Struggling to get my Lisa 2/10 to boot from an ESProfile

[Huxley]

Hi all!

My wife and I visited VCF West a few months ago, and came home with a lovely Apple Lisa 2/10. The machine is in good shape overall, including a functional internal 10MB Widget drive with MacWorks XL installed. The only real issue with the machine that I'm aware of is that the upper Parallel port doesn't work properly (according to the previous owner).

I also bought an ESProfile (external hard drive emulator), which I have attached to the lower Parallel port. However, when I power on the Lisa and get to the boot select menu, pressing Apple-4 to select the lower Parallel port (where the ESProfile is attached) causes the ESProfile to blink twice, and then the Lisa emits three loud beeps and asks if I want to try again or just restart.

I've done the following troubleshooting steps:

• Made sure the ESProfile is getting good power via a known-good Micro USB cable and known good wall charger
• Tested the ESProfile on both the upper and lower Parallel ports (same behavior either way)
• Flashed / updated the firmware on the ESP32 module according to the steps on the GitHub page
• Tried with a wide variety of bootable Lisa image files, each placed in the root of the microSD card and renamed "profile.image"
• Downloaded and tried to use the "Selector" bootable image
• Reformatted the microSD card and reinstalled various bootable images, each renamed "profile.image"

What am I missing here? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

 

[ClassicGuyPhilly]

Can't lend advice but watching and cheering from the stands!

 

[nathall]

No experience with this particular machine, but are we sure the lower port actually works? They told you the upper one didn’t, but do you know if they actually tried the lower one? It seems at least feasible that there is an issue with the parallel circuitry in general that affects both ports. The fact that you say the behavior is identical on both ports makes me suspicious.

 

[wottle]

I have not tested the external ESProfile with either of my external parallel ports. I believe when I tested mine before sending them out to people who wanted my external ones, I plugged it into the internal parallel port for the widget drive. Maybe try removing the widget and plugging the ESProfile into that and seeing if it works.

Any log info on the SDCard to confirm the ESP32 is flashed properly?

 

[JustDaveIII]

I have a Lisa 2/10 and the ESProfile. Works fine for me. I have it connected as a replacement to the internal drive. I would suggest you try it as a substitute to the internal drive to see that it works there. Also, I note in the documenatation that one pin in the cable the connects it to the external parallel port ought to be removed.

I don't recall any 'gotchas' that I encountered. For the boot menu, if it shows there that should be a good indication. If you remove it, does it go away in the boot menu? I've always used the mouse to select the boot device so not sure about using the Apple-4 key to select it.

And lastly, make sure your SD card is formatted as FAT32.

 

[JustDaveIII]

And ... It looks like there is a lot of debug output (Serial.print(xxxxx) ) if you load the "ESProFile_Emulator.ino" vs the "ESProFile.ino" into the ESP32 via the Arduino IDE. I presume that you will know how to use the serial output window in the IDE with the baud rate at 115200. However, I can't determine if you purchased & built it or bought it already assembled and programmed.

 

[adespoton]

Still seems crazy to me that the Lisa operated at 115200 when the early Macs were capped at 57600 per channel. Guess that was part of the cost cutting.

 

[JustDaveIII]

Still seems crazy to me that the Lisa operated at 115200 when the early Macs were capped at 57600 per channel. Guess that was part of the cost cutting.

No, not the Lisa at 115200. The ESP32 USB port when connected to the Arduino IDE.

 

[joevt]

Still seems crazy to me that the Lisa operated at 115200 when the early Macs were capped at 57600 per channel. Guess that was part of the cost cutting.

Aren't the SCC chips of the early Macs and Apple Lisa the same as the later Macs? Zilog Z8530. The functioning of the SCC is included inside later mac-io chips.

The SCC chip has an option to switch the transmit and receive clock from the baud rate generator directly to the 3.6864 MHz of the chip. Then you select the x32 (for 115200 bps) or x16 (for 230400 bps) mode.

If the Mac can't transmit at that rate, then it's ok - you just get extra idle time between bytes.

The issues come from receive - If the Mac can't receive at that rate then bytes will be lost. This is where flow control is required to tell the transmitting Mac to pause. The SCC supports the flow control signals, so if both machines are setup correctly then receive should work - the old Mac might not be able to receive multiple bytes at the max rate but it shouldn't loose any of the bytes.

LocalTalk uses 230400 bps mode.