Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!grian!steve From: steve@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Steve Mitchell) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: MS Windows 3.0 version of lisp? Message-ID: <1991May9.193255.1036@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us> Date: 9 May 91 19:32:55 GMT References: <119715@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <28207@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Organization: College Park Software, Altadena, CA Lines: 55 turner@webb.psych.ufl.edu (Carl Turner) writes: >I'm interested in this too. I received (and promptly misplaced) a notice >from Gold Hill announcing a Golden Common Lisp that runs under MS Windows >3.0, unless I'm terribly mistaken. Has anyone seen/had any experience >with this product? Can I get some opinions on this? I used, or tried to use, Golden Common Lisp (GCL) over several years, and poured several thousand dollars (mostly of other people's money ;{) down that particular silicon rat hole over that period. The early versions were incomplete, rather buggy, and _VERY_ sensitive to the hardware. Both PClones I tried to run it on were (at the time I bought them) on Gold Hill's list of tested, compatible hardware, but neither (a Sperry PC/IT, and a Micronics-based AT/386) were usable until the last version I bought (3.1). It ran - sort of. A big problem (which they might have fixed by now) is that they don't have a compacting garbage collector. GCL gc's, but doesn't clean up after itself, so after you've been running for a while memory gets fragmented and the gc'er goes into an infinite gc loop. Time for the hardware reset button, because the old three-finger salute doesn't make it. To give you a feel for what you can do before it dies, on a system with 5MB of available extended memory dedicated to GCL and without the editor loaded, I got about 75% of the way through a compile-load cycle on May Day PCL before it went off into an infinite gc loop. As for windows support, with version 3.1 they released a Windows 2.1 compatible version called Golden Common Windows (GCWindows). This was about the time Microsoft came out with Windows 3.0. I never even bothered to try out the GCWindows, because I was struggling with getting Windows up at the time. Since then I've gotten Win3 up and running fairly well, and moved on to a Sun 3/60. MUCH BETTER. It works and doesn't require infinte hassle to keep working. (If you have concluded by this time that my PClone is somewhat non-standard, you're right. But it's not _that_odd_ a configuration: everything but GCL works on it just fine. Even Win3, though that took some tuning...) After lots of calls to Gold Hill's tech support, I've come to the conclusion that if you have true blue IBM or vanilla Compaq hardware, 8MB or more RAM, no network, odd boards or strange peripherals and lots of patience, you can probably run GCL and get work done. At least as long as the RAM holds up... I understand they've cut down on the size of the lisp image in more recent releases, so that may help with the gc problem. But until they get a decent garabage collector, I wouldn't even consider trying Gold Hill again. Just another dissatisfied customer... -- - Steve Mitchell College Park Software steve@seabhag.cps.altadena.ca.us 461 W. Loma Alta Dr. seabhag!grian!steve@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov Altadena, CA 91001-3841 ames!elroy!grian!seabhag!steve