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Need some serious Help with Apple Lisa/Mac XL & H-ROMs

MarNo84

Well-known member
Hi friends :D

what do I miss here? :(

... I just burned me the last Lisa ROMS, the H-ROMs (341-0175-H & 341-0176-H) on suitable 2764 ROMs but I only get such gibberish on the screen when I plug them onto the CPU-Board. 

Here's also a short video of my Mac XL/Lisa showing what I mean: https://youtube.de/watch?v=d93gUHUsrwM

There is even no startup-beep. When I put back my original ROMs (341-0346-A & 341-0347-A) everything went back to normal.

These are the ROM dumps I used:

http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Apple/Lisa/firmware/

https://www.macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=14062

I already did this:

- removed the special CRT converter/transformer that sits near the screen inside the cage

- cross-checked the Chips by dumping my originals, burned them onto these and different other EPROMs again - they work flawlessly :/

- I also managed to get me a suitable original VSROM 341-0229-A for the CPU-Board, but this didn't help :/  

- checked for visible damages on all parts 

- scratched my head till loss of hair...

Is there something I may forget to change when changing to the H's? Or are these ROM-Dumps somewhat special to burn?

My Eprommer is a Willem Universal Eprommer PCB50B (parallel port), used under Windows 98SE :D  

I also welcome, if someone would be so kind and just dump/image his or hers H-ROMs for me :D  

Any advise is welcome :D  

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lisa2

Well-known member
- I also managed to get me a suitable original VSROM 341-0229-A for the CPU-Board, but this didn't help :/  
Sounds like an issue with the VSROM to me.

If you are switching from the ScreenMod(3A) ROMs to H Roms, then using the correct VSROM (non-ScreenMod) is mandatory.  Where did you get the VSROM, how do you know that the VSROM you are using is good?

Rick

 

MarNo84

Well-known member
Sounds like an issue with the VSROM to me.

If you are switching from the ScreenMod(3A) ROMs to H Roms, then using the correct VSROM (non-ScreenMod) is mandatory.  Where did you get the VSROM, how do you know that the VSROM you are using is good?

Rick
Ah right :D well I checked the VSROM also vice-versa ;) I just used my other Lisa 2/5 to cross-check every Chips ;) the VSROM  works just flawlessly in my other machine - the H-ROMs do not work properly on the other machine too  :/

 
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lisa2

Well-known member
Ah right :D well I checked the VSROM also vice-versa ;) I just used my other Lisa 2/5 to cross-check every Chips ;) the VSROM  works just flawlessly in my other machine - the H-ROMs do also not work properly on the other machine :/
I am confused, are you saying that have another working system with "H" ROMs that the VidRom does work in?   

 

MarNo84

Well-known member
I am confused, are you saying that have another working system with "H" ROMs that the VidRom does work in?   
Ah, no - my other Lisa is a 2/5 with F-ROMs and in this machine my "new" 341-0229-A VSROM works without any issues. But if I put in these H-ROMs in this one too, I get the same result as on my Macintosh XL ;)

 

lisa2

Well-known member
"F-ROM", that makes sense now.  If you PM me, I will send you my H ROM images to compare with what you have.  

Thanks,

Rick

 

MarNo84

Well-known member
"F-ROM", that makes sense now.  If you PM me, I will send you my H ROM images to compare with what you have.  

Thanks,

Rick
OMG!!! My Life-Savior :D  just see what you did to me ;)  This was such a happy moment ... unbelievable... I tried several official and inofficial sources - all corrupt - thank you so much :D

...even my Mac Works/Macintosh OS is booting just fine from it's widget drive ;)  last step will be a proper recap of the video board and the screen calibration.

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sunder

Well-known member
So to add a bit of detail to what's happening here, the VSROM stands for Video State ROM, it's a state machine in a ROM that contains the horizontal, and vertical timing info used by the video display circuitry.

The A-H ROMs use the normal Lisa rectangular pixels, and the VSROM for these provides 720x384 resolution.

When the Mac was introduced, Apple wanted to provide MacWorks to make the Lisa into the Mac XL, as part of this they wanted to also provide square pixels, so they wrote a new ROM "3A" which is paired with a special VSROM that provides 608x431 resolution. The 3A ROM contains video routines similar to QuickDraw that expect this size screen. So when switching between 3A and one of the other ROMs, the VSROM must also be switched. (There is also an inline, but unnecessary transformer you could install as part of the screen modification kit that helps with something with the 3A ROM, but you can get it to work without it if you adjust the brightness.)

The 3A ROM will only allow you to run MacWorks and nothing else. If you try to boot Xenix or another OS, your display will be messed up similar to the photos above. So there's little advantage to the 3A ROM.

You're better of with a MacPlus or a Mac SE though you'll get a slightly smaller display than using a Lisa with this ROM.

You're better off with the "H" ROM for most Lisa uses as that will let you run LOS, Xenix, UniPlus, Monitor, Gem, and MacWorks.

If you use MacWorks on a normal A-H boot ROM system, the display will be slightly stretched, and circles will look like ovals, but it's not a big deal. Typical ROMs for Lisa 2's are either F, or H. Lisa 1's will likely use D ROMs. Other ROMs are more rare as they weren't released except in prototypes, though they did exist. H is the best one if you have a choice, but F works pretty well, but NeoWidEx won't work with anything but H, and also if there's a memory error, the H ROM's service mode can be used to tell you which chip is broken by looking in low memory.

There's one more facet to this, Apple hid the serial number of the Lisa in the VSROM, so once you install Lisa Office System, (or if you have an unhacked UniPlus install), it's tied to the exact specific VSROM serial number that those apps were branded by. While you can use any normal Lisa VSROM with the A-H boot ROMs, once you install the tools on the hard drive by copying them from the floppies, they're serialized and will only work with that specific serial number (and yes the source floppies get this number written to them as well). They'll refuse to print or to copy to another system.

If you get the X/Profile kit from Vintage Micros, John will provide you with the serial number used for those CF cards so they'll work properly. There is a magic serial number you can use that prevents the serialization from happening, see: https://lisalist2.com/index.php/topic,65.0.html when you use this, the copy will still warn you, but it will write serial #0 on the floppies which is the same as a virgin unserialized floppy. So switching to that for LisaEm. You could burn this to a VSROM as well if you know what you're doing and get the same effect. This won't let you run already serialized apps off an installed hard drive, but it will let you use the same floppies without worrying about them getting serialized, which is not a big deal since you can use BLU or DiskCopy 4.2 to rewrite clean ones.

Hope this helps.

 

MarNo84

Well-known member
Yeah :D  Playing with an X/Profile will be a task for the future ;) till then I keep me happy with original Widgets and Profile drives. Next project will be my IDEfile. As I stated above, the Screen gibberish was instantly when I turned on the Lisa. It was due faulty H-ROMs not the mismatch of VSROM or OS issues ;)  But yeah, it was anyway fun what all could and did happen due playing with ROMs.

 

pinto_guy

Well-known member
mmm, it looks like I'm having a similar problem. I'm trying to convert my Mac XL back to a 2/10 model. To start with, I took the CPU board from the XL, swapped the two ROM and the VSROM chips from my good 2/10, inserted this converted XL CPU board in my 2/10, and confirmed that it worked OK.

So you'd say I just need to copy the two ROM's using an EPROM programmer, and burn into two blanks EPROM's, and that should work, right ?

Well, it did not work. The copies I made (341-075-A and 76-A) are bit-by-bit the same as the ones that can be downloaded from bitsavers.org, but I cannot boot or even see a good video screen out of the new EPROMs. If I replace with the original H-ROM chips, everything works, even though they're supposed to be bit-by-bit the same. I am clearly missing something here. Could it be something in the hardware itself ? Read voltage perhaps. I need to point out that my original EPROM's are Hitachi HN482764, and the new ones are AM2764DC (AMD) chips. They're both type 27, 64k, 28pins chips, and should be somewhat equivalent.... or not ?

Would anyone have any idea what's happening ?
 

Greniu

Active member
Hi friends,

Is it possible to burn VSROM with the valid serial number that is on the LISA sticker? I had to swap VSROM because it failed, so I would like to have original.
My Lisa Office System software has also previous serial written to it, so I would like to be able to run nit or deserialize.

Which programmer do you recommend for writing these ROMS?: "gq-4x4 usb programmer" or "Willem Universal Eprommer PCB50B"

Thanks a lot!
 
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