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The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System [pdf]

by pamoroso on 6/29/25, 2:45 PM with 29 comments

• by phaer on 6/29/25, 3:27 PM

  They have an informative website and an online emulator at https://interlisp.org/software/access-online/

• by pfdietz on 6/29/25, 4:56 PM

  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."

  So large. :)

  http://www.softwarepreservation.net/projects/LISP/interlisp-...

• by kps on 6/30/25, 2:06 PM

  ~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.

• by jshaqaw on 6/29/25, 6:35 PM

  Retro lisp machines are cool. Kudos to the team. Love it.

  That said… we need the “lisp machine” of the future more than we need a recreation.