free as in beer Archives : Page 2 of 2 : Global Nerdy

Symbolics XL1200 Lisp Machine: Free to a Good Home [Updated]

Update

I’m giving the machine to HacklabTO, who were the first to contact me about it. Congrats, guys!

It’s been sitting in my basement long enough, and it’s time that it found a good home. By “it”, I’m referring to my deadbeat ex-housemate’s Symbolics XL1200 Lisp Machine (pictured on the right), a big hulking piece of computer industry history. If you want it and can either pick it up from me (I’m in the High Park area of Accordion City) or can make arrangements to have it shipped to you, it’s yours, FREE. And yes, by free, I mean “free as in beer”. Zero dollars. Gratis.

The full story of how I came to possess this machine is written up in a blog entry of mine from January 2007. As stated in that story, the machine, when last turned on, displayed the message “Hardware Error” and wouldn’t boot any further. As I wrote nearly two years ago:

The fact that it displays a diagnostic message suggests that all is not lost; if someone were willing to go over its numerous circuit boards with a logic probe, he or she may be able to diagnose and fix the problem. Alternately, someone out there who already owns an XL1200 could use it as a source for replacement parts.

It sat safely in a closet in my old house for three years and it’s been sitting in the storage locker of my condo for the past 18 months. It is in good condition, and aside from being put into the storage locker when I moved to the condo, it hasn’t been touched.

If you’re a hardware hacker, computer historian or just really, really, really like the Lisp programming language and want serious Lisp bragging rights, this machine can be yours for free if you can take it off my hands. Interested parties should contact me at joey@globalnerdy.com.

Links

My article about the Lisp Machine’s being for sale from January 2007. Remember, it’s no longer for sale; I’m giving it away!
Symbolics site. “Symbolics.com” is widely regarded to be the first .com domain name.
Symbolics Lisp Machine Documents. If you get the machine, you might want these.
Wikipedia entry for Symbolics. Thanks to their kerfuffle with Richard Stallman, the article credits Symbolics with playing “a key, if adversarial role” in started the Free Software Movement.
Symbolics Museum. An online collection of pictures and stories about Symbolics.
Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum. Another collection of pictures and stories about Symbolics Lisp Machines.
Lisp Machine Information and Supplies. Peter Paine’s repository of Lisp Machine infromation.
Wikipedia entry for the Lisp Programming language.

The C# “Yellow Book”: Free as in Beer and Good as in Beginner’s Guide

As a new Microsoftie and programmer returning to C# after a six-year absence, I have a lot of learning and re-learning ahead of me. In preparation for this, I spent the better part of an afternoon in the “Computers” section of my neighbourhood bookstore going through the C# programming books, sorting the gems from the junk. I took the “beginner’s mind” approach and looked at all the books on the shelves, regardless of the skill level they were written for, even the books that devoted whole chapters to basic concepts like looping and branching. At the very least, it would give me an idea of the current state of programming literature was like in the .NET world.

A couple of weeks later, I stumbled across the C# “Yellow Book”. It’s the standard book for first year computer science students at the University of Hull (I know of it thanks to a Black Adder episode) and written by Rob Miles, a Microsoft MVP and lecturer at that university. Each computer science student there is given a free-as-in-beer printed copy of the book, and now anyone can get a free-as-in-beer PDF copy online.

The C# Yellow Book is quite good, and can easily hold its own against some of the commercial C# books I’ve seen, which typically sell for about $35. It’s written in a clear and breezy style, explains it concepts well, has examples that actually work (I tried some out just for kicks) and often goes beyond typical beginners’ books with many asides called “Programmers’ Points” that explain good programming technique. Its 185 pages cover most of the basic C# language — and most of the example code is run in console mode except for the section near the end that covers basic Windows Forms. After finishing this book, you should have enough background material to tackle an intermediate book on C# or introductory books on .NET topics like GUI programming, ASP.NET or even game development for the PC, Xbox 360 and Zune (yeah, really, the Zune) with XNA.

I’d say that Rob has a strong incentive to make the book as good as possible because it’s the basis of a course at his university and because he can get some rather immediate feedback from its readership. If only that was true for a professor of mine back at Crazy Go Nuts University, whose Pascal programming book (it was the eighties) had terrible examples, an incomprehensible presentation and writing style and annual revisions to foil used-book sales and to force each new class to buy the latest edition. Kudos to Rob and the computer science department at Hull for giving away the course textbook for free!

If you’re a starving student looking to learn Windows programming, I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy of Rob Miles’ free-as-in-beer C# “Yellow Book” and pair it with Microsoft’s free-as-in-beer Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. Alas, I can’t point you to any free-as-in-beer computers.