New Lisa! some questions about what to do with it

[nahuelmarisi]

I just obtained a working Lisa 2! Mine is the one that does not have an external parallel port.

However there are a few things missing

Most notably the floppy drive.

When I power on the lisa it does its system test ,and well since there is not HD or floppy drive i can't do much else.

The oldest mac I have is a mac plus. I was wondering if the floppy drive from that machine will work in the lisa. I read online that a 400k flopy drive from a mac 128k or 512k should work, but I don't have any of these available.

Unfortunately it seems that my floppy contorller is the 400k one. HOwever, would I be able to use the mac plus 800k floppy drive to read 400k floppies>

The other problem is that I have no hardrive. I did a search on ebay and they seem to be extremely rare. Since mine has no external parallel port I can only use a widget one.

It seems that Lisa Os can only be installed on an HD. Is there no way of having a minimal boot floppy to play around with? Just to demo the machine at least What about macworks?

Finally, is there any way I could get some use out this machine? I read taht appleshare should work through its serial port. Anything else than can be done? Perhaps emulate some kind of mass storage device?

What about an SCSI card, would I be able to boot from an external scsi hd?

So far there's not much that I can do, if I can't get a floppy drive it's even more useless unfortunately. It would be hard to justify the large space it takes in its current condition.

Sorry for all these questions. I tried to read as much as possible but haven't gone very far. Especially when it comes to using my mac plus floppy drive.

Thanks, Nahuel

 

[david__schmidt]

You should start here: http://lowendmac.com/lisa/lisa2.shtml

It says: "...the Lisa 2 adopted the same 400 KB 3.5" floppy drive as the simultaneously introduced Macintosh." Maybe you can fit a 400k drive in the chassis?

Hard drive replacement - look at these guys, who built a compact flash drive to replace the ProFile: http://sigmasevensystems.com/xprofile

 

[krfkeith]

Wow, that's really cool! Nice find. You might be able to try ethernet, but I'm not sure. There was a guy running a Lisa web server, but he was using MacWorks, which really takes the fun out of the Lisa IMHO.

 

[TheNeil]

I've had some success using the 400Kb floppy images that I (think) came from the Sunder site with my Lisa 2. It was a while ago now that I needed to re-install Lisa OS but I was able to use a Mac (Quadra 700 I think) and Disk Copy. I seem to remember that as long as I was using low density disks then everything was OK (Disk Copy whinged but big deal, it wrote the disks).

So why am I yammering? Well if the Mac could read the disk images and write them out, and the Lisa 2 can read them, there's a good bet that they could be compatible (I'd have to check to see if the connection cables match). There's also a good chance that the 800Kb drive will work quite happily with 400Kb disks (I have hooked up 1.44Mb drives to 800Kb systems and not had any problems - been sensible and not tried to insert 1.44Mb disks though)

Haven't really played with mine enough to know what it can/can't do (aside from removing MacWorks and installing Lisa OS). Good find though and, if it's the one that was on eBay UK, I had my eye on it and wondered if anyone would be brave enough to take it on

 

[nahuelmarisi]

It acutally was on ebay UK. Although I didn't win. However for some reason the auction winner did not buy it and I got a second chance offer which of course I took!

I have seen the xprofiler btw but for 359 dls the price is way, way, way above what I could pay. It's double the cost of the lisa!

I'll try hooking up a floppy drive first and tell you guys how it went. I found diskcopy 4.2 images on the mothership website of lisa os so that should get me going (if the floppy drive works).

The main problem now is how to get the os on a floppy instead of an HD. Any ideas?

 

[sunder]

I just obtained a working Lisa 2! Mine is the one that does not have an external parallel port.

You probably have a Lisa 2/10, but lacking a hard drive is a death blow since you can't do very much with a Lisa without one. There is a replacement for these here: http://www.sigmasevensystems.com/xprofile but they are expensive. You can buy them here: http://vintagemicros.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/30/products_id/99

It all also depends on what you want to do with it.

If you only want to use MacWorks on it, the SCSI card will work fine, and there are CPU upgrades, and floppy drive upgrades for it. If you go this route, you'll lessen its value as it won't be able to run Lisa Office System.

The floppy drive from the original Mac, sometimes you can find external versions of these, will work with the Lisa as they're 400K drives. You'll have to remove it from the case and install it internally.

So another thing, does your Lisa have the drive cage even? It sounds like someone stripped it... hopefully you do have the cage at least as they're hard to replace.

Head on over to http://lisafaq.sunder.net and browse those pages to learn more about the Lisa. It would help you to figure out exactly what you have in yours.

:b&w:

 

[nahuelmarisi]

I do have teh case for the harddrive and floppy drive fortunately. what are the pinouts of the disk drive?

 

[sunder]

This claims to have it:

http://www.ntua.gr/electronics/hwb/connector/storage/macfloppy2.html

here's another one:

http://pinouts.ru/Storage/macfloppy2_pinout.shtml

But I'm not sure if those are correct as pin 9 is +5V as listed there, and 20 is "N.C." Or Not connected, so that's probably wrong... OTOH, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=18207&coll=ap has the same pinouts, so it might be +5V and N.C. but possibly they mean something to the drive to allow single sided use, not sure.

Anyway, whatever you do, make sure that it is reversible.

You could try ebay item number: 220177665009, but I'm not sure if those are superdrives or 800k drives or what, or if they're even working drives. The cases are a bit too modern, so they're more likely to be superdrives or 800k drives than 400k drives.

 

[Kallikak]

Those ebay drives are 800K ones, meant to work with both macs and the IIgs. They won't help with the Lisa.

 

[Mac128]

There's also a good chance that the 800Kb drive will work quite happily with 400Kb disks

The 400K drive in the Lisa 2/MacXL are the exact same drive family. The Lisa drive did not have the same auto eject feature ... it is triggered on shutdown regardless if a disk is in the drive or not. The Mac will only auto eject if a disk is in the drive. Either way, it will work fine until you have a crash with the disk in the drive, then you'll have to pull the front panel off and press the manual eject switch.

If you are able to try it, please report the results, or if anyone else knows for sure ...

As for the 800K drive, it usually requires upgrading the ROMs and using MacWorks Plus. However, since one model of the 800K drive will boot a 128K & 512K, P/N MFD-51W-03 (found in the The Apple 3.5" External Drive P/N A9M0106 as listed on above ebay and later Macs), There is a good chance that the Lisa will be able to use it as well. See this thread: http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1492 as I suspect if it works all the same principles will apply. Mainly, it requires a special cable to avoid constant drive access. If your Mac Plus is a later model, it may well have the MFD-51W-03 which is easily identified by red numbers on the side of the drive, as well as the proper cable. An 800K drive SE & Mac II will most likely have this drive, but not the cable since the later Macs did not supply the speed control signal on the internal FDD.

One thing you can do without a floppy drive is run the secret Built-in Service Module. Turn on the Lisa. At the end of the kernel test (when you hear the first click), hit any key except caps lock. At the end of the module test (when you hear the second click), hold down the Apple key and press "2". The Lisa should beep 3 times and present an error box – ignore it. Hold down the Apple key and press the "s" key. The resulting service menu should be self-explanatory.

FYI, Larry Pina suggests you can use the same Hard Drive used in the SE in the Lisa and plug it in in place of the Widget. I know absolutely nothing about the Widget, but I found this somewhat surprising. Anyway something for you to investigate or for someone else to expound on.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

I still have trouble identifying the right pins. I can see the yellow coloured cable, which I guess is no 1. But i can't determine if it's the top. Assumming it is should the pins be the following:

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

I do have the red labeled drive on the mac plus. If those pinouts are right then i did cut on the right places I think. Otherwise where can i find another cable to cut? I only have one left so wouldn't want to ruin that one

Regardng the "right cable". I use the cable that comes with the lisa, and i plug it directly to the floppy drive of my mac so I don't see how the plus' cable fits in the picture.

Besides, in your previous post (the one you sent me the link to) you don't mention any cable modifications when puting a 800k drive on a 64kb rom mac. Are you saying that no drive modification should have been necessary on my behalf?

Secondly, my SEs harddrive is a 40 mb one, are you sure it would work on my lisa? is tehre any risk that my lisa will get damaged if it doesn't?

Otherwise i'll give it a try.

anyway, thanks for your great help!

 

[sunder]

The 400K drive in the Lisa 2/MacXL are the exact same drive family. The Lisa drive did not have the same auto eject feature ... it is triggered on shutdown regardless if a disk is in the drive or not. The Mac will only auto eject if a disk is in the drive. Either way, it will work fine until you have a crash with the disk in the drive, then you'll have to pull the front panel off and press the manual eject switch.

That's almost true.

The original 400K floppy drives in both the Macintoshes and the Lisas were identical. They were usually, but not always Sony units.

The difference in drives between Mac's and Lisa's came around the time of either the 512K or the Plus - i.e. the first of those to introduce double sided floppy drives.

The Lisa doesn't always auto-eject the floppy on power off, but this is a function of software (either the ROM or the last OS running), and not the drives themselves. If you run Lisa Office System, it will eject floppy media before shutting down, for example. The Lisa infact does have a software-eject feature just like the Mac 128.

You can always prevent a Lisa from booting off a floppy that's inserted into the drive by holding down either the mouse button or a key on power up. This will bypass the PRAM setting that says "always boot from floppy" and present the Lisa's standard boot menu.

If you can find an external floppy meant to be used with the original Mac 128 (these were required due to all the swapping you'd have to do otherwise), the drive inside those cases will work with Lisas. (So will the drive inside a Mac 128, but I certainly wouldn't want to sacrifice a Mac 128 to get a Lisa working as 128's are rare too, and a working 128 is a thing to treasure.)

Note that a "Mac XL" is really a Lisa. The term "Mac XL" is misleading since it refers to many kinds of Lisa 2's. Apple sold these as XL's by bundling MacWorks when they decided to no longer support the Lisa Office System software.

Some of these XL's were modified with a screen modification kit, so that they'd have square pixels instead of the 2:3 aspect ratio pixels. Lisas modified in this way could no longer run Lisa Office System (nor Xenix) and were stuck with only being able to run MacWorks variants. see http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Square_Dots.txt

and http://lisafaq.sunder.net/lisafaq-hw-rom_versions.html

XL stood for either eX-Lisa, or Extra Large (since a "Mac" XL had either 512K or 1M of memory while the Mac only had 128, and the XL also had a larger screen.)

(The nice thing about MacWorks is that you can run it without a hard drive, though this makes for a pretty lame Lisa, especially since you have to swap floppies just to boot, and then swap floppies some more to copy stuff from one disk to another. Kind of cripples the Lisa to being a little bit more useful than a Mac 128 - although I suppose if you can find the ancient ram disk program that might make things a lot better.)

An XL could be a Lisa 2, or a 2/5 or a 2/10. Either of those configs could have the screen modification kit, or they might have a stock ROM such as the H or F. The only thing the "XL" label means is that it came bundled with MacWorks. You could always buy MacWorks and turn your Lisa 2 into an XL.

(If you bought certain versions of MacWorks Plus, specifically those with hardware accelerators, you would also would no longer be able to run Lisa Office System.)

Modifying the Lisa's I/O ROM to support 800K floppies will also break usability with Lisa Office System. (I think - I don't know for sure since my Lisas have the stock 400K I/O ROM.)

Sometimes people refer to Lisa 2/10's as XL's, which also isn't quite right.

There is a difference in the whole entire I/O board between Lisa 2's and Lisa 2/10's. - the 10's have a slightly different I/O board that doesn't require the lite (sometimes called pepsi) card, and has the whole IWM on a single chip as opposed to several chips. It also has an I/O ROM version of 88 instead of A8, which is another way to identify them without actually looking.

A big danger with the old I/O boards (the A8's) is if they still have the 4-pack of NiCAD batteries - these have almost all leaked and in doing so have corroded the I/O board in the process. If yours has the pack still attached, immediately remove it!

 

[nahuelmarisi]

my lisa is a 2/10, with rom H88, and as far as I can tell it has no squared pixels modification. I'mbasing this on the rom number table that appears on the do it yourself lisa guide from sun remarketing.

I'm still a bit confused regarding what I shold do to try to get my mac plus 800k drive working on my lisa. I didn't understand if mac128 wanted me - or not- to remove the pins, and what did he mean about the "good cable".

 

[Mac128]

Check this post out to your other thread.

http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=31549#31549

Please try to keep your posts consolidated to avoid this kind of thing. Since you posted your pinouts here, I'll confirm that here.

I think you are looking at the cable connector pinouts? If so I think you are correct. These are the socket-header pinouts on the logicboard and drive which are a mirror of yours:

NOTCH KEY SIDE (top)

19-1

20-2

NO NOTCH KEY (bottom)

It appears as though you did this correctly. So then I would question your disks.

If you have the correct MFD-51W-03 drive it is the only one that MAY work on the Lisa, with the correct or modified cable. Any other 800K drive will not likely work regardless of the cable. There are no modifications to the drive.

Perhaps Sunder can answer these questions: The A9M0106 external drive has the Apple II controller built-in as does the UniDisk A2M2053 which may also be able to be used. Since the original Twiggy drives were designed to be used with the Apple II and then with Lisa, which has been bridged by the 400K controller ... I wonder if the Apple II controller could be used directly with the Lisa, bypassing the Twiggy adapter? Or even with the 400K controller.

As for the HD, Larry Pina is not clear on the matter, so I offer it for your INFO.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

I'm sorry about hte posts. They got mixed up since one was regarding the aquisition of a new lisa while the other was only related to the floppy drive.

I was looking at the cable yes. The drive itself is working .I have already put it back on my plus (ouch!) but i'll open it up and check the model for you. My other theory is that the cable is in bad shape.

I'm not using the long cable that comes from inside the lisa. I'm modifying the little one that is on the metal casing taht holds the floppy drive and harddrive. The big one connects to this smaller cable through a connector at the back of the hardrive/flppy drive holder case.

I'l look closely because it's possible that i actually got them mixed up the other way round. In that case i would need a new cable to test, however i don't seem to have one :S anybody with spare ones to sell me!?

thanks

UPDATE: the drive model is the one you say! i guess there's still hope. I need another cable to try.

 

[sunder]

The wider one is probably the 24 pin parallel port connector cable, that one goes to the Widget hard drive, well, it would if you had one. Don't attempt to plug that one into the floppy drive.

The narrower one should go to the floppy drive. I'm not sure how a 2/10's floppy is wired exactly. My Lisas are 2/5's, so they have an actual board on the left hand bottom side of the drive cage. A wider cable goes from the inside of the Lisa (the mother board connector) to that card, and then a small 18pin ribbon cable from that card goes to the floppy drive. Sounds like you have something similar without a card - note that you don't need a card since the 2/10's I/O board doesn't need that functionality.

Be careful which way you insert the floppy cable into the Lisa, I don't think they're keyed so it is possible to insert it upside down, if you do that, I think the Lisa won't turn on, so if you do that, it should be pretty easy to figure out.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

the floppy drive cable is keyed.

And i can identify the difference between the HD one and the floppy one.

I'm quite sure that the pins I removed are the correct ones.

The drive does not eject all the time, however it reads at an incredible low speed. When i try to boot it just stays there forever slooowly reading the floppy. According to the sun remarketing guide an 800k i/o rom is would solve this problem.

there are only two possible solutions they way I see it:

1. i got the pinouts wrong, therefore by ding them again (i need another cable), it would work. This is less likely.

2. only 400k floppy drives work with a 400k i/o rom. This would mean i wil ned to somehow get one of these drives.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

UPDATE: IT WORKS!!! (well not exactly...). The drive read amazingly slow, but it actually works! It took me about 1 hour (literally) to boot the lisa test floppy for H roms. This surely means taht the pins i removed were the right ones. However, it may also mean that without an 800k I/O rom I'm stuck with this ridiculous speed. Any ideas?

 

[Mac128]

Whatever you do ... DON'T DO THIS!

http://www.techquarium.com/aquaria/oldsite/buildlisa/molisa.html