[Axiom-developer] Literate programming and Provisos

[daly]

Up until we made an agreement with NAG, Scratchpad, the pre-Axiom
system, was being developed primarly on the IBM/RS6000. However, I
ported it to run on everything I could touch including several
different lisps (allegro, golden common, zetalisp, symbolics common
lisp, akcl, lispvm, spicelisp (cmucl), lucid common lisp, etc) on
several different platforms (SUN solaris, IBM/VM 370, IBM/RT,
Symbolics, and even a DJGPP port on DOS on a toshiba laptop).  The
code is very generic lisp at this point, uses almost no special
features of the native system, and was regularly cross-compiled on
multiple platforms in parallel. I even managed to get the algebra 
running on a linux system. Linux came on 3 diskettes.

I sent out copies of Scratchpad to people worldwide using different
kinds of platforms and lisps. The distribution included source code.
Scratchpad was viewed as a research platform, not as a "product".
There was competition but it was a very small world and everyone
knew everyone else. Stephen Watt was both a Maple developer and
a Scratchpad developer. Barry Trager had worked on pre-Macsyma
under Joel Moses at MIT.

That said, I had one of the first IBM/RS6000s. I had to have my office
specially modified with a motion detector and a high security lock to
have it installed. A funny war story is that to install the AIX opsys
I needed a terminal connected to a serial port (a TTY device) and the
only thing we could find in the building was a TI silent 700 portable
TTY-like device that used heat-sensitive paper. Fortunately the AIX
lead developers were in the same building.

I negotiated with Scott Fahlman on various CMUCL topics. He wanted
to get a set of RS6000s for his research project but I was unable to
close the deal. CMUCL was using the IBM/RT which was basically a hair
dryer that occasionally executed an instruction.

I'm unaware of any hardware specific version sold from IBM. In fact,
I'm unaware that IBM sold Scratchpad. I generally shipped copies free
for the asking. On a couple occasions I installed it on an IBM/RT and
shipped the whole RT.  But Scratchpad/Axiom would bury a 500khz PC.
It took many weeks and many tricks to get it running on DJGPP/DOS on
that Toshiba. So I can see an argument for top-of-the-line hardware.
Maybe a 6Mhz machine with 256k of memory. Ah, those were the days.

Tim