sources were recently made available).

ᐧ

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[Johnny Billquist]

Sigh.

On 2023-03-05 06:01, Clem Cole wrote:
> Paul McJones has the best History of LISP that I know:
> https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/

> <https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/>, which has as

> complete a list of LISP implementations and pointers to their sources
> when possible.

While, as always, it's nice that people do this kind of work, it is a
disfavour to refer to such things as "complete list of ...". Which is
never true, and most definitely not in this case. I've already mentioned
that I have another LISP implementation for RSTS/E which is not known to
the people taking care of that page. And I'm sure there are others.

On the topic of NIL-LISP that I mentioned before, my recollection was
that the PDP-11 NIL-LISP that I know about, the NIL stood for Nilsson.
So I suspect that there might be two different LISP implementations
called NIL-LISP, because the New Implementation of Lisp seems to
definitely have been for VAX.

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-03-05 11:06, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On the topic of NIL-LISP that I mentioned before, my recollection was
> that the PDP-11 NIL-LISP that I know about, the NIL stood for Nilsson.
> So I suspect that there might be two different LISP implementations
> called NIL-LISP, because the New Implementation of Lisp seems to
> definitely have been for VAX.

Ha! I found a reference to it. I didn't imagine this.

So there is really two different Lisps called NIL-Lisp. The one I was
thinking of was written by a guy named Martin Nilsson, and it was at
least running on a PDP-11/45 in the early 80s. The machine was sitting
at KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, and the name of
the machine was ELVIRA. I still do not have any of the sources though,
so don't ask me for them.

[David Bakin]

huh! good catch! never heard of the "other" NIL! -- David

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[Ian Hammond]

I've uploaded an RT-11 version of VLISP to https://github.com/rust11/rust/tree/master/kit/vlisp.rar that I put together recently.

The kit is sourced from https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/vlisp/ to which I've added VLISP.DSK with a ready-to-go RT-11 runtime.

[ufasoft]

BkLisp for RT-11: https://github.com/ufasoft/bklisp/releases/tag/v2022.11

[Lars Brinkhoff]

There's one written by Richard Stallman.

https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/rms/lisp11.265

[Lawrence Fisher (RealTimeCat)]

Johnny,

I am attempting to build all available language compilers on to my PiDP-11 baseline for RSTS/E. 

I was the system administrator for a school district's RSTS/E system running on an 11/70 from 1980 - 1983, and am attempting to build back as much of that as possible (I am using RSTS/E 10.1, so unfortunately I can't build in Kevin Herbert's terminal links, which we utilized extensively).

I would love a pointer to your lisp, and any other kits or software (games included) that I can download.

Disk images are best, as I am still having problems with easily transferring large amounts of files over to a RSTS/E disk format (Paul Koning's wonderful RSTS FLX helps, but it does not handle wild cards very well and I have not had the time to attempt improvements on it).

Please contact me via this news group, or if you would rather, let me know how to contact you directly.

Thank you,

Lawrence Fisher

[Johnny Billquist]

Well. Let's start by saying that if you hook your RSTS/E machine up to
HECnet, you can copy things over very easily.

Second - when it comes to "kits", any DEC based ones are different for
RSX than for RSTS/E, and I would recommend that you grab the RSTS/E ones
for installation. Many of them can be found at trailing-edge. The
question is mostly then about how you transfer them into the RSTS/E
environment.

As for xlisp and other bits, you can find that on MIM:: (mim.stupi.net)
in various directories. Some of it you might be able to get running
under RSTS/E, but it will require some work from your side. xlisp for
example is written in C, and I've added various stuff to that which are
related to the TCP/IP under RSX. All of which is stuff that will not
work under RSTS/E. Same with other tools and so on.

Start by telnet:ing to mim.stupi.net, and look around there, and
transfer what you want. If you're not on HECnet, then you can use ftp to
get things out from mim. How you get it on to RSTS/E is a different
problem...

Johnny

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[Johnny Billquist]

I'm feeling bored. If you want to, I can do a port of it. With a machine
with split I/D space, supervisor mode libraries and so on means you can
get lots of more space to play with.

Also, not sure if you've seen that XLISP is available. Closer to common
lisp in dialect, but with object oriented extensions. I've also added
more interfacing to RSX from it, as well as adding TCP/IP networking
functionality just to have fun.

Johnny

On 2024-04-27 13:01, Steve Platt wrote:
> Back in the early 80s (been a while), I brought up LISPF4 on a PDP11/60
> running RSX-11M.  This is an Interlisp based dialect.  It worked well,
> as I remember.
>
> Alas, the limited PDP11 address space... As I remember, I virtualized
> it, setting up  a pageable CONS cell space with LRU swapping. Slowed it
> down a bit, but got a much bigger address space.
>
> Once I'm fully reintegrated into my pidp11, I may try re-porting. The
> source is available on github, with an update to a C version.

>
> On Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 3:46:10 PM UTC-4 b...@softjar.se wrote:
>
> Well. Let's start by saying that if you hook your RSTS/E machine upto
> HECnet, you can copy things over very easily.
>
> Second - when it comes to "kits", any DEC based ones are different for
> RSX than for RSTS/E, and I would recommend that you grab the RSTS/E
> ones
> for installation. Many of them can be found at trailing-edge. The
> question is mostly then about how you transfer them into the RSTS/E
> environment.
>
> As for xlisp and other bits, you can find that on MIM::

> (mim.stupi.net <http://mim.stupi.net>)

> in various directories. Some of it you might be able to get running
> under RSTS/E, but it will require some work from your side. xlisp for
> example is written in C, and I've added various stuff to that whichare
> related to the TCP/IP under RSX. All of which is stuff that will not
> work under RSTS/E. Same with other tools and so on.
>

> Start by telnet:ing to mim.stupi.net <http://mim.stupi.net>, and

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/f47b3cf1-b58f-45f8-a0da-e988db1f0027n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/f47b3cf1-b58f-45f8-a0da-e988db1f0027n%40googlegroups.com> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/f47b3cf1-b58f-45f8-a0da-e988db1f0027n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/f47b3cf1-b58f-45f8-a0da-e988db1f0027n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.

>
> --
> Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
> || on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>

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[Johnny Billquist]

CLOS, as well as a full common lisp does not exist for any PDP-11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLISP

The version on RSX is V1.7. I have not bothered starting looking at
porting V2. If you search around a bit, documentation for XLISP 1.7 can
be found. I also have enough documentation included in my package inside
RSX to get people going.

Johnny

On 2024-04-28 21:21, Bradford Miller wrote:
> I’m not sure what you mean by “but with object orientedextensions.” CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) is part of the standard.

>
>> On Apr 28, 2024, at 9:22 AM, Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se>wrote:
>>
>> I'm feeling bored. If you want to, I can do a port of it. With a machine with split I/D space, supervisor mode libraries and so on means you can get lots of more space to play with.
>>
>> Also, not sure if you've seen that XLISP is available. Closer to common lisp in dialect, but with object oriented extensions. I've also added more interfacing to RSX from it, as well as adding TCP/IP networking functionality just to have fun.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>> On 2024-04-27 13:01, Steve Platt wrote:

>>> Back in the early 80s (been a while), I brought up LISPF4 on a PDP11/60 running RSX-11M. This is an Interlisp based dialect. It worked well,as I remember.
>>> Alas, the limited PDP11 address space... As I remember, I virtualizedit, setting up a pageable CONS cell space with LRU swapping. Slowed it down a bit, but got a much bigger address space.
>>> Once I'm fully reintegrated into my pidp11, I may try re-porting. Thesource is available on github, with an update to a C version.

>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, sendan email to pidp-11+u...@googlegroups.com.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/260cfb59-6102-4e17-9930-ba67dabaf1f9%40softjar.se.

[Steve Platt]

Johnny --

Go for it!  Google "lispf4 github" and you'll see the most recent sources.  Checking my personal archive, I see I also have the source tree from 2015 or so, before the C translation.

I also remember building overlay trees for some programs; I forget if LISPF4 was one of them.  Nasty things, the overlays...

I've seen XLISP.  I used to run it on my DOS and Windows machines, a fine interpreter.  Yep, saw it in one of the file lists.  But LISPF4 had a soft spot in my heart.  Oh, Common Lisp had its own object orientation mechanism.  I used it (CL) for my dissertation -- computer graphics, constructed a hierarchical object-oriented model of a funky nonrigid object (the human face).  That was under VAX/VMS, DEC CL was in beta at that time.

I've been using Lisp since (dating myself) 1975 or so.  For a while, writing lisp interpreters was kind of a hobby, trying out different approaches to variable binding, managing builtin functions, etc.  The first/simplest one I wrote was in Z80 assembler (a fine 16 bit machine, if  you focused on it as a 16 bit accumulator (HL) and a pair of secondary 16 bit registers (BC, DE)).  Having two sets of 16 bit registers made some parts of the code rather efficient, if you didn't mind a lot of juggling between sets and using the stack for data exchange.

It sounds like you've delved into RSX internals more deeply than I have, though.  My work on the old 11s was during the transition from ARPANET to TCP/CSnet.  I vaguely remember I/D spaces.  So much cognitive rust...

Looking forward to seeing what  you come up with, let's stay in contact!

Steve

[Bradford Miller]

I’m not sure what you mean by “but with object oriented extensions.” CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) is part of the standard.

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