computer video (was Re: Free IBM AT)
Chris M wrote: But Apple made a mistake with the Mac by not supplying a distinct video ic, allowing the 68k to do all the work, and therefore was lacking in speed. That's not quite true. Both the original Mac and the Lisa shared memory access with the video hardware. The video hardware was actually much simpler than what most computers used a dedicated display chip for. It was basically a nothing more than a shift register that walked memory and spat out video signals. Half the time the CPU had access to the memory bus, the other half the video system. Other contemporaries of the time may have used a dedicated IC to do the video, *BUT* in most cases, these also shared access to memory with the CPU. So it was no better. Infact, they were more complex because they were text mode (40x25 or 80x25) and needed a character generator ROM. The video IC would read a byte from main memory, then turn around an read the bitmaps for that character from a ROM and display that. I remember there were various tricks done to get various styles displayed too. For the Commodore line, there were several bitmaps (aka fonts today) that implemented primitive graphics. The high bit (128) was used to invert the bitmap, so the scheme to display the cursor was to use XOR 128 on and off every second to flash the character. There was a patent for this simple scheme. Other displays used another chunk of memory that mapped along with the text to implement attributes such as underline, flash, inverse, and another set for color. Things like the VIC20 and Commodore 64 had some dedicated hardware to do sprites and such, it's true, but for normal operations, it wasn't too much better what the Mac/Lisa had. There were of course vector systems out there, but these were mostly for games and worked in a totally different way than raster displays like om the Mac, Lisa, Commodore's, and PC's. Even so, they generally had to share the memory with the CPU, so there was a slowdown due to that. This can be exposed on the Commodore 128 by going into FAST mode which ran at 2Mhz instead of the usual 1Mhz. The 40column display would be shut off. (The 80 column one which ran off a chip similar to the CGA controller still worked.) Even the lowly TS/1000 had a fast mode that disabled the video because it too shared it's small memory with the video system. I don't recall whether you had to do special stuff to access IBM PC's video memory on the CGA cards, perhaps it was accessible in memory though the video ram as it lived on the ISA card, but I do recall it displaying snow if you directly wrote to the video memory and didn't use the INT21 routines in the BIOS. Lots of program wrote directly to the screen for speed, but had to do so in the vertical retrace. (The BIOS routines were very slow.) The Lisa ran at 5MHz even though the 68000 was an 8MHz cpu due to the video circuitry needing access to memory. I'm not sure how they fixed this for the original Mac. Perhaps faster RAM, or more likely the smaller screen real estate did the trick. In some ways, if you look at the Mac and the Lisa, the Lisa actually had something like 5 CPU's (68000, 6504, COPS, COPS in keyboard, and an optional AMD/TI FPU for the early I/O boards, and a Z8 in the Profile/Widget).The Mac had to rely entirely on the 68000. They could have added one more CPU just to do graphics, but, that would have added a lot more expense and complexity. Besides, in that sort of system, whenever the main CPU would need to transfer a big chunk of data to the graphics controller instead of just instructions that say, draw a line from this point to that point in this color, there would be a bottle neck there. Also, back then having a dedicated video processor didn't mean you could do graphics primitives with it. i.e. the chips did not have the silicon to draw lines, boxes, in hires bit mapped display modes. Rather the CPU had to do that work and there were various algorithms for it. QuickDraw just happened to be a better implementation that all of those. :-) I'm not sure many computers had video chips that could offload graphics work from the main CPU at that stage (i.e. hardware accelerated graphics), except maybe perhaps for the Amiga, but that came later on. Most were just good old fashioned frame buffers in bit mapped mode, and character generator based displays. -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive:
I've repaired my power supply and floppy issues, suggestions on cleanup?
I was able to get this Lisa working. I replaced several large caps in both the 1.2A and 1.8A power supply and got the Lisa to work from both. The 1.8A supply had that large bulged out capacitor, it also had another identical one right next to it that had bubbled out - this wasn't visible until I removed both caps as it was inbetween them. The 1.2A actually had a small cracked capacitor that was visibly damaged. Replacing the caps helped. There are more capacitors I'd like to swap out of both supplies, these are the large clear amber ones - they look like they've suffered some stress - there are small hairline line fractures visible there. One of the caps I need to do this is backordered, so I'll have to wait until the end of December to do so. There was a short, but the short was from inserting the cable from the cable harness to the Lite adapter - the socket on the Lite adapter is keyed, but the plug on the harness is not, and from the way it fits, it looks correct when it's actually shorted. I suspect that perhaps the 1.8A was marginal, but working, but that the short caused by this is what prevented it from working. The 1.2A I knew was broken from before, and this fixed it. So for those who need to know this: when there is a short the 1.8A supply behaves like this: power light comes on for 1 second, then shuts off, and you hear the speaker click once or twice. The 1.2A supply makes the speaker sound like a machine gun (or very fast clicking, like a sewing machine) when there's a short circuit. After playing around with with the XL I/O board, I was unable to get it to see the floppy at all, *but* I was able to use one of the two battery leak damaged I/O boards. In fact, the one that had the parallel port 6522 with the plastic melted on it worked - sort of. I was able to boot using this I/O board, and while the mouse worked just fine, the keyboard did not. After swapping out both 6522's and the COP421, I managed to get this I/O board fully working. So this was a weirdo Lisa, it has a Lisa XL wire harness, but only 3 pin power, so it was never a Lisa XL, hence some of the confusion. I do see a few other issues however. This Lisa has the worm problem - that is video wiggles very very slightly on the horizontal, so if you have a straight line, you can see a very small - perhaps no more than 1 pixel or even half a pixel wiggle. I recall the Larry Pina book mentioned this could be solved by switching from the 1.2A to a 1.8A power supply, but guess what, I am using the 1.8A supply! (It was doing this before the whole power/short issue.) So either replacing the clear amber VAC capacitors in the power supply will fix the worms problem, or there's an issue with the analog video board. Anyone know how to address this? I'll try to swap the 1.8A supply out tonight or tomorrow with a 1.2A supply and see if the worms go away, if they do, then I certainly need to replace the remaining caps in the 1.8A supply. But if they don't - then either the video board needs a bit of work, or both power supplies need their remaining caps replaced. Battery leak cleanup questions Also, what is the best way to clean the corrosion? Since these are alkaline leaks, James suggested that possibly using a distilled water and distilled vinegar might neutralize it, or perhaps using full strength vinegar and then some other alkaline stuff - like baking soda to catch the rest of the acid. I can certainly reflow the solder at the joints that are green, and patch small wires between the traces that were effected, but how do I prevent the corrosion from spreading? I'm a bit weary of using anything containing water, as I wouldn't want any capacitors soaking up the humidity and dying just from that, so I'm not sure - is it really safe to clean with water? I'm thinking maybe a lightly damp paper towel and some kind of brush - like an old toothbrush perhaps? Any suggestions? The other non-working I/O board that also had battery damage which I cannibalized a 6522 from had one trace that was so badly corroded that it was visibly raised off the board by several millimeters: I can imagine this stuff eating through the copper traces quite easily, and since electricity is passing through those half corroded traces when the Lisa is on, they will heat it up, as more resistance builds up from the corrosion, the heat from the resistance will then act as a catalyst to further speed up the corrosion. Also, I noticed that someone had repaired one of the boards and put some kind of clear lacquer on top of the repairs, where can I get this stuff from and what is it? Can it be used to seal repaired corroded portions? -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info:
Re: Lisa doesn't power on - power lights up for 1sec, speakerclicks, then off.
Yeah, from what I see everything seems to point at the power supply. It's likely that plugging in one of the bad I/O boards stressed out something in the power supply. Other than this, the only thing that's in common are the CRT, video board, LisaLite and cables in the chasse. I originally had the following which worked, except I could never get the floppy drive to function. Lisa motherboard (regular Lisa2 - external parallel port)+cage+Parallel Port card Lisa 2-10/XL I/O board with 88 ROMs + the extra on board IWM. H-ROM CPU Board Lisa Chasse with LisaLite adapter + 1 3.5 floppy. 1.8A power supply. I tested: a 2nd motherboard two I/O boards - one with a visibly damaged 6522 - both with some corrosion from leaked battery packs. two more CPU boards. one known bad 1.2A power supply which I tested last night to be sure it's dead. It does provide the +5V trickle to the COP421, but doesn't turn on as the 1.8A one does. So my next steps are to take apart the 1.2 and 1.8A power supplies and see if any caps or components are visibly damaged and check the polarity of any diodes after discharging their caps so I don't get shocked. I guess I could eliminate the LisaLite too by unplugging it, as well as memory boards. -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Re: Lisa doesn't power on - power lights up for 1sec, speakerclicks, then off.
Yup, it's the power supply - took apart the 1.8A power supply and found one of the large capacitors was bulging out slightly, when I touched it, the top plastic cover sunk in - it's all dried up. Time to buy a bunch of replacement caps. Diodes that I've tested measured ok. -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Lisa doesn't power on - power lights up for 1sec, speaker clicks, then off.
Hey guys, My Lisa doesn't power on anymore. I was going through my spare parts in order to inventory what I have, so I swapped out several I/O and CPU cards. For a few of the cards, the Lisa exhibited some strange behavior - I'd push the power button, the light would light up for maybe half a second, and I'd hear the speaker click, but it wouldn't turn on. Both of the two spare I/O cards I tested had some battery leak damage, one I know is dead from a long time ago, the other did leak, but I caught it and removed the battery pack and cleaned it up, but perhaps the corrosion spread over time, or was marginal enough to work when I last tested it a few years ago. When I was done swapping boards, I placed the originals back, but still got the power light on for 1/2 a second and no power. :-( So I've got a totally non-working Lisa now. I wasn't aware of this until I read Larry Pina's Mac repair book, but the I/O board I had in there is a new one designed for the 2/10 or XL and has the extra chip that replaces the LisaLite board. So I was never able to get the floppy drive to work, because the motherboard and case were setup as a Lisa2/5 or just plain Lisa 2. (I believe this board works - except for the fact that it's inside the wrong motherboard since it passes the power on self test - unless the LisaLite or motherboard can harm it.) I don't believe I can get my hands on a Lisa 2/10 motherboard any time soon :-) though perhaps I can rewrire the connector in some way to hook up this I/O board directly to the floppy drive. Anyone have the pinouts I'd need for wiring this board directly to the floppy drive? Far more likely, perhaps I can repair one of the two corroded I/O boards which are from Lisa2's or 2/5's, and make use the LisaLite card which does exist in the floppy drive bay. The config in this Lisa is a 1.8A power supply (known to be good before the swapping of cards), H ROMs, and the wrong 2/10 I/O board - no widget, nor ProFile attached when I tested it. Anyway, when I was done testing all the boards and put back the originals, the Lisa would no longer turn on and no matter what I did, I got the same behavior - pushed the power button, the light comes on for half a second, and I hear the speaker click, then the light goes off and it doesn't actually turn on. I also had trouble fitting the CPU board back in, it doesn't quite mate with the connector on the motherboard unless I push it towards the connector, then it does make the connection, and I do see it in the socket. I suspect that perhaps part of the connector doesn't quite make it in all the way, even though I see it in there, perhaps being in the card cage for so long, it has warped a bit, and now it's no longer making contact all the way. I left the Lisa unplugged, hoping the boards would acclimate over time so that I can try re-seating them later on. I had it in storage for quite some time now, haven't powered it on in several years until last night. It did power up initially, and passed all the self tests before I tried to swap cards. I'm not sure whether my issue is similar, or even the same as the previously discussed chirp-on-power, as this is (was?) a known good power supply, but seems to me that it may be related to the COP421 controller in some way, or perhaps the I/O board doesn't see a CPU board attached and doesn't quite power on. So my questions are: 1. Is there a known symptom/fix for the power button lighting up for half a second this way? Is it an I/O board, motherboard, or CPU board issue? Anyone else had a CPU board that got slightly warped and wouldn't fit? Any way to relax them enough to fit without damaging them? 2. Is there a way to use a Lisa 2/10 I/O board and rewrire it directly to the floppy drive without going through the motherboard, or rewrire the existing connector from to the floppy. (I believe the end that goes into the LisaLite card has more pins than the cable that goes from the LisaLite to the floppy, so perhaps Apple just left some unused pins, and hopefully all the ones that go to the floppy are there.) 3. Would placing such a board inside a Lisa 2 with a LisaLite floppy card damage either the I/O board itself, the motherboard, or the LisaLite card? 4. What's involved in repairing an I/O board with a battery leak? I can certainly rewire/resolder the missing traces - at least the ones that are still visible. (I know one of the two dead I/O boards that I tested has a broken VIA chip since the plastic on the chip shows it melted. :-) so I can possibly use parts from this one to repair the other.) Any tips, tricks, or things to watch out for? -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to:
Re: Apple soap box
Nord, Al wrote: If Apple cared that much about the Lisa computers they and Sun Data would not have hired bulldozers to drive over piles of Lisa computers in Speaking of which, AppleFritter used to have a ton of Lisa documentation online, any word as to where it moved to? I did as well, but lack of bandwidth is not helpful. Perhaps things like bittorrent can be helpful if several of us leave the client open always. Perhaps we can compile a comprehensive collection of all apple lisa docs, hopefully something that can fit on one or more DVD-R's and share those over bittorrent? -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Re: Original Mac Portable disposal
Nord, Al wrote: At the end of last school year in June of this year I had a call from a teacher who offered me 40+ working old Mac portables for free if I hauled them away. Where could I store 40+ of these vintage computers and what would I do with them ? Hell, you could have made a fortune on ebay. :) I would have loved one of those. -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Re: Motherboard/CPU
It is a very good idea to remove the power cord before disassembling the Lisa as it's always turned on even when it looks off. Assuming you're facing the back of the Lisa and have turned the two metal knobs and removed the back cover, the board on the bottom is called the mother board. To the right, you'll see the power supply module along with the brightness and vertical (I think) controls. The motherboard, along with all the cards it contains, just slides out forward twoards you. Once it's out, there are 3 or 4 boards inside it on the right hand side. The I/O board is the one directly facing you, the CPU board is next, followed by one or two memory cards. They have clips at the top at the left and right, which you can undo on to take the card out by pulling them upwards. The clips are color coded on one side and there are matching marks on the card cage to let you know what card goes into which slot. On the left side, there are three expansion slots which could contain various I/O cards - most commonly a dual parallel card, though other devices have been known to exist, such as a 4 port serial card, a SCSI card (compatible only with MacWorks, and so on.) These just slide forward once you undo the yellow tab at the bottom, I believe you have to pull and twist the yellow/metal clip thing at the bottom clockwise (maybe) which opens up the slot enough to let you slide the card out towards you - not up! You should not have to remove any screws other than what is necessary to unlock the motherboard. The Lisa's designed to be user maintainable. This is what an empty motherboard looks like: http://lisa.sunder.net/lisa-img/mb1.html and http://lisa.sunder.net/lisa-img/mb2.html Here's what the CPU board looks like: http://lisa.sunder.net/lisa-img/cpu.html and the I/O board: http://lisa.sunder.net/lisa-img/io.html If you see a battery pack to the lower left of the I/O board, you should remove this - just clip the tabs carefully off. This is a great source of trouble - these NiCAD packs tend to leak, and when they do, they'll corrode both the I/O board and the motherboard, destroying your Lisa. These batteries are used to provide backup to the equivalent of the PRAM settings, however the Lisa will function just fine without them - it won't be able to keep the date and time, but since the Lisa's clock has a range from 1980-1995, it's useless anyway. Justaname wrote: OK, I have disassembled the cage, but can't see how to remove the CPU board from the bottom of the cage which now consists of the metal base only. The dozen or so screws are out and the sides have been removed. Any suggestions on how to gently remove the board? -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Birth of the Lisa
Found this during this morning's surfing on osnews.com... http://braeburn.ath.cx/modules.php?op=modloadname=Newsfile=articlesid=9mode=threadorder=0thold=0 The Lisa project was initiated in 1978 to provide Apple's next generation business computer. According to the original marketing specifications, created in 1979, the computer bore little resemblance to the computer that was actually released several years later. It's major claim to fame was its inclusion of a bit sliced processor, but it became clear that such a processor would price Lisa well above the $2,000 goal that the marketers had set. SNIP -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Re: Birth of the Lisa - copy protection, Lisa serial #'s, GEOS, and other computers of the era
Nord, Al wrote: Considering the Apple lisa's list price was $10,000.00 it is a miracle as many Lisas were sold that there were. Apple had a software serial number prom preventing other copies of software installed on other Lisas from working. So each Lisa owner had to purchase a legal copy of the software they wanted to use. Um, yes, but didn't LisaOS and the office tools come with the Lisa when you purchased them? Certainly upgrades were free, but this is no different than Microsoft - except that the Office apps came free with the machine. Of course, when Lisa became Mac XL, the included software changed. Also, the Lisa wasn't sold at $10K for too long, they dropped the price pretty quickly, so very few actually paid that much. I remember replacing logic boards and having to swap that prom chip so their software would continue to operate. That's right, the first time you inserted a virgin tool disk into a Lisa, it would stamp the serial # on it. You could have of course unserialized them if you read David Craig's compuserve article about where the serial # is stored on the disk. If that PROM failed, you could have sent it to Apple for a replacement too. It's funny, but the old knockoff GEOS did the same thing except that since the C64 did not have a serial #, it randomly picked a 16 bit serial # and used that the same way. The 5 meg Profile HD was also a treat. Apple decided to reverse their software writing to hard disk to make the profile HD the only HD to work inside the profile. I tried other Seagate st-506 5 meg HD's in the profile case but was never sucessful in getting them to write the boot track. One company devised a way to write the boot track but they charged too much from what I remember. I'm sure this is still a problem today. You need a special version of a ROM and an Apple II/III to reformat these old beasts as the ROM in normal profile drives did not support the low level format command. If I recall correctly, early Mac OS's (some 6 and 7) refused to install or boot from non-Apple branded hard drives and CDROM drives too. Of course, these usually came with third party drivers to make them work. The Mac plus also had an external HD20 meg drive that used the serial port on the MacPlus. You mean the external floppy port. I have one of these somewhere in the attic. I remember you needed a special extension called HD20 to make that work. The Mac portable used a special controller board to operate their internal HD's which failed regularly. I have swapped that controller board and used other HD's in the Mac portable but that's another story. Apple sure was innovative in their HD selections and often were the only ones available. But since the first Apple //e floppy drives sold for $500.00 with out the controller when they were introduced. Most of the other computers were still using the cassette drive to load and run programs like the TI-99 and the Comodore 64. Maybe, but I do recall the Commodore 1540 and 1541 floppy drives which were very slow and had their own on board 6502 CPU + a little bit of RAM. These were initially very expensive too (~$500), so you could say that was the market price. Still, you wouldn't want to wait for a program on tape to load - and even programs on tape had copy protection. (I recall a game for the VIC20 called Swarm that left some data in the tape buffer and executed it. It was impossible to copy it to tape, but it was very easy to create a loader for it and transfer it to a floppy.) Much like the Lisa, the C1541 (and future disk drives too) had a CPU inside them. The Lisa has the equivalent of a stripped down Apple II without RAM, display, etc. as the floppy controller. The 1541 had a 6504 and a few K of RAM, which could hold small programs that could be used to either write copy protection to the disk (weird errors, checksum errors, two tracks with the same ID's, multiple sectors with the same ID, sync-traps, etc.) or they could be used to detect copy protection, or for fast loaders - there's a story somewhere on the net about how the VIA chip (which the Lisa also uses) has a broken shift register, so you can't really use it for serial transfers - this is why the original Vic20, and C64's were so slow accessing the floppy. Eventually someone wrote a fast load program, and then there were clones of it. GEOS had this feature built in... One game had a very dumb protection, I think it was spy hunter, that after it loaded,it paused for a second to display a logo, then it checked for a disk error on a specific track/sector, then never looked at the floppy again - so you could easily just time it right and open the floppy door right before it checked but after it loaded and it worked just fine. When the C128 came out, you had a machine with a built in monitor (debugger) - so it was very easy to remove the protection off lots of programs - just press the reset switch and hold
Re: Lisa Office System and GUI
Shirl wrote: The only regret I have about this area is the WIMP (windows/icons/mouse pointer) interface is still around. There must be something better than this. I know efforts have been made to develop the WIMP successor, but these seemed to have failed due to WIMP's hegemony in the computing world UI. The closest, I'd imagine, is the OpenCroquet project... http://www.opencroquet.org/ -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Re: Hard drive reformatting and setup
Yes. 1.44M SuperDrives can do this. I've created 400K Lisa disks on a Mac 7100 (Mac OS 7.5) using Apple Disk Copy 4.2 and DART, as well as on a 20th Anniversary Mac (Mac OS 9.1), and on a IIsi (Mac OS 7.5). My Lisa was able to use them without any problems. Note that you cannot use *NEW* versions of Apple Disk Copy as they will not write the tag data to the disk, so if you try, those floppies will not work on a Lisa. Nor can you use the new versions of Apple Disk Copy to convert from DART to Disk Copy 4.2 image formats - again, the tag information gets stripped off. Normal PC floppy drives will never work as they only write MFM format, whereas the 400K format requires GCR. Apple 400K, 800k, and 1.44M Superdrive floppy drives are able to create proper 400K disks for use on a Lisa. I vaguely recall there may have been some strange Mac's that had a 1.44M MFM only floppy, but not sure if they were clone PPC's or what - only that they had no soft eject - they used PC floppy drives with a push button for eject. These did not of course work, but I don't recall ever using any of those. On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Marcin Wichary wrote: This can be done with Macs, with a build-in 800k Floppy-Drive or a so called 1,44 MB Super-Drive if you use DiskCopy and are able to run with OS 6 up to OS 7.5.3 Are you sure that SuperDrives can correctly write to 400K disks? I read reports to the contrary... -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:lisalist@mail.maclaunch.com To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
Re: My sick 2/10
Speaking of which, there's a power supply on ebay. Doesn't say if it's a 1.2 or 1.8A model, and the auction will close in 10h, so you might want to ask the seller quickly. :-) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=51046item=5142326481rd=1 -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Mac? Free email more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
Re: Installing Lisa OS on ProFile
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Chris Smolinski wrote: For that matter... I wonder if the Lisa OS 3.1 might work any better than 3.0? I've seen several sites that claim to have Office 3.1 disk images, but they are all actually version 3.0. Lisa OS 3. aka 7/7 1 is just Lisa OS 3.0 with one more application: LisaTerminal. When you boot from these, they'll all say 3.0, even thought they were sold as 3.1. I think i can get the Lisa to boot off the profile on the external card port, if I can just install the OS. Perhaps if I can get my Lisa 2/5 to function I can use it to do the installation. What you can try is to take the motherboard (card tray) from the 2/5 and also it's I/O board, but use the CPU board from the 2/10, and install LisaOS on the Profile that way, then put all the cards back, and setup the ProFile on the parallel port card and see if it will function. It's vital that you keep the OS on the ProFile with the CPU board because this board contains a serial # in the video state ROM. Without it, you'll have problems with that instance of the OS (not being able to print is one issue.) Also be aware that when you do the install, your OS disk will be serialized with the serial # of that CPU board, and I believe it won't work elsewhere. The same is true of the tools (Write, Calc, Project, Draw, Graph, Term, except they'll write the serial #'s on the floppies they came with.) So be sure to have disk images of everything if you plan to work with serveral Lisas. -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Mac? Free email more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
Re: Floppy fixed! Boots, but disk problem ...
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003, Stephen M. Jones wrote: That was it, I cleaned the sensor with a soft paper towel and found an oily residue on it.. I put it back in the machine and .. its works! Thanks! Cool. :) I was under the impression the images I got were LisaOS 3.1 .. however, they state they are LisaOS 3.0 1983, 1984 .. but that shouldn't make a difference, right? The only difference between 3.1 and 3.0 is that 3.1 added another tool - LisaTerminal I think. :) I don't think the drive is dead, its actually spins nicely and doesn't make any strange scraping or funky calibration sounds. One thing I wasn't clear about... is this hard drive an internal (Widget) or an external (ProFile)? If it's a profile, on power up, it should also flicker the red LED.. not sure about Widget drives... At this point what's happening is that the drive has it's own Z8 cpu (microcontroller actually) that can scan the drive for errors, and it is doing just that. I think it took something like 5 minutes for this process before the Lisa would see the disk... I would like to do my best to 'repair' the internal drive .. I'm damn curious to see whats on it ;-) More than likely the media lost the data it was holding. I've seen this happen to my profile hd's I installed an OS on them a very long time ago, and a few years later when I powered them back on, they had lost all data, but if I reinstalled an OS, they'd hold the OS for a long while... If you don't mind wiping it, you could try to boot up MacWorks and see if it can format it... Or Xenix. :) If it's external, are you attaching it directly to the parallel port, or to a dual parallel port card? If it's on a card, I seem to recall only being able to use one of the ports to off boot off from, but that the parallel port on the motherboard always worked. (could be my parallel card wasn't working?) The profile cable is just a straight through DB25 cable with all the pins wired. Be careful - if you buy a replacement. Some DB25-DB25 cables are made for serial cables, and to save money the manufacturers don't wire all the pins... You should get a small ohm/volt meter - set it to OHM's and try the pins on each end. All of the pins should be wired - except for one which I think is missing on the original ribbon cable... The Lisa detects the ProFile/Widget drive by a single pin (Open Cable Detect), so even though the Lisa POST can see the drive, it might not be able to talk to it. So check the cable. -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Mac? Free email more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
Re: Lisa 2/10 widget drive problems ..
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003, Stephen M. Jones wrote: Ahh, okay. Both the drive and the widget board have an LED each. I'm assuming the POST is the initial test that runs when the LISA is turned on. Here is what happens when I turn on the LISA: 1. The widget board LED flashes and the drive LED lights up briefly. 2. The drive then spins up and then, it flashes as it calibrates then it goes solid 3. If I try to boot off the hard disk, the widget LED will flash, then the drive will seek/head calibrate, then the widget LED will flash again .. then the lisa goes 'beep, beep, beep' error 82. 82 means Drive doesn't answer - not sure what that means, but could be a cable issue again... It does sound like it to me. The LED means Ready unlike most HD LED's of today. So when it's not flashing, it means there's no access... If I continue and boot off the floppy, when I select either 'repair' or 'install' I get the message the lisa is looking for attached disks, the LEDs just remain solid and the drive does not seek .. then I get a message no usable drives were found From what I know of the Lisa's POST - and it's more than I'd like to know, it doesn't check for much on the Widget drive. Just it's presence so it can put up a menu option to boot off it, or to attempt to boot off it. But it may not have tested it... So it would seem that the Lisa POST (if that is what the test is called) seems to be able to see the disk, but because of error '82' (anyone know what that might be?) that it can not find a boot image. Oh, google just told me what an '82' is: 82 Internal HD Drive doesn't answer Now as far as the LisaOS disk 1 doing nothing with the internal disk, I'm at a loss. I've already tried taking out the drive and checking the cables, what I could do next is take it apart and check the components (just to be sure no one assumes this, I'm not going to *open* the drive). Hopefully I can recover this piece of hardware without having to replace it. Well, it does say on the screen Lisa is looking for attached disks... could mean it's looking for a parallel port drive... From what I know, your Lisa should either not have an external parallel port - unless you have the dual port card, or you should see a ribbon cable plugged into the parallel port going back inside the case. The Lisa 2/10's shouldn't have any external parallel port from what I recall. The port is internal to the motherboard, and that will go to the drive area... It's far more likely that you'll have dirty contacts, so try to wipe any junk off the connectors first... So tighten the cable like you planned and clean the contacts, and failing that, take the motherboard rack out (carefully), and take the widget drive out and attempt to test each pin on the ribbon cable with an ohm meter. Put one probe in the drive area, and the other where the motherboard was attached - might need two people to do this... If you feel it's worth it, you can try to extract the cable - but be careful. If you find a broken wire, you can patch another one. CAREFULLY! Get an Xacto knife and slowly shave off the plastic coating off the wire you think is crimped - then attach another to it. A light bit of solder will do, be careful not to melt the plastic off it's neighbors... -- LisaList is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Shop buy.com and save. http://lowendmac.com/ad/buy.com.html Support Low End Mac http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html LisaList info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/lisa.html -- AOL users, remove mailto:; Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/lisalist%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Mac? Free email more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
