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Apple Lisa

Gary C

Gary C

Veteran Member
Joined
May 26, 2018
Messages
2,300
Location
Lancashire, UK
Now this one is a rarity.

Donated to the museum with its keyboard, an external hard drive and the software & manuals.

First thing is to check the PSU. Opening the case it seems very DEC like in its build, even down to the thumbscrew & turnbuckle fastenings.
PSU removed and a multitude of blown RIFA's found and removed but its got an interlock and a soft on/off input, so in for a penny so threw it back in and powered it up.

Multiple beeps I now have a very very dim display. Might be the tube or the power, next I will need to see how I can power it all up with the case open for testing.
 
You need to remove the face bezel and shunt the front interlock switch to get it to boot up. There may be more interlocks depending on what you have open but they are in obvious places to see. I swear I had the same problem on my LISA 2 when I got it. Blown rifas and a dim display. A recap fixed it right up. I think I ended up recapping a friends LISA as well around the same time. Is this a Lisa 1 or 2?
 
:)

Screen came up to reasonable brightness after about 30 minutes and now warms up much quicker.

RIFA's removed from PSU

Profile hard drive RIFA's removed and....

it all boots up !
 
If not obvious, the To-Do's for the Lisa are a complete recap of:
The Power Supply (no power situations)
The ProFile (can't handle the motor inrush)
The analog card (regulator failure/poor brightness control)
 
The electrolytics in the main PSU look a bit suspect so they will be changed. The PSU's have had more of a decap than a recap with the removal of the RIFA's. I must get a bulk order.

The hard drive, while it works Im not sure for how long. Is it a SCSI I ?
 
Its a 2 with the 3.5 drive which looks ok but I will give it a stripdown as I know the motor drives on apple disks can fail if they have to deliver too much torque.

I'm not really into 'recapping' everything I get my hands on, tend to diagnose and replace what needs to be replaced, but dont want this one failing due to missing some simple maintenance.

So its time to get ordering :)
 
Gary C said:
The hard drive, while it works Im not sure for how long. Is it a SCSI I ?
Click to expand...
Oh, it's better than that.
The ProFile is an ST506 or ST412 HDA with Apple's own motor control and A/D board attached to it, rather than a standard 2-cable hard disk interface. The rest of the logic is Apple's own thing and the rear 25 pin port is Parallel. SCSI was available for the Lisa, but considerably later and only under MacWorks Plus. Your only options are take very good care of the ProFile or spend north of $400 for a disk emulator. People already know my opinions on the current roster of vendors selling aftermarket Lisa parts....
 
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NeXT said:
Your only options are take very good care of the ProFile or spend north of $400 for a disk emulator.
Click to expand...

"Only" is not accurate. There are several cheaper emulator options if you don't mind soldering and/or can tolerate delays owing to the parts shortage.

I made this one, which supports drive image management. There is a commercial variant*. As you have a ProFile, I assume your Lisa is a 2/5, in which case you could use this Arduino-based emulator which also supports my drive image manager.

Much earlier, a talented hobbyist made IDEfile, which you can also build. This one doesn't support image management in software to the same degree, but it's still a fine design that I've used for a decade. Even better, that person documented the ProFile protocol so well that you could make your own emulator if you wanted to! (I am proof of that.)

* I have no commercial interest in this product: my design is in the public domain.
 
stepleton said:
"Only" is not accurate. There are several cheaper emulator options if you don't mind soldering and/or can tolerate delays owing to the parts shortage.

I made this one, which supports drive image management. There is a commercial variant*. As you have a ProFile, I assume your Lisa is a 2/5, in which case you could use this Arduino-based emulator which also supports my drive image manager.

Much earlier, a talented hobbyist made IDEfile, which you can also build. This one doesn't support image management in software to the same degree, but it's still a fine design that I've used for a decade. Even better, that person documented the ProFile protocol so well that you could make your own emulator if you wanted to! (I am proof of that.)

* I have no commercial interest in this product: my design is in the public domain.
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Ooh! Now that's an unexpected surprise! Here I was thinking the X/Profile and IDEfile were still the only options. Even a DIY kit is a lot more welcoming than I remember. Sorry about that.
 
Lisa continues to run well :)

Drive is continuing to work and is getting quieter as time goes on. Bearings probably suffering a bit of brinelling :) but now bedding back in.

Screen is now bright after a slow start so this unit is now a display item until it throws a wobbler.
 
So with the recent failure of the Lisa's screen and magical restoration (just removed the horizontal scan linearity coil and soldered it back in and it worked)

Its time to think about the hard drive. The profile uses a serial interface, not unlike the PET's GPIB and like my PET disk emulator, the Arduino one suggested above could be the way to go.

So parts ordered. I think I should be able to connect the Profile & the emulator up at the same time. I wonder how you produce a bootable image.
 
It is, and so is the PET's GPIB

Ooooh, just read what I wrote !!! Sorry I meant to say

"The profile uses a parallel interface, not unlike the PET's GPIB and like my PET disk emulator, the Arduino one suggested above could be the way to go".
 
Parts all collected for the arduino emulator and all now fully built. As its for display purposes I haven't included the selector at present because it will probably only be used to boot the OS and demonstrate a few programs.

SD cards, though. Its amazing how you cant get the low capacity cards easily. a 32mb one would be perfectly fine, but they just dont seem to exist in any numbers, even on eBay. Seems daft to use a 128GB one, but hey ho.


I have noticed something in the code for the Arduinofile though.

void setup(){
setLEDColor(1, 0, 0);
Serial.begin(115200); //start serial communications
nonce = EEPROM.read(5);
EEPROM.write(5, nonce + 1);

It appears that every time the device starts, it adds one to location 5 in the EEPROM (using variable nonce, which is an unfortunate label, in the UK at least). Now I know that 100,000 cycles is quite a bit of life but it seems daft that this location is written to for every single reset ?

Might rewrite my PET disk emulator code to work on this device as they are very similar.
 
Emulator works well. The image I downloaded wasn't recognised but I did an erase and now it works. I have backed up the system disk to it and its all there and correct but its not a bootable file. Is there something you need to do to make a Lisa hard disk bootable ?
 
Gary C said:
Ahhh, keytronic foam pads !!!!
Click to expand...
Yep had to do this on my LISA also... Next I will have to do it on my ADDS terminal keyboard. I guess using a keytronic keyboard was like using a membrane keyboard of the day.. cheaper.

Strange they would use a keytronic keyboard on the LISA and a mechanical switch keyboard on the Macintosh.
 
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