My new Lisa

[haplain]

I've wanted a Lisa for so long now but yesterday I finally made it happen. I picked one up for $150 down the street. It came with Lisa, keyboard, mouse, and power chord. The computer also came with a RAM upgrade from Apple. Everything is there I/O Board, RAM, etc. I'm in the process of documenting everything but wanted to share with the group. What should I watch out for, or be weary of when trying to repair and get this piece of history working? Everything is there, just needs to be cleaned up and probably recapped. Please let me know your thoughts, I've never worked on a computer this old.

 

[Concorde1993]

Is this an original Lisa, or a Lisa 2? Either way, $150 is a steal for these rarities.

 

[haplain]

Is this an original Lisa, or a Lisa 2? Either way, $150 is a steal for these rarities.

Sorry, I should have clarified. Its a Lisa 2 with a Memory upgrade (Part number A6SO304) I've ordered a 10MB HD, floppy for it since this only has a floppy. Does anyone know what kind of memory upgrade that is? It has two MASSIVE boards in it looks like 2x 512 boards perhaps?

 

[TheEisenfaust]

My intense jealousy of your snag knows no bounds... Good move good sir, good move. :lisa2:

 

[mcdermd]

$150! What sort of fairy tale land did you find that in? Man, $150. :approve: with jealousy.

 

[Macdrone]

A Lisa seriously? Its just not fair. Its like unobtainium for a poor fellar like me, and you get it for a pittence. Good job good sir.

 

[CelGen]

Welcome to the $150 club. It's nice when you get cool gear on the dime. :lisa2:

The primary thing to check is if your I/O board still has its battery pack. If it does it's probably leaking and you have damage to the I/O board and the backplane. If it doesn't either someone already removed it (and spared you a lot of problems) or you have the later Lisa 2/10 I/O board which completely excluded a battery.

Speaking of 2/10, does your lisa have a parallel port on the back? That is the easiest way to determine if you own a Lisa 2/5 (there is one) or 2/10 (no parallel port). The /5 and /10 don't mean much. Just tells if there was either an external 5mb drive or an internal 10mb drive. If you bought an internal drive for a 2/5 there's no promises you'll get it to work if it's going to emulate the Widget hard drive.

As for ram, the Lisa will take up to 2mb I believe although for the most part people stick with the stock meg. LOS doesn't really have anything that demands a lot of ram.

As for recapping, I found the primary concern was the primary paper filter caps blowing up. You can use modern polyester caps as substitutes.

 

[Concorde1993]

Its a Lisa 2 with a Memory upgrade

Congrats on your conquest. Pics are definitely a must.

 

[haplain]

Here is the photos of my boards. It would appear there is a space for a battery but it is not present?? Is that correct? It would also appear I have a Serial port... Please help me out.

 

[CelGen]

The cut resistor on the I/O board (and the presence of the parallel port) means this was formerly a Lisa 1 that was upgraded. Nothing special there. A lot of people did that.

Your battery pack IS missing however it appears it was after the battery leaked but your board still looks in good condition so it's probably still good.

Have you tried powering it up yet? Lisa's don't have a reputation of blowing up at random.....excluding those filter caps.

MacMothership has a corner of their website dedicated to the Lisa. They have images of the OS, the 7/7 applications and the dev environment plus a bunch of handy utilities.

 

[haplain]

This is the only photo I have for now. My Lisa is happily sitting next to some Cubes. I hope to have the Lisa up and running soon, with countless thanks to uniserver and his awesome skills/help.

 

[uniserver]

Knock on some wood, hopefully all this will power up.

Before you turn it on, lite a cigarette, put it in your mouth,

and then say " Hold on to your butts " while you turn it on

 

[UNA_Lion]

Congrats on your find!