Lisa OS

[bibilit]

I have been playing for the first time with Lisa OS for real.
All Profiles i have dealt with were bad.
So all in all a good experience, Lisa is not mine but this one is in very good shape, and System is the French one, so pretty rare.

 

[stepleton]

Do you know if the owner has the installation media for this French version of the Office System? I don't know if it's ever been backed up...

 

[bibilit]

Should ask, chances are thin to have the floppies and that those are still in good shape today.
Anyway, if those are available, and if a copy can be made, how can the media can be made available online ?

 

[bibilit]

Available, not all of them though.

 

[stepleton]

Even an incomplete set would be a fascinating recovery! I hope your friend might be willing to image those disks someday. If they are not certain how to do it, I'd be happy to help them through the process. (The two most obvious options include using Disk Copy 4.2 on a Mac or using the BLU utility on a Lisa.)

 

[bibilit]

Hi Stepleton,

Thanks, was able to make a copy of "Système de bureau 1 to 4" (probably the equivalent of : Lisa Office System - 7/7 ??) and LisaList for the time being (even if LisaList seems to be faulty, keeps throwing me errors messages when trying to open files)

I will ask my friend to make a copy of the Pascal ones for good sake.

So probably still mising a few units (LIsaDraw, LisaWrite,LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaCalc and LisaTerminal)

With those copies and a clean drive i will try to make proper images (using Disk Copy 4.2) the process should be pretty straightforward, but if it's not... please advise.

By the way, have you got a source for the small bulb which is in the main switch ? i have been scoring the web to find one but seems to be unavailable ( type #86 T1 3/4 6.3 volts) but you probably already know all that.

 

[stepleton]

Thanks, was able to make a copy of "Système de bureau 1 to 4" (probably the equivalent of : Lisa Office System - 7/7 ??) and LisaList for the time being (even if LisaList seems to be faulty, keeps throwing me errors messages when trying to open files)

Excellent, thank you! Indeed, I am virtually certain that this should be 7/7. "Système de bureau" means "Office System" if I'm not mistaken, and the splash screen in your photos says "7/7" as well as the version number 3.1F (F is for France, I suspect).

So probably still mising a few units (LIsaDraw, LisaWrite,LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaCalc and LisaTerminal)

One thing that will be interesting to see is how different these software distribution disks will be. Lisa Office System software kept the text information for menus and dialogue boxes in separate files called "phrase files". Porting an application to a different locale could have been as simple as shipping it with a different phrase file --- although maybe there were other changes too, like setting defaults for A4 paper or similar.

With those copies and a clean drive i will try to make proper images (using Disk Copy 4.2) the process should be pretty straightforward, but if it's not... please advise.

This should be just fine!

By the way, have you got a source for the small bulb which is in the main switch ?

I'm afraid I don't, sorry --- maybe ask over on http://lisalist2.com ?

 

[mg.man]

By the way, have you got a source for the small bulb which is in the main switch ?

VintageMicros

I would e.mail to check availability and cost to post to you.

 

[bibilit]

Excellent, thank you! Indeed, I am virtually certain that this should be 7/7. "Système de bureau" means "Office System" if I'm not mistaken, and the splash screen in your photos says "7/7" as well as the version number 3.1F (F is for France, I suspect).

Yes, but IIRC floppies had version number 2.0 F (yes F is for France or better French) so probably the Hard drive (proFile) was updated at some point while the floppy set was the earlier version (or am i wrong ?)

One thing that will be interesting to see is how different these software distribution disks will be. Lisa Office System software kept the text information for menus and dialogue boxes in separate files called "phrase files"

that's the reason why floppy drives seems to be blank ? (tried booting from the first floppy System and booted to installation)

I would e.mail to check availability and cost to post to you.

Thanks

 

[stepleton]

Yes, but IIRC floppies had version number 2.0 F (yes F is for France or better French) so probably the Hard drive (proFile) was updated at some point while the floppy set was the earlier version (or am i wrong ?)

Hmm, you're probably right. Well, it would be nice to have 2.0F images too

that's the reason why floppy drives seems to be blank ? (tried booting from the first floppy System and booted to installation)

If I understand what you mean correctly: yes, there are a lot more files on any Lisa software disk from Apple than what you see in the Office System. These are not visible on the Desktop. Installing an application (or a "tool" in Lisa terminology) copies over the program binary for the tool itself as well as supporting files like phrase files and so on. Installing the Office System results in copies of a few dozen files being placed on the hard disk, if I recall correctly. These include things like drivers and library files.

 

[bibilit]

These are not visible on the Desktop

Yes, that’s it…. when you are used to Macintosh files, first thought is that someone has removed files from a good looking floppy.

what is difference between 2.0 and 3.0 ?

 

[stepleton]

That's actually a good question; I haven't used version 2 very much at all, but I think it's closer in look and feel to version 1 (which I have used) than version 3. Someone else likely knows more.

What I can do is compare version 1 and version 3, and some of what I describe could be reflected in differences between version 2 and version 3. Changes I can think of off the top of my head include:

• (Under the hood) Different filesystem: there were three (I think) versions of the Lisa OS FS, and the OS version 3 filesystem supported HFS-style hierarchical directory structures for the first time. (Previous versions were a bit like MFS: you may have seen folders in the Finder/Desktop, but the underlying filesystem was flat.)
• (Under the hood) More hardware support: the Widget and the 3.5" drive required changes introduced in versions 2+ of the Office System.
• System font for menus, dialogues is more condensed.
• User fonts allow you to choose text size and font face independently of each other.
• Colour printing introduced for LisaDraw and other tools; support for the Canon Inkjet Printer.
• Spellchecking for LisaWrite.
• I think better copy/paste support between tools was touted for 7/7, but I don't have a reference for that.
• Surely many bugfixes...
• ...

Hmm... you know, I think I'll ask this question over on LisaList2 and see what people there can come up with

 

[compu_85]

The small bulb is a 3w wedge bulb, used in some car instrument panels. The bulb for the blower motor control on a 99-03 VW Golf is the same.

_J

 

[bibilit]

The small bulb is a 3w wedge bulb, used in some car instrument panels. The bulb for the blower motor control on a 99-03 VW Golf is the same.

Yes i know the specs, but this 6.3 volts is incredibly hard to find in France. i can order it Online, but the P&P is awful for such a small item.

 

[bibilit]

Another question, what will be the better setup for imaging the disks ? should a 1.44 drive will work safely or a 800k will be better ?

 

[stepleton]

Hmm... I don't have enough experience to say myself. If nobody else knows any better ... start with whatever you have that's easiest to set up, then switch to the other one for any disks that the first drive doesn't work with?

Thanks for archiving these disks!

 

[bibilit]

Tried with a pair of Powerbooks yesterday evening, DiskCopy 4.2 is complaining about a lack of memory when the 400k disk is inserted.

So maybe an issue with PB drives.

I have other toys to have a try anyway.

 

[bibilit]

Macs with 800K double-sided drives and Mac-compatible 1.4MB High Density (HD) drives can read and write the MFS format used by 400K disks as long as they are running System 7.5.5 or earlier. Under Mac OS 7.6 and 7.6.1, they can read 400K floppies but not write to them. There is no support at all for 400K floppy disks in Mac OS 8 and beyond.

Think i found the issue, one of the PB had MacOs 8.

 

[bibilit]

So, good and bad news. I was able to image the files. To cut a long story short, a Macintosh SE/30 and pair of external floppy drives were required to do so (800 and 1,4)

bad news is out of the 5 install floppies, only 4 were available in the original set… so chances are thin a full installation will work.
Indeed i tried under Lisaem, but was not able to go too far (but maybe i am not good)

most images are mounted fine under Lisaem.
So not everything is lost …

i can send files to anyone willing to go further or have a try.

 

[fri0701]

So, good and bad news. I was able to image the files. To cut a long story short, a Macintosh SE/30 and pair of external floppy drives were required to do so (800 and 1,4)

bad news is out of the 5 install floppies, only 4 were available in the original set… so chances are thin a full installation will work.
Indeed i tried under Lisaem, but was not able to go too far (but maybe i am not good)

most images are mounted fine under Lisaem.
So not everything is lost …

i can send files to anyone willing to go further or have a try.

Thanks for doing the imaging! I’d love to take a look at the images, if you can send them over.