The INTERLISP Virtual Machine Specification: Revised

The Interlisp Virtual Machine is the environment in which the Interlisp System is implemented. It includes such abstract objects as "Literal Atoms", "List Cells", "Integers", etc., the basic LISP functions for manipulating them, the underlying program control and variable binding mechanisms, the input/output facilities, and interrupt processing facilities. In order to Implement the Interlisp System (as described in "The Interlisp Reference Manual" by W. Teitelman, et. al.) on some physical machine, it is only necessary to implement the Interlisp Virtual Machine, since Virtual Machine compatible source code for the rest of the Interlisp System can be obtained from publicly available files. This document specifies the behavior of the Interlisp Virtual Machine from the implementor's point of view. That is, it is an attempt to make explicit those things which must be implemented to allow the Interlisp System to run on some machine.