Apple Lisa questions

[ried]

What have I done, friends? This is a new-to-me Apple Lisa, because it was local and I figure if I don't get this one I may never have another chance.

I think this is an Apple Lisa 2/10 because of the internal widget hard drive, but can the learned among us confirm? The previous owner picked it up from a print shop that closed in 1996, and when he went to turn it on before the sale it smoked. My recent experience with the Apple /// ProFile PSU instantly made me think "RIFA cap!" I know how to replace those!

I do realize that it has a Macintosh mouse, rather than a proper Lisa mouse.

But I haven't gotten into the internals of this machine yet. First, can anyone confirm what model we're looking at here?

 

[cheesestraws]

Yeah, that's a 2/10: the absence of batteries and the presence of the Widget are the things.

I do realize that it has a Macintosh mouse, rather than a proper Lisa mouse.

I think this was the standard kind of mouse with the 2: at least, my 2/10 came with the same one. The "Lisa Mouse" I think only came with early Lisas (Lisae?)

 

[ried]

Ah, excellent! Thank you, @cheesestraws. Now to dig in and find out what was smoking.

 

[ried]

There's a surprise inside!

 

[ScutBoy]

Nice with the RamStak? Why is it that lower right row always seems to be empty? Also, is RamStak usable in Lisa 7/7, or is it only good in Macworks?

And yes, that's a 2/10 all the way.

 

[ried]

Found the smoking culprit! As suspected, a RIFA cap in the PSU.






There are a few and I'll replace 'em. Also, this is probably a dumb question, but I need to remove these two little display adjustment knobs in order to angle the board and pull it from the PSU enclosure. How do I remove those plastic knobs? I don't want to pull too hard and break one. Are they supposed to pull out?

 

[fri0701]

I've recapped one of these PSUs before (The 1.8A a nice addition to have alongside the hard drive). You should be able to remove all the screws and slide the board carefully out of the metal enclosure without separately removing those plastic stalks. Just take it slow and you should be able to angle it in a way where you can slide it out. Just be careful with the metal tab on the interlock switch in the corner - it tends to get caught on the case sometimes.

Nice find! Keep us posted on your repair progress - the lack of batteries in the 2/10 will certainly make your life a lot easier

 

[LaPorta]

This is a really neat find. Though I will probably never own a Lisa, it is neat to see these sort of restorations. Best of luck!

 

[stepleton]

Congratulations on your Lisa 2/10. As mentioned, the "Mac" mouse is appropriate for this machine. @fri0701 is also correct that you can angle the PSU PCB out without needing to remove anything, which is good because the potentiometer shafts do not come off.

Your power supply is the 1.8A supply or the "DataPower" supply. It's more powerful than the original 1.2A supply from the Lisa 1 and Lisa 2/5. The extra power is for the internal Widget hard drive.

It may be the case that the 1.8A supply can be operated and its voltages tested without a load. (The 1.2A supply cannot and will trip its overvoltage protection circuit unless something is drawing current.)

You will find that the keyboard does not work, or barely works, thanks to degraded foam-and-foil pads. You can buy replacements from TexElec.

The most fragile component in the computer is the Widget hard drive. On your first power-up attempt, I would disconnect it altogether. Getting the Widget working can be a later step

Your 2/10 has the original 400K single-sided disk drive and was not upgraded to an 800K double-sided drive, as happened with a number of machines that were used as Macintoshes (and called Macintosh XLs) with the help of MacWorks software. Even though there's no disk drive upgrade, it will be a pretty big surprise if your Widget has anything but MacWorks installed on it.

Some Macintosh XLs had a modification which changed the screen geometry (the "square pixel mod"). It will be useful to know whether your Lisa has this mod, because if it does, it will only be able to run MacWorks and not the Lisa Office System. There are a few ways to find out without powering on the computer: the easiest is probably to look at the CPU board (the one with the 68000 on it of course) and see what labels you can find on the ROMs there. You can compare any part numbers you find on the labels with the ones listed in this file. If you see 341-0346A and 341-0347A, that means you have the square-pixel mod.

Other problems you may encounter include screen jitters/waviness owing to old PSU/video board capacitors and tired video board trimpots.

 

[ried]

Thank you, @stepleton. That's great information. I already ordered the replacement foam-and-foil pads, which are currently backordered.

I pulled the logic board to see what ROM chips are present and found the following:




Based on this information, should we assume that this machine still runs the original Lisa Office System?

 

[cheesestraws]

I pulled the logic board to see what ROM chips are present and found the following:

Those are the Lisa2 ROMs. That can run the Lisa O/S and MacWorks but with a slightly funny screen aspect ratio. You could also run GEM... (he said, plugging an old project ;-) )

 

[lisa2]

Nice with the RamStak? Why is it that lower right row always seems to be empty? Also, is RamStak usable in Lisa 7/7, or is it only good in Macworks?

And yes, that's a 2/10 all the way.

The last row on the RamStack is normally un-populated, leaving the board with 1.5 MB of RAM. This plus a standard half meg memory board in the other mem slot makes a total of 2 MB of RAM, the most Lisa can address. Both MacWorks and 7/7 apps support the 2 Meg config.

 

[ried]

Very helpful info, everyone, thank you. Replacement caps for the PSU should arrive this week and we'll see if it boots as soon as they're swapped in. Sounds like this has all of the right hardware and still runs Lisa Office System, so if the 10MB widget drive somehow works, should be fun.

 

[stepleton]

should we assume that this machine still runs the original Lisa Office System?

Not necessarily: MacWorks is very happy to run on original Lisa 2 hardware --- as @cheesestraws suggests, everything will just look strangely tall. Until Apple developed the square pixel mod, this is just how it was for XL users.

My Lisa 2's original users had a cheap and cheerful fix for this: they just tweaked the vertical height potentiometer on the video board until the pixels were square; nevermind that the screen now had thick black bands of unused space on the top and bottom as the image was squeezed into shape!

Your Lisa can run the Office System (and this may have been what you meant by "runs"), but I would still expect that you will find it booting into MacWorks. If you don't, it will be a pleasant surprise. Just in case, it might be useful to image your Widget before you attempt a boot (I've seen very few examples of what real people actually used the Office System for...) but that could be a topic for later on.

 

[ScutBoy]

The last row on the RamStack is normally un-populated, leaving the board with 1.5 MB of RAM. This plus a standard half meg memory board in the other mem slot makes a total of 2 MB of RAM, the most Lisa can address. Both MacWorks and 7/7 apps support the 2 Meg config.

Bravo - thanks for clearing that up for me!

 

[Paralel]

Regarding the square pixel modification, has anyone ever dumped the EPROMs and the VSROM? Other than those the only other piece of the original package was what I am guessing was a neck pin socket of some kind?

 

[ScutBoy]

That's a little transformer that goes between the video board and the neckboard(?) I just unplugged mine and left it there when I swapped out the ROMs to turn my machine back into a Lisa.

 

[Paralel]

That's a little transformer that goes between the video board and the neckboard(?) I just unplugged mine and left it there when I swapped out the ROMs to turn my machine back into a Lisa.

Oh, ok. I wasn't able to tell much from the image. It seems like such a simple upgrade, I just hope someone has imaged the ROMs and done a write up on the transformer. Given what people charge for the kit now, it's awful.

 

[stepleton]

I think I've known the original screen geometry to work even with the transformer in place, but that memory could be faulty --- it would be nice to have an independent confirmation of it.

The boot ROMs for the square pixel mod are here:

Index of /bits/Apple/Lisa/firmware

I think the video state ROM for the square pixel mod has the part number 341-0348-A, and if it does, then it's here:

Index of /bits/Apple/Lisa/firmware/video

 

[ried]

Replacement caps arrived from Mouser today, so I swapped them into the Lisa's PSU. Put it back together, hit the power button and hoped for the best.









It's alive! But its widget hard drive doesn't seem to be working... I forgot to disconnect it, as @stepleton suggested. D'oh. The display also appears to need adjustment. Sure seems like this hasn't been booted up in decades.

But still... it's alive

What should I do next to rehabilitate this lovely old machine?