We now have both VAX Common LISP and Standard LISP (the HLISP interpreter). This was made possible by a gift from David Donald Miller, who provided both a license and the use of his Consolidated Distribution CDs - thanks, David! If you are a LISPer, take a look in SYS$COMMON:[VAXLISP.EXAMPLES], where you will find tools such as PCL (a "publicly available" version of the Common LISP Object System), Foxglove (a framework for creating knowledge-based systems), RDBLISP (access relational databases through LISP) and others.

If you want to make use of any of these examples, please copy them to your own directory first! Thanks - Ian

I've been keeping my eyes open for a StorageWorks CDROM to add to our HSJ controller setup, so that I don't have to squeeze everything through a 10Mb/s FTP pipe. I found an RRD46 in the appropriate enclosure on eBay last week and have installed it as device DKA5:. Obviously, it's only available as an operator-assisted device. -- Ian

Today I installed and configured HLISP, an interpreter for "Standard LISP" on the VAX. Note that this predates Common LISP; in the documentatation for HLISP, the author mentions the later standard in a way which allows one to infer it was perhaps yet to be completed.

To run the interpreter, simply type HLISP at the command line. The home directory for the interpreter, SYS$COMMON:[SYSEXE.HLISP], contains a number of sample files with the .LSP extension. These can be loaded into the interpreter (at run time) with the construction @FILENAME (the file extension is assumed). There is also a code checker, LINT, available at the command line.

If you want to know more about the particulars of HLISP, the file LISP.MEM is available to be TYPEd in the home directory. You might also want to check out "The Standard LISP Report", which can be obtained online in PDF format at http://www.reduce-algebra.com/docs/sl.pdf. -- Ian Note: this was edited 5/19/2009 to reflect a change in the invocation.

We now have the classic game Empire available on Rosencrantz. Just type EMPIRE at the command line to play it in your own account directory. If you save your game, it will place your .DAT file there.

The documentation file that was included was obviously formatted for printing, and didn't work too well with TYPE/PAGE. I reformatted it to be a better read on the screen, and named the update EMPIRE.TXT. It's located in SYS$COMMON:[GAMES.EMPIRE].

I expect this game will account for a serious amount of processor time before long. -- Ian

Since our new network configuration made it a challenge to bring in new content via the FTP client, I turned my attention to the FTP server in CMUIP. It responded to a client request but, when the user provided a password, it rejected the connection.

I found an old email thread that mentioned this problem, and also mentioned that someone had rewritten the FTP server to fix it. It seemed likely that patch was contained in a package called CMUIP665K.BCK, which came with a readme stating it was a patch set but not what was in it. It did warn that one should only replace components if you truly had a problem, so it seemed I needed FTP_SERVER.EXE.

Unfortunately, a listing of the save-set (BACKUP/LIST CMUIP665K.BCK/SAVE_SET) produced a torrent of errors. I wondered if the file wasn't truly a save set but rather a tape image. A bit of experimenting with SimH discredited that theory. I went to the Web, looking for someone who might still have this save set available by FTP. I didn't find a new copy, but I did find a reference to "problems with save sets after FTP." It seems the FTP exchange corrupts the block size of the file so that BACKUP does not recognize it. The following sequence repairs it:

	   $ CREATE/FDL=SYS$INPUT  newfile.bck
	   RECORD
	     FORMAT FIXED
             SIZE nnnn
             CARRIAGE_CONTROL NONE
	   ^Z
	   $ COPY/OVERLAY file.bck newfile.bck

I extracted the patched FTP server, rebooted the machine, and we now have inbound FTP access!

We also have the latest version of CMUIP and its patch, if anyone else is looking for it. -- Ian