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Think different! :b&w:
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Lisa?
- Thread starter mactjaap
- Start date
Concorde1993
Well-known member
Apple hasn't been using floppy drives with their computers since the release of the iMac in 1998, so there's really nothing to "think" about. All of the "AIO" Macs, in addition to the modular Macs, all had the auto disk eject feature, which was a pretty unique feature for its time (all DOS computers used manual ejection, including Apple's II-series, the III, and the Twiggy Lisa). Even the external floppy drives had auto eject, such as the 400k, 800k, and SuperDrive.
jpolster2009
Banned
Apple's macs use auto disk ejection for the slot loading dvds as well. Plus every modern mac ive had (then sold to pay a bill) ive used a USB Imation SuperDrive. It has autoeject
Concorde1993
Well-known member
OK, my mistake. When you said "disk," I thought you were referring to a "floppy disk," as there is no such thing as a "floppy disc." Obviously the auto eject feature is prevalent in the modern Macs, as it is a staple of Apple engineering. The main difference between the auto feature in the floppy, and the modern DVD drive is the DVD drive accepts a disc about three-quarters of the way in, while with the floppy drive, you basically have to insert in the whole disk before the drive accepts it.
John Hokanson Jr.
Well-known member
In a way, the auto EJECTION makes sense considering that the Mac was designed to be used by people who were not at all computer literate. It removes the chance of data corruption if the disk were ejected in the middle of a write cycle. A menu or disk light could easily be ignored by somebody without a clue. To say nothing of the fact that going with the Sony 3.5 and the plastic shielded disks was the right move as well.
That being said, I don't quite understand the point behind auto INJECTION for floppies. That seems like a totally needless expense.
BTW, folklore.org REALLY makes you appreciate what a hack Steve Jobs is, and how brilliant the rest of the Mac team were.
That being said, I don't quite understand the point behind auto INJECTION for floppies. That seems like a totally needless expense.
BTW, folklore.org REALLY makes you appreciate what a hack Steve Jobs is, and how brilliant the rest of the Mac team were.
H3NRY
Well-known member
You guys sure found a bunch of pictures of prototypes! Some of those are obviously very early, earlier than any I have seen. Now you know what a Mac looks like with a 5.25" disk slot (suitable for a CD drive). It would be cool to build a modern Mac into that Lisa chassis if you can't find parts to restore it.
If you read closely, I didn't say Burrell designed the Sony drive, I said he designed it IN. I meant he designed it into the Mac. I could have phrased that better.
The Sony drive caused a bit of a problem when Apple held a programming course for the (pre-release) Mac in Palo Alto. The teacher offered us copies of his sample disks, which we all wanted, but none of us had 3.5" blank disks. We spread out across the peninsula at lunch hitting all the electronics stores looking for disks. Fortunately H-P had just released an industrial computer which used the brand new disks, and we cleaned out the H-P distributor, $400 for 4 boxes of 10 disks, then split up our cache of disks after lunch so each of us went home with a half-dozen disks of code and demos. Some of the demos were early enough they didn't have a Finder, such as the Pepsi Caps and the Alice disks.
I didn't have and couldn't afford a Lisa, so I adapted the Lisa / Mac programming tools to run on my Apple II and Mac, and my first Mac programs were written on the Apple II, transferred to the Mac by serial cable, and debugged with the serial version of MacsBug. Yves Lempereur quickly ported the S-C Macro Assembler from the Apple II to the Mac so we had a native Mac development system, and the Consullair C editor, compiler, linker, and assembler followed not long after. MacOS was a new and mysterious environment, much more complex and rich than Apple II DOS or PC DOS. Even the "phone book" programming manual didn't help that much - you sort of got the Mac philosophy by osmosis. We all knew the Lisa and Mac were the new face of computing.
The Lisa team's philosophy was different. They didn't offer or want outside developers' help. They envisioned a complete integrated office automation system supplied by Apple. Therefore there was no attempt to recruit developers, in fact the Lisa OS was considered a trade secret.
If you read closely, I didn't say Burrell designed the Sony drive, I said he designed it IN. I meant he designed it into the Mac. I could have phrased that better.
The Sony drive caused a bit of a problem when Apple held a programming course for the (pre-release) Mac in Palo Alto. The teacher offered us copies of his sample disks, which we all wanted, but none of us had 3.5" blank disks. We spread out across the peninsula at lunch hitting all the electronics stores looking for disks. Fortunately H-P had just released an industrial computer which used the brand new disks, and we cleaned out the H-P distributor, $400 for 4 boxes of 10 disks, then split up our cache of disks after lunch so each of us went home with a half-dozen disks of code and demos. Some of the demos were early enough they didn't have a Finder, such as the Pepsi Caps and the Alice disks.
I didn't have and couldn't afford a Lisa, so I adapted the Lisa / Mac programming tools to run on my Apple II and Mac, and my first Mac programs were written on the Apple II, transferred to the Mac by serial cable, and debugged with the serial version of MacsBug. Yves Lempereur quickly ported the S-C Macro Assembler from the Apple II to the Mac so we had a native Mac development system, and the Consullair C editor, compiler, linker, and assembler followed not long after. MacOS was a new and mysterious environment, much more complex and rich than Apple II DOS or PC DOS. Even the "phone book" programming manual didn't help that much - you sort of got the Mac philosophy by osmosis. We all knew the Lisa and Mac were the new face of computing.
The Lisa team's philosophy was different. They didn't offer or want outside developers' help. They envisioned a complete integrated office automation system supplied by Apple. Therefore there was no attempt to recruit developers, in fact the Lisa OS was considered a trade secret.
