RE: Scheme on Atari ST.

[NETWORK%FRSAC11.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]

Date: 21 December 1987, 13:09:03 GMT
From: NETWORK  at FRSAC11
To:   SCHEME at MC.LCS

To everybody concerned by Scheme on the Atari ST:

To my knowledge there is no native Scheme on this computer.
If you run a Mac emulator (Aladin or Magic Sac) then you can use MacScheme.
If you run PC Ditto then you can run TI PC Scheme.
(I would be most interested to hear about the speed of this combo.)

Why there is no MIT's CScheme on the Atari: memory.
When I get 4 meg (no less) of memory on my ST, I will port CScheme
6.1 or whatever is available at this time.
Last year I have spend a lot of time porting 4.1 on my 1040, up to the point
where the microcode compiled, using MWC 1.0. It is a lot of trouble because
there is some code in Scheme that is dependent upon C int = 32 bits.
But 1Meg is not enough to run CScheme.
If I try again, it will be with Lattice 3.04.

Some people are currently writing new Scheme implementations, if they
are portable, in C preferably, then we may end up with a working version
quite soon, if we can have the sources on the ST.

An other possibility is to start from XLISP, and change it from CommonLisp
to Scheme, I looked at the code, it is quite easy. The problem is the
speed of this implementation is not very good at all...

The last possibility would be to use Vincennes Scheme, it should run
on 2meg of memory, compiled with the Lattice C. There is currently
some technical problems to get the sources, and I still dont know
what is the Policy about this code. (Private, Copyrighted, public domain
or else...)

Keep on Scheming.

Jean-Pierre H. Dumas

network@frsac11 (bitnet)
network%frsac11.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu (arpanet)
dumas@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (arpanet)