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Any Lisa owners here?

R

Roderick Usher

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 9, 2006
182
1
Holy gods, jackpot.

A business that was closing here found a Lisa buried in one of their back rooms and gave it to me, figuring it was too old to be of any resale value. I can hardly believe my luck. They lost all the software for it though so I can't really test it much beyond simple power-up (which works).

I've always been an Apple II collector so I have no idea what to do with this thing, but I know enough to treat it right. Any fellow Lisa owners here? I'd like to build up a software library the way I did with the Apple II - downloading disk images and writing them to floppies.
 
Pictures or we will not believe you:D

That is a cool find though I think you will need an old Mac that can run a 400K floppy drive to make install discs for it, unless the 800K drives work with 400K discs. I could not really say for certain if that would work though. Maybe you could build the discs with one of your Apple II's. Say if you have a IIgs and GS/OS.

Is it a Lisa or Lisa 2. Looking at apple-history.com it appears the Lisa had 5.25" drives.
 
A "SuperDrive" floppy should be able to deal with every floppy out there, so if you get your hands on an older Mac with a SuperDrive you should be able to make your own system disks and whatnot.

Nice find!
 
Lucky you!

Does it have the "Lisa" badge on the front and two 5 & 1/4" drives or two 3.5" drives or just a single 3.5" drive?

You'll need to format disks as "MFS" rather than "HFS". You need MacOS 7.5.5 or earlier to create MFS disks. Note that 7.6 (IIRC) dropped support for MFS.

DiskCopy 4.2 is probably your best option to ensure correct duplication of disk images. DiskCopy 6.3 apparently doesn't work with MFS.

Try some of the early ones here

:)
 
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This appears to be the first Lisa - it has two 5.25" drives. After reading up a bit, this seems to mean that acquiring or even downloading/writing images of any software is going to be really, really, really difficult.
Click to expand...

-- Sorry Roderick - I accidentally botched this post of yours! --
 
Roderick Usher said:
This appears to be the first Lisa - it has two 5.25" drives. After reading up a bit, this seems to mean that acquiring or even downloading/writing images of any software is going to be really, really, really difficult.
Click to expand...

I am insanely jealous. You are one lucky person, I'd say.

And although getting some software would be difficult, I'd be pleased as punch just to have one.

Well done. :)
 
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Lisa value

Be aware that this original Lisa (with 5.25-inch "Twiggy" drives) may well be worth more than $10,000. These machines are RARE. Lisas with 3.5-inch drives are far less valuable.



blakespot
 
blakespot said:
Be aware that this original Lisa (with 5.25-inch "Twiggy" drives) may well be worth more than $10,000. These machines are RARE. Lisas with 3.5-inch drives are far less valuable.



blakespot
Click to expand...
That part I did know about beforehand - in a sense, it makes no difference since I take extraordinarily good care of all my old systems regardless of rarity. I've no intention of selling/auctioning it off, since my goal with these machines isn't simply to acquire them or to make money, but to put them to actual use. It kills me whenever I see photos of some museum where computers sit under fluorescent lights 8 hours a day, their electronics steadily degrading from disuse. Museums fail horribly at that facet of preservation; they're a place where computers go to die. I intend to keep all of mine up and running, and in use, for as long as parts are available. So I was really pleased that this Lisa appears to be powering up properly (the room it was buried in seemed to be a stable, dry, climate-controlled environment) even if I can't yet test it with actual software.

Not sure how I'll go about getting Apple FileWare disks, but in the meantime, my Apple /// does have a ProFile that maybe I can use as an alternative. Hmmmm...
 
I own a lisa, she's a bit high maintenance though, always deserving punishment.

:p
 
Hmm - according to this, the Lisa's boot ROM does include functionality for booting from a ProFile. Now to set about configuring the ProFile for that purpose... hmmmm...
 
Mord said:
I own a lisa, she's a bit high maintenance though, always deserving punishment.

:p
Click to expand...


I rebuilt one many years ago, even managed to write out the bad blocks on the internal Widget hard drive with Hard Disk ToolKit.

She worked like a charm for about a week, running system 6 and a demo.

Then one day, there was a horrible twang, a scrape and a squeal. Horribly, the widget drive suffered a head crash. I cried for weeks. :D

And I hate the power supplies. Despite repairing heaps of switchmode power supplies over the years, these beasts still scare the pants off me every time I open the PSU case. :eek:
________
Honda Pilot (ATV) history
 
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Someone Selling Lisa mint in box, owned by Apple on eBay

I have always wanted to buy one, but the cost is quite prohibitive. Anyone wanna sell me theirs?
 
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