My Lisa clone has a new case! A real case, in fact. It’s a mishmash of vintage parts, clone parts, and modern parts. And I built it!
This weekend was a bit of a dress rehearsal for an event happening later this year.
This is the first time I was able to get the #AppleLisaClone and the #MacintoshPlusClone running at the exact same time.
Almost exactly a year after the #AppleLisaClone fired up for the first time, the #MacPlusClone has also fired up.
The #AppleLisaClone gets in on the #GlobalTalk fun. Running MacWorks XL and System 6, it works quite nicely as a workstation.
The #AppleLisaClone #BBS is still working. The new SCC chip seems like it's doing well (I hope!).
Help me test it by dialing into the BSS!
telnet to bbs.mc68000.com port 6400
Cheers and have fun!
Hey retropal! I put the #AppleLisaClone #BBS back up for a short period. I'm testing the system with a better serial comm controller this time. Also got a chance to flex a domain I've had for a very long time which seemed appropriate
telnet to bbs.mc68000.com port 6400
Cheers and have fun!
I disabled AppleTalk on the modem port and serial ports seem more stable now!
BBS is still up-- 29 folks made accounts and left 21 messages on the board.
So something keeps causing it to stop working. The OS and BBS software are still fine. PPP connection seems fine. I think it's the serial port hardware on the IO card. It seems to get munged at some point. Once it happens, no serial port program (like ZTerm) works. I have to reboot the Lisa completely.
Anyway, it's up again if you want to try it. I added a fancy ASCII graphic to the login screen!
Did you miss the BBS I ran briefly on the #AppleLisaClone yesterday?
Now's your second chance to try it (for as long as it stays up lol).
telnet to bbs.biosrhythm.com port 6400
If you try it later and it's not working, it went down!
So I think got my #AppleLisaClone online as well! It's currently running SubText #BBS on MacWorks/ System 6.0.8 with 2MB of memory over a PPP connection!
Ok so it worked for about 30 minutes, the BBS was packed, all nodes busy! There was a multi user chat!
Then it just stopped responding. Oh well! I'll try again soon. =)
A troubleshooting document that @DosFox shared with me mentions using the service mode to peek at some memory locations for clues as to which chip on the 512k card is at fault. I can’t wrap my head around it at the moment, but here are the memory locations. Will need to look at this later.
So I was able to borrow both Apple 512K RAM cards, which is awesome! I plugged in the second one and I think there’s an issue. Parity error perhaps?
Hi, I’m a Mac! Sometimes a Lisa. But I’m also just a giant pile of cards
I put the SunRem 2MB card (configured with 1.5 MB of memory) and left memory slot 2 empty.
Well, well. Hello error 45! This conclusively proves there’s a fault with this RAM card.
Thanks to @iconicbits for the tip that the FloppyEmu has a Lisa mode that needs to be set. After that, it boots the Lisa Office System!
Absolutely amazed that I was able to cobble this thing together.
I didn’t bring the ArduinoFile with me so I don’t think I can go further with LOS.
Inserting a disk (well, selecting one on the FloppyEmu) doesn’t seem to work though. I’m getting an error 38 which means no boot file on disk. So do I have bad disk images? Did I get the floppy interface wiring wrong?’does the FloppyEmu need a special mode to work with the Lisa?
It does “eject” the disk though so something is working.
Wowowowow the #AppleLisaClone just passed the startup tests and is asking for a disk!!
This means my system (and especially the MMU) seems to be working! This also means the SunRem 2MB card may be faulty. Going to test it in the Lisa 2/10 later to confirm.
Ok Apple 512K card installed in the #AppleLisaClone. Will it blend?
#What RetroComputing
I had a little trouble removing the card cage. There are small metal levers on the corners of the cards to aid in removal. One of them was sticking up too far and caught the case. Fixing that it slid out easily. There are two 512K Apple RAM cards in this machine. It has a VintageMicros sticker on the inside dated Nov 07.
Let’s pop one of the RAM cards out and see if my rig throws the error 45 again.