Lisa emulator released, allows OS X and Windows users to exp...

[MacBytes]

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Category: Reviews
Link: Lisa emulator released, allows OS X and Windows users to experience Apple's Lisa (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20070228131255)
Description:: Nearly a decade in the making, the Lisa Emulator Project now has a working Lisa emulator for Windows PCs and OS X Macs.

Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)
Approved by Mudbug

[nagromme]

Cool--I had thought the Lisa UI was nearly identical to the earliest Mac OS, but it's actually just a bit more primitive. Interesting piece of history leading up... eventually... to Leopard.

[psychofreak]

I wanna try it...damn HD failure...

[shamino]

Cool--I had thought the Lisa UI was nearly identical to the earliest Mac OS, but it's actually just a bit more primitive. Interesting piece of history leading up... eventually... to Leopard.
It's more primitive in some respects, and the lack of square pixels can be annoying, but in some other aspects, it is more advanced than even some modern computers.

In particular, the Desktop metaphor - where applications start and stop themselves in the background, in response to document operations - is something that nobody made mainstream. The only other system like this I know of is Xerox's Star/ViewPoint OS, which also was never mainstream.

Although the lack of an explicit "application" may be frustrating for certain classes of users (I'm thinking gamers, in particular here), I think the idea of completely hiding apps in favor of documents would make computers much easier for the non-pro user to work with. Let the application installer set up whatever magic is needed to create new types of stationary pads, and hide it all from the user.

Combined with the automatic-save behavior of apps, it's really hard to make a disastrous mistake (of course, system bugs and hardware failures are still a possibility...) If I remember correctly, the auto-save feature actually saves the list of edits since your last explicit-save, so you can put a document away, then open it a week (or a year) later, and your undo stack is still valid.

[GanChan]

I just downloaded the emulator, but it says I also have to configure the ROM. Where do I get the ROM, and once I have it, how do I configure it?

[ThunkDifferent]

Maybe you have to make a disk image, a ROM, y'know.

i know people think it is more modern than a current OS, but, what? The screen shots look so old. I don't think you would really want that on your system for any practical reason.

tell us about it though if you can figure it out.:cool:

[GanChan]

Maybe you have to make a disk image, a ROM, y'know.

i know people think it is more modern than a current OS, but, what? The screen shots look so old. I don't think you would really want that on your system for any practical reason.

tell us about it though if you can figure it out.:cool:

Actually, I found the ROM files and the Lisa OS files, but I'm supposed to rename two of the ROM files using the Terminal (instead of Finder), and I know nothing about UNIX at all, so.... :o

[chadi]

Actually, I found the ROM files and the Lisa OS files, but I'm supposed to rename two of the ROM files using the Terminal (instead of Finder), and I know nothing about UNIX at all, so.... :o

If you know the path that the files are stored in use

mv /path/to/firstfile/namehere /path/to/second/newfilenamehere

Although I don't see why you couldn't rename it in finder.

:O

[GanChan]

If you know the path that the files are stored in use

mv /path/to/firstfile/namehere /path/to/second/newfilenamehere

Although I don't see why you couldn't rename it in finder.

:O

This is what the developer says:

I first attempted to rename those files in the Finder, and it appeared to work; however, OS X retained the additional ".bin" suffix (hidden), so the filenames were actually "boot.hi.bin" and "boot.lo.bin". That caused the emulator to throw an error about the checksum, then crash. I had to rename them in the Terminal, like so:

mv boot.hi.bin boot.hi
mv boot.lo.bin boot.lo

The files are in a folder called "LisaEM" on the first level of my home directory.

Here's the whole how-to page. I feel really dumb for not grasping the Terminal instructions - it's just that I've never even opened Terminal before. My last command-line experience was in the 80s with DOS....

http://www.whoopis.com/howtos/lisaem-howto.html