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three cables in a Macintosh XL

mactjaap

68000
In my Macintosh XL I found three cables. Two are for a disk, but not for a floppy drive. 26 holes in two rows of 13. Who knows what they are? And what is the white one? Seems some kind of power cable.

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Aha! I tried it on a widget drive I have (wrapped in plastic) and ...yes...it fits!

Not sure what the power like cable is for. I see the widget drive needs a more complex power plug, with 7 pins.

widget-cable.jpg

 
I did not look close at connector.

I may be wrong, but there may be two different style connectors. I know not all widgets are the same. Not sure on power. Also it may be an after-market upgrade and not even used a widget drive.

 
You're missing the Widget's power harness. That three pin power cable is for a Twiggy floppy drive and indicates that your Lisa did not start out originally as a Lisa 2/10 or an XL. It's been upgraded.

You can't power a Widget off the Twiggy's power harness. You would have to run a new harness from the power supply like I did and talked about in the last thread..

Also, if that is saran wrap on that widget, remove it. That is the polar opposite of an antistatic bag.

 
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1st of all you don't have a Macintosh XL (AKA a Lisa2/10), you have an original Lisa ( Lisa 1 or converted Lisa 2).  The two 26 pin ribbon cables are for the upper and lower twiggy drives, these cables have both data and power in them.  The other 3 wire plug is for nothing, Apple never used this connector in a production unit (it's a power cable).  If  your system was a Lisa 2, one of the twiggy cables would connect to another board ( the Lisa Lite Interface) to adapt this to a 20pin Sony disk cable.  

Do not connect these ribbons to a profile or widget board unless you want to see a lot of magic smoke!

Rick

 
Thank you for this update. So this was a formally Lisa! Nice to know!

Could you tell me two things:

-Is it normal to find a sticker on such a Lisa that indicates that it is a Mac XL?

-I have a second machine with the same power connector. Maybe it is a normal plug?

 
The Apple part number may be different on the label, I don't know if it is or what is should be to indicate a 2/10.

The normal differences that I look for to indicate a Lisa 2/10 (XL) from a 1 or 2/5 are:

- the 1.8 PS (at least for USA spec systems)

- a different motherboard without an external par. port. and with an added interrupt. switch, standard DB9 mouse port

- a different IO board & IO ROM

- the case has a widget power connector (7 pins??), internal par port ribbon (26 pin), and Sony Floppy ribbon (20 pin)

- no Lisa Lite Adapter, and the drive cage has a FAN

- internal 10 meg widget HD, Sony 400K floppy

- The lighted power switch on the 2/10 has a tiny rectangular notch above it in the case

- the motherboard, IO board, and Lite board all have the Lisa logo silkscreened on them, none of the Lisa1 boards or any of the other Lisa parts say "Lisa" anywhere on them aside from the logo on the Lisa1 faceplate.

Also note that presence of the screen mod (ROM / Video transformer) does NOT make a Lisa into a Mac XL.

All Lisa 1 / Lisa 2 cases have that funky 3 pin power connector, and again it was never used for anything!  I don't know why it's part of the harness, but if you find one in a system, it's a good bet it's not a 2/10.

Rick

 
The two 26 pin ribbon cables are for the upper and lower twiggy drives, these cables have both data and power in them.  The other 3 wire plug is for nothing, Apple never used this connector in a production unit (it's a power cable).
Now that is something I never knew. Guess that's because I've never seen a twiggy assembly.

 
As I told here before my other Lisa has also the "strange unused power connector". See below.

It say on the casing also that it is a A6S0300P

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There is also the PSU I can't find online. It is part 620-6203. Doesn't seem tp be a normal power unit too?

Anyone knows what it is? See below

/monthly_04_2015/post-894-0-70824800-1429031343.jpg">View attachment 6118

 
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The 220V-240V, 50Hz, .7A PS would be correct for Lisa's in Europe, it's nothing special.  Later Lisa 2/10 (XL) units with the widget drive used a 1.8A PS that was internally 120V-60Hz/240V-50Z switchable.  (Many users with 1.2A and .7A PS's upgraded to the better 1.8A later on)

This is consistent with the fact that you have Lisa 1/Lisa 2 cases and not Lisa2/10 (XL) versions even if the title of this thread says otherwise...

Rick

 
I need to find photos, if I have any, of my sold Mac XL. I am starting to think it had that spare cable too now. But its been so long.

 
There are 3 main revisions of the Lisa Hardware, the original with the twiggy drives (Lisa 1), the updated version with one Sony drive (Lisa 2) that is otherwise the same as a Lisa 1, and the version with the 10 meg widget drive (Lisa 2/10) that has many small differences from the earlier models.  Many folks incorrectly believe that the there was a specific Mac XL version also but the "Macintosh XL" name was later added for marketing purposes only, both Lisa 2 and Lisa 2/10 configurations where sold as "Mac XL's", but the hardware is exactly the same.  This is scan of my Lisa 2 manual cover, note the round sticker on the top right that apple added declaring the  "Lisa is now Mac XL".

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Hi,  I know this is an old post but saves me adding pictures again!

I have the same computer as Mactjaap with those two flat cables, one with a red line and one without.

They don't have any notches for correct orientation and I was wondering if it mattered which way they went?

One will be for the Lisa Lite card (for the floppy) and the other into the Sun Reman hard drive.

I wish they weren't disconnected in the first place!

Thanks

 
The twiggy connectors are oriented, they have two notches on one side (near the ends) and the twiggy drive has matching keys that prevent you from plugging in upside down.  These cable contain power and data and would release the magic smoke if plugged incorrectly.

On a Lisa2/MacXL one cable would go to the LisaLite card for the sony floppy and the other is not connected.  The Sun HD gets its data from the par port on the back of machine.  

HTH,

Rick

 
Hi Rick.  Have to dig around and see if I can find an appropriate cable.

The two cables coming out of the computer don't appear to have any notches- maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

They seem to plug into the Lisa Lite card either way.

I assume that I can use the cable with the red stripe for the Lisa Lite card?  Does it make a difference?

Thanks for your help.

Tim

 
You've plugged it in? You say they seem to plug in... make sure you physically plug it in both ways, and see if it will in fact plug in both ways. There's a lot of cables (Crt monitor wise mostley) that look like they fit both ways, but one pin is slightly moved to the left or right or whatever and it won't.

 
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