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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: Xerox STAR
Message-ID: <1769@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Mar-84 00:10:43 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1769
Posted: Tue Mar  6 00:10:43 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Mar-84 07:02:26 EST
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Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
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> You can't program a Star.  It's a dedicated super word processor.
> The same hardware running Interlisp software is called a Dandelion, and is
> as fast as a 780 running Interlisp.  Great for developing lisp software.

Running an OS whose kernel whose code size in bytes is almost as big as our 4.1c
here?  Yup, "super" is the word for it.  It's a bit more than a "word
processor"; it has a mini database system (it's not really relational, but
imagine a "relational dbms" with *one* relation and you're not too far off),
electronic mail, etc..  There is a development system that runs on the
hardware, also; someone told me that the Star applications programs can
run on the same machine as the "Mesa Development Environment" under the Pilot
OS.  So *if* you can pry the Mesa Development Environment out of Xerox, yes,
you can program a Star.

The Star consists of a Dandelion microprogrammable engine running microcode
to give it the "Mesa processor" instruction set and running the Pilot OS with
the Star applications software on top of it.  The "Mesa processor" is discussed
in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Architectural Support for Programming
Languages and Operating Systems (ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News,
Volume 10, Number 2, March 1982 and ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number
4, April 1982, ACM Order Number 556811) and the OS is discussed in an article
in CACM called "Pilot: An Operating System for a Personal Computer"
(Communications of the ACM, Volume 23, Number 2, February 1980) and in a
paper in the Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium on Operating Systems
Principles (ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 15, Number 5, December
1981).  The Mesa language (I've heard it described as "industrial strength
Pascal"; it's got the usual sort of abstract data type thingies, as well
as a "fork" and "join" primitive for process creation and a *very* PL/Iish
signal mechanism) is described in the Mesa Language Manual, Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center paper CSL-79-3.

Whether you consider the Star a success or failure (they haven't sold many, but
then how many of *you* are willing to buy a deskside "office automation"
computer that costs $15K, as the Star originally did?), the Mesa processor,
the Pilot OS, the Mesa language, and the Star applications software are worth
reading about.  There are several clever ideas in all of them.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
is discussed in the