Comments on: The Lambda Papers: When LISP Got Turned Into a Microprocessor

By: chango

chango — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 07:19:52 +0000

TI built their own Lisp processor in a sea of GALs to make the Explorer workstation. It was a truly weird piece of hardware from the VME-like backplane but it’s NuBus to the fiber optic connected, gas cylinder supported, music playing monitor.

They followed it up with the Explorer II which condensed most of the CPU down to a single VLSI chip called the Mega. The last Explorer was a Mac Lisp accelerator that put most of an Explorer II on a single NuBus card.

TI was kind enough to document nearly everything about their hardware, and those docs survive thanks to Bitsavers: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ti/explorer/

By: Ostracus

Ostracus — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 05:17:09 +0000

In reply to MikeMac. Interesting OS. There's an OpenGenera image floating out there somewhere.

By: paulvdh

paulvdh — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 03:54:59 +0000

Reminds me of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle

Which apparently evolved into ThumbEE, and then devolved into the history books too?

By: MikeMac

MikeMac — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 03:12:10 +0000

In reply to LambdaMikel. Mine is still in the cabinet in the garage! Saw it this weekend. Haven't turned it on in years. I have Genera VM that I can play with.

By: David

David — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 02:59:55 +0000

Obligatory: Knights of the Lamda Calculus Obligatory xkcd: Lisp and Lisp Cycles

By: LambdaMikel

LambdaMikel — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 02:46:33 +0000

Miss my Symbolics 3645. Too bad I couldn’t hold on to it.