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re: macivory information
We have received our MacIvory just before Christmas. Due to
some problems with the shipping of the EtherTalk board we
can use our MacSym only as a stand-alone. Software transfer
from other Symbolics has been carried out with Kermit to a VAX
and then to the Mac.
Our first impression when starting the Ivy was that this is
a really great product. You have a complete Symbolics
running Genera 7.3i on your desktop publishing game-filled
Mac. So, you can switch by mouse-click from your Genera
application to MacDraw or other Mac stuff. Even if you are
warm-booting the Mac, the Ivory will still run. As far as we
know at the moment every Genera-based application can be
transferred to run on MacIvory by simply recompiling the
sources (the canonical object-file extension on the Ivory is
".IBIN"). We have had any problems yet. The processor
performance is comparable to a 3620 but the user interface
is slower (due to the RPC scheme). We have also ordered a
Symbolics keyboard with a three-button mouse but shipping of
these parts will start in March.
The application we are planning to implement on the Ivory is
a highly graphical and animated user-interface for
simulation. We therefore want to program the graphical and
user-interface stuff completely in Lightspeed C version3.0
(you have to buy it) on the Mac CPU to achieve highest
efficiency for the interactive part. Symbolics claims that
performance of graphic operations will be 100 times faster
if you are using directly MacToolbox calls on the Lisp side
and a C program as receiver on the Mac side.
We hope that this approach will not make it too difficult to
port software to future VME bus systems like SunIvory when
available later this year.
If you want to know more details you can mail me directly.
We are very very interested in experiences of other MacIvory
users!
Bernd Wild
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* F Z I Forschungszentrum Informatik ********
* D-7500 Karlsruhe West-Germany ***************
* Division Technical Expert Systems and *******
* Robotics ************************
* E-Mail: BWILD%FIX@GERMANY.CSNET *************
* or BWILD%FIX@IRA.UKA.DE ********
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