Mac128
Well-known member
As for the FDD ... you could always try to find one of these:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/old_apple_world/Lisa-to-Mac-1.JPG
However, the best solution is try to pick up a 400K 3.5" drive off of eBay, either external or internal.
What you are doing with the 800K drives is a hack. Not knowing exactly how the Lisa FDD controller works, I am pleased it does work at all. As I said before if it works on the 128K Mac, it should work on the Lisa. However, as JDW specifically pointed out, when emulating the 400K mode (without 128K ROMs or HFS emulation), the 800K drive makes a grinding noise and runs more slowly than normal. This may be the case on the Lisa as well, though 1 hour to boot-up seems excessive. You may not have needed to cut both of the wires. Can you bridge the cuts in the ribbon cable with small pieces of wire to experiment? There should be no need to replace the cables as long as you simply cut sections out of it rather than destroyed the pins or connectors (another reason I always specify cutting wires, not pins). Second, understand why you are cutting the pins you are cutting. Pin 9 is -12V and pin 20 is PWM motor speed control for 400K FDD only. Keep in mind these pinouts are for the Macintosh ONLY. It is possible the Lisa FDD controller uses slightly different pin assignments, hence the need for testing your cuts. As the 800K drive controls its own speed and works on the 128K without additional instruction, I have to think the 800K drive should work just fine if you isolate the PWM, all other signals considered being the same as on a 128K. This is based on the fact that the floppy drive logicboard headers are the same for the 128K as they are on the Plus and only the cable isolates those signals which differentiate the 800K drive from the 400K drive. That said, the reason the 800K-03 rev drive works in the 128K is because pins 9 & 20 are connected for use with the IIGS, whereas they are physically disconnected on the earlier Mac specific models, though it is the additional circuitry that allows the 128K to use it (since the 128K won't use those pins anyway). Assuming the IIGS & Lisa are closer in FDD design than the Mac, that may account for different pin assignments: meaning the IIGS used pins 9 & 20 which may be at least partially the case with the Lisa as well. However, clearly cutting one of those pins disconnected the PWM motor signal that was causing your drive to continually eject so that at least is constant.
As for the floppy disk, I assume you are starting up with a MacWorks disk? What happens after that loads? Do you insert a Mac System disk? If so what happens then, is it still painfully slow? The reason I ask is once the Lisa begins emulating a Mac, assuming there was an issue with 400K Lisa disk formatting, the 800K drive should operate like it does on a Mac (assuming no other hardware issues) reading and writing standard Mac 400K MFS interleave. To be certain, make sure you create your 400K MacWorks (or Lisa) startup disk from the image exactly per the Sunder FAQ. That way the image will be copied sector for sector the way it was formatted on the Lisa 400K. That way, you will know it is formatted to be read by the Lisa with the proper interleave. If that fails to speed up the drive access, then it is definitely a hardware issue with the pin assignments or an incompatibility.
http://homepage3.nifty.com/old_apple_world/Lisa-to-Mac-1.JPG
However, the best solution is try to pick up a 400K 3.5" drive off of eBay, either external or internal.
What you are doing with the 800K drives is a hack. Not knowing exactly how the Lisa FDD controller works, I am pleased it does work at all. As I said before if it works on the 128K Mac, it should work on the Lisa. However, as JDW specifically pointed out, when emulating the 400K mode (without 128K ROMs or HFS emulation), the 800K drive makes a grinding noise and runs more slowly than normal. This may be the case on the Lisa as well, though 1 hour to boot-up seems excessive. You may not have needed to cut both of the wires. Can you bridge the cuts in the ribbon cable with small pieces of wire to experiment? There should be no need to replace the cables as long as you simply cut sections out of it rather than destroyed the pins or connectors (another reason I always specify cutting wires, not pins). Second, understand why you are cutting the pins you are cutting. Pin 9 is -12V and pin 20 is PWM motor speed control for 400K FDD only. Keep in mind these pinouts are for the Macintosh ONLY. It is possible the Lisa FDD controller uses slightly different pin assignments, hence the need for testing your cuts. As the 800K drive controls its own speed and works on the 128K without additional instruction, I have to think the 800K drive should work just fine if you isolate the PWM, all other signals considered being the same as on a 128K. This is based on the fact that the floppy drive logicboard headers are the same for the 128K as they are on the Plus and only the cable isolates those signals which differentiate the 800K drive from the 400K drive. That said, the reason the 800K-03 rev drive works in the 128K is because pins 9 & 20 are connected for use with the IIGS, whereas they are physically disconnected on the earlier Mac specific models, though it is the additional circuitry that allows the 128K to use it (since the 128K won't use those pins anyway). Assuming the IIGS & Lisa are closer in FDD design than the Mac, that may account for different pin assignments: meaning the IIGS used pins 9 & 20 which may be at least partially the case with the Lisa as well. However, clearly cutting one of those pins disconnected the PWM motor signal that was causing your drive to continually eject so that at least is constant.
As for the floppy disk, I assume you are starting up with a MacWorks disk? What happens after that loads? Do you insert a Mac System disk? If so what happens then, is it still painfully slow? The reason I ask is once the Lisa begins emulating a Mac, assuming there was an issue with 400K Lisa disk formatting, the 800K drive should operate like it does on a Mac (assuming no other hardware issues) reading and writing standard Mac 400K MFS interleave. To be certain, make sure you create your 400K MacWorks (or Lisa) startup disk from the image exactly per the Sunder FAQ. That way the image will be copied sector for sector the way it was formatted on the Lisa 400K. That way, you will know it is formatted to be read by the Lisa with the proper interleave. If that fails to speed up the drive access, then it is definitely a hardware issue with the pin assignments or an incompatibility.
