TIL there's a project to resurrect the MIT CADR #Lisp Machine: https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/, with a release announcement containing this enticing snippet: "System 300 contains numerous fixes that make it usable on the Global Chaosnet."
I have close to no idea what is going on there, but dammit, I can't help wanting to know. The GLOBAL CHAOSNET?!
Does it help if I told you we used to have bridge routers from CHAOS to IP/TCP? :-)
@weekend_editor I have now read that Chaosnet was a kind of local network. A global chaosnet though?!
Yes, that's more or less right. We used chaosnet at MIT, and that carried over to the lisp machines.
Chaosnet was a lot simpler to use, as I recall from the experince of writing network applications like 40 years ago.
IP-TCP was only just beginning to become popular in those days. We had chaosnet to IP-TCP bridges, basically routers that could speak either protocol. (And I have a hilarious story about an MIT network admin who didn't know the difference between a router & a bridge, and didn't know what a time-domain reflectometer was.)
Then around 1986 or so we had native IP-TCP on lisp machines.
Symbolics.com was in fact the first .com site on the internet.
@weekend_editor > (And I have a hilarious story about an MIT network admin who didn't know the difference between a router & a bridge, and didn't know what a time-domain reflectometer was.)
Please do tell!!!
My notes on things, IP-TCP on the Lisp Machine was earlier than 1986 (but I suppose it depends if it is MIT/LMI/Symbolics ... vintage -- and I suppose, who really cares)