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[John Morrison]

Hi;

> I was half joking, more reflecting on your earlier comments about keeping
> things discreet with TI for a while and not existing anybody unnecessarily.

I wish we knew who to talk to about this.  Now that we've got many more
people on the list, maybe it's time to ask the question Yet Again.  Does
anybody have any ideas?  Please?

> I personally fail to see why TI would ever have bad feelings towards the
> project. But I am not TI...

No, and I don't even know to whom they sold the business.  Does anybody
on the list know?  How would we best go about this?  I am eager to start
following the thread if somebody can at least point me in the right
direction.

I have tried at least twice to track down via MIT the original CADR
stuff.  Daniel (Hi!) -- or at least I *THINK* it was Daniel -- helped me
track down some of the original CONS/CADR software off an ITS dump tape,
but it seemed woefully incomplete (although I could be mistaken).  I
also remember talking to somebody (Alan Bawden?) at the AI Lab a few
years ago who said he had no problem with letting us have the software
(which I'm sure Steve and Paul can tie, ancestrally, anyways, directly
to the TI stuff we've got, as the comments attest), but that they
couldn't find it all (isn't this a shame?), and that no bootable load
band had ever been backed up (which would certainly complicates
bootstrapping an emulator).

When there was hope that enough of the MacLisp-based bootstrapping stuff
(cross-developed from ITS, or so I recall) could be obtained to
rebootstrap the process, I had even gone so far as to track down an
ancient UNIX (early BSD) version of Franz Lisp to try and port the stuff
to.  Alas, the sources seemed to me to be too incomplete for this to
work.

Lately, over the past few months, I have been trying to get MIT's
Technology Licensing Office to help me figure out what could be done,
but while the person I've been talking to has been extremely nice and
has tried (apparently) extremely hard to get to the bottom of the status
of the MIT-vintage software, she hasn't been able to give me any answer
at all, much less a definitive one.  Maybe I should pester her again (I
feel bad, because even though as I said she's been really nice, I get
the feeling she views this as a hopeless, sort of annoying crank request
for some 25-year-old software nobody cares about anymore.  I, for my
part, have tried to be as nice as possible, too, because I'd REALLY like
an answer, and I'd like for it to be an answer I'd be happy with.)

I also found an ancient Usenet posting from a dp@world.std.com (try
google) that somebody's brother had taken a CADR home.  I got neither
reply nor a bounce from my message to him.  If anybody on the list (Hi,
William) had a bootable LMI box, that would certainly be interesting.

-jm

-- 
==== John Morrison
==== MAK Technologies Inc.
==== 185 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, MA 02138
==== http://www.mak.com/
==== vox:617-876-8085 x115
==== fax:617-876-9208
==== jm@mak.com