A working Lisa Emulator

one needs a ROM, i have no way to try it out unless I have a ROM. sadly, i don't own a Lisa
Anyone got clues as where to get a ROM?

hes been working on it for a while now. like coius said, anyone kno where to get a rom for it. a google search was to no avail. ill try emailing him.

You didn't google correclty then, I found it here:
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/System/A2_ROMsCollection.zip
Rename 3410175H.bin to boot.hi and 3410176H.bin to boot.lo, and feed LisaEm with boot.hi
Of course, if you don't actually have a Lisa with ROMs in it, it would be illegal to do this.

You can find LisaOS here: http://www.applerepairmanuals.com/lisa/software/LOS_archives/

I'd been wondering where they might still be found. I had some I downloaded years ago (from MacMame or MacMESS, I forget which), but didn't know if they were still out there online. Saves me the trouble of posting what I've got.

One question - I noticed a lot of other ROMs in that collection - Mac Plus, Mac XL (aka, LisaMac). You seemed to know what to rename the Lisa ones - any ideas on what to rename the rest?

For that matter, what would you use them with? Emulators, obviously, but which ones and where?

One more thing - this site used to have all the Lisa manuals available as rather large pdfs - I know, I downloaded them all when I found them - but I can't seem to find them here anymore. I'd be happy to upload what I've got, though it's a ful cd-rom worth, but don't know if I should do so here (or, for that matter, where around here if I did), or if there's another location these docs would be welcome. Know of any good spots?

Thanks

ive been trying to get it to run all day, and it crashes out when i tell it to power on

The linux version seems to work. At least, it gets as far as complaining to me about not having a boot disk. (Just had to try it out of curiosity. I'm unmotivated at the moment to go any farther and figure out what it would take to make a suitable floppy or hard disk image.)

That "picture of a lisa" user interface is totally on crack, however.

--Peace

Here is a step-by-step guide to set up the LisaEm emulator with Lisa Office System on an emulated 10MB ProFile drive. (I thought ProFiles were only 5MB...) This process has been tested on an Intel iMac running OS X 10.4.9.

1. As per Zydeco's post:

Get the ROMs collection from here: http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/System/A2_ROMsCollection.zip
Rename 3410175H.bin to boot.hi and 3410176H.bin to boot.lo.

NOTE: This tripped me up. I attempted to rename those files in the Finder, and it appeared to work; however, OS X retained the additional ".bin" suffix, 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:

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

2. Make a folder under your Mac OSX home dir, called LisaEM. Inside it, put the LisaEm app, boot.hi, and boot.lo, and the five Lisa Office System disk images from here: http://www.applerepairmanuals.com/lisa/software/LOS_archives/

3. Un-binhex the LOS files with Stuffit Expander. You do not need to convert them any further.

4. Launch the LisaEM app. When it opens, go to Preferences. For "Lisa ROM", browse to boot.hi. Then hit Apply.

NOTE: This step causes two files to be generated: a "boot.ROM" file in the same directory as the boot.hi and boot.lo files, AND a lisaem.conf file in your home directory. There does not appear to be a way to override that location; furthermore, that conf file contains entries with absolute file paths to the ROM and (later) hard disk files. So, if you move your LisaEm files or rename the enclosing folder, things will break unless you modify the conf file manually, or re-set your preferences (which may in turn kick off a whole new hard drive setup process -- I don't know yet.)

5. Then go to LisaEm's File menu and selected "Run". A dialog box pops up asking, "Hard Drive Size?" I picked the 2nd option, "10M - any OS". After a few seconds, the Lisa self-test screen appears, followed by the Lisa's "Startup From" menu.

NOTE: This step causes another file to be created in the same directory as the ROM file(s); a disk image named "lisaem-profile.dc42." This is your emulated hard drive. You can't mount it under OS X, because it has an unreadable file system to OS X.

6. From the Lisa's "Startup From" menu, select the first option, start from floppy. The next screen shows a picture/dialog indicating that you need to insert a floppy and continue.

7. Go to LisaEm's File menu and selected "insert diskette." From the dialog box that appears, first select the "All (*.*)" option from the top "Enable" popup menu, THEN select the first of the Lisa Office System disk images.

8. Then hit the Lisa's Continue button, and after a couple seconds, the LOS installer should appear. From there, follow its prompts to install LOS to the emulated 10MB ProFile hard disk. Whenever it asks for another floppy, repeat the "insert floppy" process from LisaEm's File menu.

After this, the emulated Lisa will be able to boot from the ProFile hard disk. When it's booted, you can insert more diskettes to load more software such as LisaWrite.

Please let me know if you encounter any problems or better alternatives for this howto. I plan to add screenshots later.

Thanks for the excellent tutorial, but has anyone had any luck with this on Tiger? I get as far as completing step 5 but all I get is a black screen (I've turned the skin off for now) with a little MHz reading in the bottom left corner of the window which flicks between around 2MHz and 80MHz every so often.

I don't get the system self-test or the Startup from menu.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Sorry, ignore my last post - I think I picked the wrong ROM files to copy over (didn't notice the H and F suffixes). It's working now!

I last used a Lisa in 1984... is installation of LisaWrite as simple as dragging the files off of the Lisa Write disks onto the hard drive?

I found out I need to "Duplicate" the files before they are copied.

Yeah, that one took me by surprise, too. Duplicating files to copy them, opposite the way it usually works these days.

Also seems weird not having a visible system folder anywhere. I wonder if there's anyway to see the system files. They seem to be totally invisible. I'm guessing that's another part of hte concept - that it would be document- and office-metaphor centered. No visible system files for the boss to screw up.

Thank you very much for your tutorial.
I tried it on a windows machine, it works till the part where i have to insert the first LOS archive file.
Lisa_Offic_Sys_1of5_1.archive is the name of the file.If i try to "insert" it as a disk file i get an error message: DC42 volume name size wrong,or version not 0100
How can i convert the .archive files to DC42 files under windows ?

regards
Dirk

If you install the Workshop, you can see the system files (although you can't see Office System documents or tools).

Okay, which workshop is this? Have to say, I'm not really familiar.

I want to use the Lisa emulator to resurrect my REAL one sitting in the corner, but the diskette images are rejected with the same error the other Dirk received (below).

-- Another Dirk

error message: DC42 volume name size wrong,or version not 0100

400ko disk images should be sized 409 Ko (419 284 octets).
Most of the archives found on the net are stuffit files (most of the time reencoded with macbinary or binhex). Also only the data part should be kept under windows (stuffit can create a macbinary with the 2 forks).

When you will have the correct files, take a look at my lisa emulator (named IDLE http://idle-lisa-emu.sourceforge.net/) that was the the second to run an OS. The first ever lisa emulator was the MESS multi emulator (until version 0.89 (lisa driver is now broken)). Lisaem is only the third emulator but was the first to run LOS.

Hi Gilles,

I've been able to build and run the earlier versions of your emulator, but versions 0.6 and 0.7 both hang for me on the startup memory check. I get the same problem for both your binary and one I built myself - even with the 5MHz throttle code removed.

Ken

Memory check is now activated (LOS does not boot if memory check is removed).
The memory check should take 45 seconds (my real lisa takes the same time...).
I think lisaem patches the rom to speed up this test.
the 5MHz limit can be removed while running by pressing "F1" and reactivated with "F2".

Oh, thats nice. Get out of here, please.

The disk images you are looking for can be found at the link below.

http://www.macmothership.com/lisacontent/sys_lisa.html

Use StuffIt to expand the downloaded files. Under Windows, he final disk images are named sequentially from "Lisa Office System 1_5.image" to "Lisa Office System 5_5.image"

Cheers,

Grimace780
Edmonton, AB
Canada