The Texas Instruments Explorer is a family of

Lisp machine Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, the ...

computers. These computers were sold by

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

(TI) in the 1980s. The Explorer is based on a design from

Lisp Machines Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, the ...

Incorporated, which is based on the MIT

. The Explorer was used to develop and deploy

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

software. Notable is also the early use of the

NuBus NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital for th ...

as the

system bus A system bus is a single computer bus that connects the major components of a computer system, combining the functions of a data bus to carry information, an address bus to determine where it should be sent or read from, and a control bus to dete ...

for the Explorer computer family.

History

The Explorer was used to develop and deploy

software. Later models were based on a special

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers vol sc-22 issue nr 5 developed by TI, which hardware had enhanced support for executing

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

software.

Operating system

The operating system of the Explorer was written in

Lisp Machine Lisp Lisp Machine Lisp is a programming language, a dialect of the language Lisp. A direct descendant of Maclisp, it was initially developed in the mid to late 1970s as the system programming language for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M ...

and also supported

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fro ...

Use

A notable application is SPIKE, the scheduling system for the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versa ...

. SPIKE was developed on Texas Instruments Explorer workstations.

Models

* Explorer * Explorer II, based on the Lisp microprocessor * Explorer LX, which combines the Explorer with a co-processor running a version of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

(TI System V) * MicroExplorer, a

board for the

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

based on the Lisp microprocessor

References

Publications

* Software innovations for the Texas Instruments Explorer computer, Tennant, H.R.; Bate, R.R.; Corey, S.M.; Davis, L.; Kline, P.; Oren, L.G.; Rajinikanth, M.; Saenz, R.; Stenger, D.; Thompson, C.W., Proceedings of the IEEE Volume 73, Issue 12, Dec. 1985 Page(s): 1771 - 1790 * Artificial intelligence hardware architectures for the Space Station era: The Texas Instruments Explorer and Compact LISP Machine, Krueger, S. ; Manuel, G. ; Matthews, G. ; Ott, G. ; Watkins, C., Opt. Eng. ; Vol/Issue: 25:11 * Dussud, P. H. 1988. Lisp hardware architecture: the Explorer II and beyond. SIGPLAN Lisp Pointers 1, 6 (Apr. 1988), 13–18. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1317224.1317226 * P.H. Dussud, TICLOS: An implementation of CLOS for the Explorer Family, In Proc. OOPSLA'89, International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, 1989, pp. 215–219. * Zeitgeist: Database Support for Object-Oriented Programming (1988), by S Ford, J Joseph, D Langworthy, D Lively, G Pathak, E Perez, R. Peterson, D. Sparacin, S. Thatte, D. Wells, S. Agarwal, In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Object-Oriented Database Systems (Zeitgeist was an OODBMS developed by Texas Instruments for the Explorer)

External links

TI MicroExplorer documentation

TI Explorer documentation

TI Explorer Lisp Machine Source Code (1991)

* ttp://www.unlambda.com/lispm/index.html Emulators {{DEFAULTSORT:Ti Explorer Lisp (programming language) Computer workstations

Explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...