MacWorks Plus on Lisa 2

[CP/M User]

"qu1j0t3" wrote:

>> I get the impression from this site that the
>> Mac's lacked a Hard Disk until the Mac II &
>> Mac SE came out in 1987.

> The II and SE were the first machines which
> Apple shipped with internal hard disks as a
> factory option. The earlier Mac Plus introduced
> built-in SCSI circa 1986. Apple introduced the
> new Hierarchical File System (HFS) and a
> 20MB hard disk (the HD 20 SC) at the same
> time. Third party modifications could put a hard
> disk inside the Mac Plus case (IIRC).

Actually IIRC when I wrote that statment above,
it was ment to suggest that I have indeed played
with a Mac Plus with a 20Mb External Hard Disk
(well seperate from the Monitor - or whatever! ;-).
At the time I played with this system, I thought
it was in very good condition (can't remember
when it was I played with it between - 1997 ->
1999). Lots of Macs used to get a hard time at
the school I went to, might of also been the
trend at others as well.

> But even before SCSI, there were many
> non-Apple hard disk solutions for Macs - I
> remember Corvus and others.

I know of the Corvus Concept through my
Computer Guide book. I see you could even
plug an 8in floppy to that thing, so maybe
Mac could support that too?

Cheers,
CP/M User.

 

[qu1j0t3]

I know of the Corvus Concept through my
Computer Guide book. I see you could even
plug an 8in floppy to that thing, so maybe
Mac could support that too?

Cheers,
CP/M User.

I never saw a Corvus floppy, but I am sure there were 8" solutions out there. The Corvus units I saw in operation were typically 5 or 10MB disks connected through the Mac's floppy port (or fast serial port?) These disks were even networked to workgroups as a file serving resource. I recall they used the MFS flat file system. This was before the Mac Plus, and the consequent standardisation on SCSI for mass storage, of course.

 

[CP/M User]

"qu1j0t3" wrote:

> I never saw a Corvus floppy, but I am
> sure there were 8" solutions out there.

Actually the Corvus Concept doesn't have
a floppy disk as standard. The 8in would
have been external as it looks like this
machine didn't have any room to put a
drive internalally inside the box.

As it reads the Corvus Concept could have
5, 10 or 20 megabyte Hard Disks, Optional
8" floppy. It's possible that other disk drive
options came out later as my source is 20
years old! Quite possibly other external
Disk drive options like 5 1/4" & maybe 3.5".
If no-one at least made other options for
this computer, it wouldn't have lasted very
long as 8" disks were nearly on it's way out.

> The Corvus units I saw in operation were
> typically 5 or 10MB disks connected
> through the Mac's floppy port (or fast
> serial port?) These disks were even
> networked to workgroups as a file serving
> resource. I recall they used the MFS flat file
> system. This was before the Mac Plus, and
> the consequent standardisation on SCSI
> for mass storage, of course.

Oh yeah!

Cheers,
CP/M User.

 

[Terry Yager]

"qu1j0t3" wrote:

> I never saw a Corvus floppy, but I am
> sure there were 8" solutions out there.

Actually the Corvus Concept doesn't have
a floppy disk as standard. The 8in would
have been external as it looks like this
machine didn't have any room to put a
drive internalally inside the box.

As it reads the Corvus Concept could have
5, 10 or 20 megabyte Hard Disks, Optional
8" floppy. It's possible that other disk drive
options came out later as my source is 20
years old! Quite possibly other external
Disk drive options like 5 1/4" & maybe 3.5".
If no-one at least made other options for
this computer, it wouldn't have lasted very
long as 8" disks were nearly on it's way out.

> The Corvus units I saw in operation were
> typically 5 or 10MB disks connected
> through the Mac's floppy port (or fast
> serial port?) These disks were even
> networked to workgroups as a file serving
> resource. I recall they used the MFS flat file
> system. This was before the Mac Plus, and
> the consequent standardisation on SCSI
> for mass storage, of course.

Oh yeah!

Cheers,
CP/M User.

Another interesting option that Corvus offered was a videotape-as-mass-storage device. I don't remember what the capacity of the tape was, but it seemed to me an interesting concept, videotape being such a cheap storage medium at the time. I once-upon-a-time had a small Corvus "network" (two PCs). I also had other add-ins, like a hard drive, but not enough cabling to go around. (It was already old 'n obsolete when I picked up the various bits second-hand). I never had the videotape thinggy tho, but the documentation mentioned it.

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

Someone told me a few years ago, that one of the reasons Lisa 1s are so scarce is because Apple offered free (or cheap?) "upgrades" to the Lisa 2 (equivalent) to owners of the Lisa 1, so naturally, most people took them up on thier offer. Anything to this rumor?

--T

 

[Erik]

Someone told me a few years ago, that one of the reasons Lisa 1s are so scarce is because Apple offered free (or cheap?) "upgrades" to the Lisa 2 (equivalent) to owners of the Lisa 1, so naturally, most people took them up on thier offer. Anything to this rumor?

Yeah. The twiggy drives were unreliable so Apple offered a free upgrade for anyone who had purchased the original. They destroyed all of the Twiggies they got back, as well.

Some say the Twiggy Lisa 1 is as rare or rarer then an Apple I.

Erik

 

[CP/M User]

"Erik" wrote:

>> Someone told me a few years ago, that
>> one of the reasons Lisa 1s are so scarce
>> is because Apple offered free (or cheap?)
>> "upgrades" to the Lisa 2 (equivalent) to
>> owners of the Lisa 1, so naturally, most
>> people took them up on thier offer.
>> Anything to this rumor?

> Yeah. The twiggy drives were unreliable
> so Apple offered a free upgrade for anyone
> who had purchased the original. They
> destroyed all of the Twiggies they got
> back, as well.

> Some say the Twiggy Lisa 1 is as rare or
> rarer then an Apple I.

Does this mean that the Lisa 1 is as rare as?

Or is this just the Twiggy drives?

Cheers,
CP/M User.

 

[qu1j0t3]

Lisa stuff

Lisa stuff

the Apple Lisa 1 in my book has support for
CP/M as well

According to http://yahozna.dhs.org/computers/lisa/ "There were also two variants of UNIX released for the Lisa: Unisoft's UniPlus+ (based on System V) and M$ XENIX (based on System III)." According to http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/guidebook/articles/thelisacomputersystem Smalltalk was ported to the Lisa, and IIRC the UCSD p-System was too.

XENIX and a lot of other Lisa software is downloadable from http://www.mmhart.com/apple_lisa_computer.htm.

As other posters mention, the Mac XL upgrade (MacWorks) was a ROM switch plus a square-pixels mod to the video circuitry. At one point it was the fastest and most capable Mac model on the market, in particular it had 1MB RAM when the largest Mac available off the shelf had 512KB. This guy http://home.xnet.com/~lisa2/MacOS.html is even running MacOS 7.5.5 on Lisa/MacWorks hardware!