Hello, Unixhub. I've considered switcing from a AMD64 computer(FreeBSD) over to a Lisp machine.

Why?:
1. As a protest to todays consumerist-market.
2. I love symbolics.
3. I would get infinite leet points(heheh)

Advantages:
The first advantage is perhaps the most obvious; Genera(the operating system). Other more personal advantages are; Minimalsism, improved workload(as-in less web browsing.), CRT-screen(I hate LCDs), my now current computer will be used as a server.

Problems:
Avaiability(Solved, i've found one.)
Sound(I'm an audiophile). But the sound problem is solved like this; Sell my gfx card(gtx 580) and buy a soundcard for the server, then connect the server to my audio rig. All in all; You won't need a gfx card on a server, IMHO.
If a problem appears, i'm fucked.

Personal:
I suffer from hand pains, so I can't use the standard mouse and keyboard.
Therefore my dream is to connect the datahand to the machine, and to either connect a trackball or apply "microswitch-surgery" to the original mouse.
-Datahand; I'll either have to figure out the signals, and reverse engineer it so that it connects(and works!)
-Trackball; same as datahand.
Alternative; Symbolics released an ADB adapter with the MacIvory rig, that adapter takes a ps/2-like input and translates it into the symbolics input. This might work, but it's not proven tested.

"Microswitch surgery"; Disassemble the mouse, and replace the siwtches with some saia burgess G3M1T1PUL microswithces. It works, but is not as comfortable as a trackball(with the same switches!)

Usage: Programming and research, obviously. But also writing text documents, and connecting to the internet in some odd way. I'm sure that I can "SSH"(or something alike that) into a terminal running w3m and IRC.

Ooh, and I also love the look of the symbolics UI!
I will keep you guys updated if things go according to the plan, I tend to overthink so I sometimes(often!) change my mind, but this seems damn fun!

EDIT: NOTE: I'll still keep my laptop with a flavor of *BSD!

This seems like a really interesting project.
You'll fill your free time with ton of exciting new(old) stuffs and won't get bored.
>won't get bored
The best thing ever.
Keep us updated and also post ton of pics, we crave for those.

(14-05-2013, 02:00 PM)venam Wrote: This seems like a really interesting project.
You'll fill your free time with ton of exciting new(old) stuffs and won't get bored.
>won't get bored
The best thing ever.
Keep us updated and also post ton of pics, we crave for those.

Yeah.

Here comes some pics:
https://web.archive.org/web/201808161356...s/20040805[112556]3223.jpg?showpage=true
^The connectors for the keyboard and mouse, notice the difference in size.

https://web.archive.org/web/201808161039...wpage=true
^Pictures of the ABD connector I was talking of. Hopefully it can work with other LispM's, and hopefully it can use other keyboards than the apple extended.
NOTE: My trackball and my keyboard(datahand) is driverless.

Here's a picture-archive of the mouse(If my trackball(s) won't work.)
https://web.archive.org/web/201308300044...rnals.html
Funnily enough made by logitech, newer ones are made by "the mouse house" but the design seems similar to that of mouse.sytems.
In the 2nd you can see the switches, these will be replaced. Ooh, and if I get a spare one i'll try making it optical.

Now, we don't care about my input devices, right? "Show us the lispM!"(lol, actually saying "Lisp-EMM"...")
Well, I don't know which one i'll get yet. The seller has possibility to refurbish a 3620, if not i'll needa get a larger machine.
Here's some machines; https://web.archive.org/web/201808160650...wpage=true

Keep tuned, eventho this might take a while(Headphones, soundcard, and DAC are first on my list of items to buy.)

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Also; Ask me questions, that way I can learn something beforehand.

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Bad news, i'm afraid. My datahand is broken, I will try to get it fixed.

Incoming quad-post; I just got this reply from David Schmidt; "
The ADB box for the MacIvory allowed you to connect a Symbolics
keyboard and mouse to the ADB bus on the mac. It will not work to
connect a non-symbolics keyboard to a Symbolics machine. "

That's a very interesting project, better start learning lisp :)

Lisp machine! :@
Wicked! You are the man, I could believe this stuff exists.

P.S By the way, I succeed booting my virtual lisp machine, but I have no idea dueling with it. Need to study manual :P

After further thinking; A 3620 is suficcient. The UI is so responsive that it'll work at 4mhz. What one needs to reverse engineer on the 3620 is the HDD, and the fragile console.
The biggest challenge is the keyoard.
The easiest approach is probably to desolder the hall effect switches, take a datahand and solder them together.
This is however inefficient since with a chording keyboard one can have one hand on the board, and one hand on the mouse, and still get full features.
This is troublesome however, the assembly is not that hard, but getting the key combinatioins to work software wise can be troublesome(mostly because of beastie's "Okeg is not allowed to write drivers" ban heh)