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Twiggy disks

Okay. So today I made my rounds in the recycling center. I was about to leave because I saw nothing good. Mostly industrial "computers", VCRs, DVD Players, and such. then i found a lisa with twiggy drives and a hard drive. how to write a blank twiggy disk with a pc?

 

Anonymous Freak

Well-known member
To my knowledge, the Twiggy drive is the only drive capable of writing to them. They are *VERY* not-standard. Not just "non standard formatting like Apple's 400k and 800k disks", but physically treated differently.

 
So how do I go about getting software from the internet into this machine. Do External drives work with it? It came with a bunch of blank Twiggy disks, a System Startup Disk, and a bunch of other system installation disks

 

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
Mmmmhmmm... You should document this find in pictures.

Twiggy Lisas are rare as hen's teeth (as in, maybe less than a dozen are known to exist?), so if you found one you have something you could easily sell for several thousands of dollars on eBay. Someone must of been pretty stupid to drop it off at a recycle center.

 
Most people are stupid in NW Indiana. I dont want to sell it I want to keep it and use it. Does anyone know what interface the ProFile Hard Drive uses? Is it a form of SCSI? Are the DB25 Ports on the back a form of SCSI?

 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
I find it hard to believe that someone would drop off a Twiggy Lisa 1 with documentation at a recycling center. Even finding a Lisa 2, or a Mac XL in that type of environment sounds pretty unrealistic due to their rarity, and high aftermarket value.

Mmmmhmmm... You should document this find in pictures.
Definitely.

 
You have to understand. Most of the people in Northwest indiana are {removed - mod} . they are steel mill workers and {removed - mod}. they dont know what a lisa is. All they know its its an old computer in their office closet at work or something. they are {removed - mod}, they dont know its rare, they know it looks old and they think they should throw it away. they dont think like you and me {removed - mod}

 
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Concorde1993

Well-known member
{removed - mod}

they dont know what a lisa is.
A lot of people do not know what a Lisa is because it never had a major impact on the market. Sure, it was extremely revolutionary for its time, being one of the first mass-produced GUI computers, but poor marketing, a limited software library, and an unattainable initial price for most (not to mention the introduction of the cheaper, and much faster Macintosh) made the Lisa seem impractical, which was quite unfortunate. There was a lot of potential with the Lisa, which went to waste. But hell, a lot of people are even unaware that Apple used to produce certain peripherals, such as printers, scanners, cameras, and unique items like the Newton PDAs (although this has been surpassed by the iPad), and likewise are uncertain of its "collector's value." It doesn't necessarily mean that those people are complete morons. Not everyone is into computers/electronics, btw.

they dont know its rare, they know it looks old and they think they should throw it away. they dont think like you and me
Well, if you did in fact find, and brought home a Lisa 1 from a recycling center, I hope you are sensible enough to take better care of her than her previous owner(s).

 
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david__schmidt

Well-known member
Well, if you did in fact find, and brought home a Lisa 1 from a recycling center, I hope you are sensible enough to take better care of her than her previous owner(s).
Not to put too fine a point on it, but... pics or it didn't happen. ;-)

 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
Not to put too fine a point on it, but... pics or it didn't happen.
My thoughts exactly. We definitely require photographic proof here. But that would be one hell of a conquest if JP did in fact find a Lisa at a recycling center.

 
Well then according to you it didnt happen. I Dont have a digital camera, cant afford one. Not trying to start a fight here, im just asking how i get software into it. If i didnt have a Lisa 1, why would I be asking how to load software disk images into it>

 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
Well then according to you it didnt happen.
JP, finding a complete (or almost complete) Lisa 1 set is like finding the Holy Grail of vintage computers. There's not too many surviving units (there were never too many to begin with, as they sold poorly), so naturally we need some proof to confirm this extraordinary find.

I Dont have a digital camera, cant afford one.
You can't spend $10 on a basic digital camera? We're not asking for state-of-the-art photography here. Come on!

{removed - mod}

 
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david__schmidt

Well-known member
Well then according to you it didnt happen. I Dont have a digital camera, cant afford one. Not trying to start a fight here, im just asking how i get software into it. If i didnt have a Lisa 1, why would I be asking how to load software disk images into it>
Sorry, it's just that this kind of post comes up from time to time. "I found the Holy Grail - what's it do?" Surely you can see how this must look.

To address your point about software, there's not software available on twiggy disks anywhere. There are several disk images in digital form (you can find them on ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/applelisa) but there's not an ADTPro, for example, for the Lisa. As the author of same for the Apple II, I've been waiting to get my hands on a Twiggy'd Lisa so I can write it. But so far... no luck at my local recyclers. If you'd trade a digital camera for some time on yours - perhaps we can talk about it.

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Enough taunting in this thread. Leave it out. Same applies to insulting folk based on geography. Mod has spoken.

 

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
Enough taunting in this thread. Leave it out.
Not to stir the hornet's nest, but... does "no taunting" still leave room to attempt to convince to OP in a calm, rational, well-reasoned and non-insulting way that to have simply "found" an item as rare as a working Lisa 1 (with a full set of accessories, no less) lying in a recycling center is a claim of such extraordinary magnitude that any reasonable person would expect evidence to be supplied before believing said claim?

(That it is in fact a claim so fantastic that it essentially insults the intelligence of the readers of this forum to think that they would be so gullible as to believe it without seeing proof, particularly when the technological barrier to supplying said proof is so laughably low that essentially anyone who has access to the Internet should have within their power the means to supply it? I don't believe anyone is asking for anything beyond a few grainy webcam-resolution photographs of a Lisa 1 with something in the background to indicate that the photos were taken for the occasion rather than re-purposed from the results of a Google image search.)

Or is "no taunting" to be taken as the signal that no further discussion on the topic of "proof" is to be permitted and that from this point on anyone reading this thread should simply draw whatever appears to themselves to be the most obvious conclusion regarding the veracity of the claims within this thread, and by extension the veracity of the participants involved?

(I don't really care either way. I'll grant the metaphysical possibility that the OP is being perfectly truthful in his account and is, for instance, simply unaware of just how rare a find a Lisa 1 would be and thus fails to understand why his story sounds so fanciful.)

 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
Not to stir the hornet's nest, but... does "no taunting" still leave room to attempt to convince to OP in a calm, rational, well-reasoned and non-insulting way that to have simply "found" an item as rare as a working Lisa 1 (with a full set of accessories, no less) lying in a recycling center is a claim of such extraordinary magnitude that any reasonable person would expect evidence to be supplied before believing said claim?
Bunsen laid the law down this morning because JP had labeled people residing in NW Indiana uneducated trash, and I joked by commenting on how all the "idiots" receive rare antiquities that most of us forum members would ultimately love to get their hands on. I found out about the edits through a PM sent to me this morning. Quite unexpected, but what can you do?

(I don't really care either way.
As stated before, I'm going to stick with David's comment: pics or it didn't happen (and I believe Bunsen utilized the same line in another thread on the Conquest forum). So it's good to know that we're all in agreement in regards to adequately proving one's find, rare or not.

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
claim of such extraordinary magnitude that any reasonable person would expect evidence to be supplied before believing said claim?
That seems a reasonable way of putting it. The OP may or may not care whether anyone believes him. The reader may or may not care to draw their own conclusions. I wasn't aware myself of the rarity of the specific Lisa 1 until it was brought up here. Personally, I don't care enough to believe or disbelieve it. The issue for me as a moderator is that discussions from all stay this side of flaming and flame-baiting, and not the other.

Concorde: I'll explain my actions to folks here myself if necessary, thanks. You don't need to interpret for me.



I Dont have a digital camera, cant afford one.
That seems dubious. Cellphone?

 
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