New Lisa Hardware Coming

[68krazy]

This is really cool!  What an incredible feat from the hobbyist community.  Prices seem reasonable considering the incredible amount of engineering hours that must have gone into developing these and how much time will go into hand-assembling each one.  

These four gentlemen have worked incredibly hard and deserve to recoup at least some of what they have invested into creating this.  In fact, I can't imagine they won't come out of this at a net loss.  This project a labor of love, I sincerely doubt anybody is getting rich here.  The manufacture of these boards also doesn't displace original Lisa hardware—that's still a viable option if you prefer to go that route, and there's no need to crap all over these guys's creation.

This is like the SCSI2SD.  Is it original hardware?  No.  But it allows us as a community to keep our vintage machines going as their electronic components degrade past the point of no return (which will, eventually, happen to each and every single machine any of us owns).  And I think that's pretty neat

 

[Cory5412]

Hi Everybody,

Aplogies that this has taken a few days to do and write write.

Some now-hidden posts in this thread was extremely negative to the mere concept of these boards having been built. Incidentally, the person who designed and built them is a member here.

This attitude crops up from time to time and it's important to take a step back and remember a few things as we discuss things like this, especially when somebody presents a completed project that has already been designed, prototyped, built, and posted for sale, but even when somebody has an idea, and even in hack idea threads:

• Somebody took their own time and effort to do this. 
•  In this specific case, they happen to have built an entire motherboard for a computer older than some of us here.
•  Just because you don't want something doesn't mean it shouldn't have been built or that there isn't a case for it.

In these situations specifically, if you don't like it, and feel the need to share, there's ways to do it, but it may be best just to curb the urge to post at all. The thing already exists. There may eventually be time for feedback to suggest possible changes, but the announcement thread probably isn't it.

As another thought, just generally, we hear a lot about the pricing on these things. I don't want to outright forbid talking about the price, but it's worth noting that pricing on these types of things is almost never designed for lots of profits. In general, nobody is getting rich selling reproduction vintage hardware, they're doing it for the love of the machines.

 

[CelGen]

Incidentally, the person who designed and built them is a member here.

I would like to suggest to the designer that I would be curious about the cost of purchasing unpopulated boards. The idea of transplanting components from failed boards to new boards with healthy traces sounds like an interesting prospect.

 

[armadsen]

I would like to suggest to the designer that I would be curious about the cost of purchasing unpopulated boards. The idea of transplanting components from failed boards to new boards with healthy traces sounds like an interesting prospect.

I’d be interested in this too. Not least because I enjoy stuffing and soldering PCBs.

 

[Gorgonops]

As it's been pretty transparently revealed that a large part of the objection to this project isn't the "principle" of using the original hardware, it's an objection to the price, let's discuss a roughly comparable situation very briefly:

Mike over at willegal.net has over the years sold various replica computer boards and kits. This is a link to the Apple I replica board, he's also sold an Apple II rev. 0 kit. The boards alone for those machines sold for between $150 and $200, and those boards are both smaller and simpler than some of these Lisa boards.( And, yes, before anyone says anything: I know that you *can* order boards of roughly these sizes for around $50 a head in quantity from Chinese PCB puppy mills. The boards sold by Mike are high-quality boards manufactured in custom colors and silkscreened to match the originals as closely as possible, so it's not a reasonable comparison.) And here's the thing: A full kit of ICs for populating these boards cost well north of $500. You could possibly do a *little* better, but not much; Unicorn tends to have more than reasonable prices across the board.

In short, these are not "rip-off" prices they were asking. This is a custom board that took a lot of hard work to design and manufacture that uses a significant number of getting-difficult-to-find ICs. To criticize the team as brutally as was done here for wanting to earn a *little* bit of return on their hard work is selfish, entitled, and uncalled for. The prices of these boards are far cheaper than the originals cost back in 1984, particularly if you adjust for inflation, and they're being produced in far lower quantities. So please give that angle a rest. Full stop.

 

[CC_333]

@Gorgonops: I completely agree. This is not some criminal operation whose sole purpose is to rip people off for money, but rather, a fellow collector (or several) who wanted to give back to the community, and they deserve to be payed for all their hard work, because I'm sure it cost them a significant amount in R&D to design these things, let alone manufacture them.

And as some have pointed out here, original Lisa parts aren't getting any less scarce, so at some point, having replica parts isn't a bad thing, particularly for Lisas with that dreadful NiCad battery that spills its innards all over the mainboard, destroying it in the process. Because of that, there are rather few mainboards left that are undamaged, and many of those that have been damaged are very difficult, and sometimes impossible to repair, forcing one to look around for a replacement, in the hopes that maybe there's a NOS part, or maybe one removed from an otherwise beyond-repair Lisa, for a slightly reasonable price.

So, yeah. The TL, DR of this is that it makes sense to have replica boards at this point for any hope of keeping these things working in years to come ("real" boards, because of their relative scarcity, are simply becoming too expensive for the average collector to afford, in my opinion), and whomever designs and produces said replica boards deserves to be payed for their trouble. If it's expensive, too bad. The cost of manufacturing them and finding period correct parts is a large part of the price.

Now, on a related note, I wonder if someone can replicate an SE/30 or Quadra 840AV board someday?

c

 

[68krazy]

[...]

Now, on a related note, I wonder if someone can replicate an SE/30 or Quadra 840AV board someday?

c

Excuse me for a second guys, I need to clean up a puddle of drool over here after reading CC's post  [] ]'>

I would jump at the opportunity to put a brand new motherboard in my SE/30!

 

[PB145B]

Yes that would be very cool! We could then easily fix all those bomb victims!

 

[techknight]

Thats a couple things I have been eyeing at, is a blank new SE/30 board and a Mac Portable board. 

Replicating the board is easy, parts on the other hand are not. If I had a new SE/30 board, I would have to move over all the proprietary parts and then all the 74 series stuff would be new. 

 

[LukeandPatty]

In short, these are not "rip-off" prices they were asking. This is a custom board that took a lot of hard work to design and manufacture that uses a significant number of getting-difficult-to-find ICs. To criticize the team as brutally as was done here for wanting to earn a *little* bit of return on their hard work is selfish, entitled, and uncalled for. The prices of these boards are far cheaper than the originals cost back in 1984, particularly if you adjust for inflation, and they're being produced in far lower quantities. So please give that angle a rest. Full stop.

No price is a rip-off unless someone is forced to pay it. Judging by some comments you'd think people are pining for communism. If someone tries to get rich doing hobbyist work good luck to them. That's what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did when they built the Apple I and II. They didn't say "I'm going to make Apple a non-profit."

If people are charging "too much" for something then they'll have to lower prices if they want more sales. I don't see why there is drama about pricing in this context.