October 14, 2002
TI microExplorer

Rainer Joswig has a collection of promotional brochures for lisp products from the days of yore. I'll be posting his scans periodically.

Now, here's Rainer:

So it is time for some heart warming memories, now that the cold winter days are coming. We start publishing a series of Lisp memorabilia from before the "dark ages". First there will be some information about the TI Explorer Lisp machines. Little information about those is available on the Internet - compared to the more popular Symbolics Lisp machines.

The first brochure is about Texas Instrument's "microExplorer Computer System", a combination of an Apple Macintosh II and a Lisp processor on a NuBus card. Actually Texas Instruments used the NuBus first on their Lisp machine series before Apple introduced it with the Macintosh II.

The heart of the microExplorer is a 32 Bit Lisp microprocessor that runs an operating system written in Lisp. The software did support ZetaLisp, Common Lisp, Zmacs (an Emacs-like editor) and much more.

Btw., used microExplorers are extremely hard to find.

TI microExplorer brochure, page 1TI microExplorer brochure, page 2
microExplorer Computer System, Pages 1-2

TI microExplorer brochure, page 3TI microExplorer brochure, page 4
Pages 3-4

TI microExplorer brochure, page 5TI microExplorer brochure, page 6
Pages 5-6

TI microExplorer brochure, page 7TI microExplorer brochure, page 8
Pages 7-8

Posted by jjwiseman at October 14, 2002 09:32 AM
Comments

BTW, the german computer magazine C't (heise.de) published two articles detailing the architecture and internal works of lisp machines, especially the TI Explorer ones (and the ones you could put into a Mac II, IIRC). This was back in 1989, if my memory serves me right. I will post a complete when I get home, if anybody wants it. (The articles were in German, of course)

Posted by: Andreas Fuchs on October 18, 2002 02:58 AM

I think I have those too and would publish them later. First we concentrate on some original material. ;-)

Posted by: Rainer Joswig on October 20, 2002 03:21 AM

Be sure there are no copyright conflicts. The articles were published in C't Magazine, Issues September 1988 (p. 232-240, Author: Peter Rosenbeck) and October 1988 (232-244).

Interesting, in Oct 1988's issue of C't, there is also an article about software patents (title: "Vom Abmahnen zum Absahnen - Ein Patent-Fossil wiederbelebt", which roughly translates to "Cease and Desist as a Money-making machine - Reviving a fossilized patent") . Ick!

Posted by: Andreas Fuchs on October 21, 2002 11:55 AM

Great! :)

Posted by: Murzynki Azjatki on December 16, 2003 10:54 AM
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