25 Jun
1997
25 Jun
'97
4:18 p.m.
At 09:45 PM 6/24/97 -0400, you wrote:
> us, rather than simply because a machine is
physically attractive,
> technically impressive, or financially successful.
Actually, some of the real dogs are just as fun and
important. The Lisa,
for example, strikes out on all three (OK, two strikes and one foul) of the
above mentioned catagories, but is still a fascinating machine.
Hey, waitaminnit.... The lisa is one of the best looking computers around!
I think it's design is a classic! (Also, I think it was technically
impressive -- I remember being very impressed upon seeing a demo in a little
back room of the St. Francis hotel just before it was announced.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
25 Jun
25 Jun
4:38 p.m.
Hey, waitaminnit.... The lisa is one of the best
looking computers around!
I think it's design is a classic!
Unfortunately, it was a classic design at the time - a lot of people
thought it looked like a dumb terminal (VT100).
(Also, I think it was technically
impressive -- I remember being very impressed upon seeing a demo in a little
back room of the St. Francis hotel just before it was announced.)
I wouldn't think that "too innovative"
would result in a lesser rating for
"technical" aspects (at least in the realm of computer history/collecting;
the "real" world is a different matter (see "success"...))
That is why I call it a foul - they gave the ball a real smack, but into
the side seats. Using the 68000 was a big step, far more powerful than
what powered most desktop machines at the time. The problem is that Apple
tried to do too much with the poor chip. As a system, it really is no
good (I am going to catch at least one rotten peach for this). The
engineers should have seen this and cut down the operating system.
Question for any Alto owners - was the original Xerox GUI machine just as
slow?
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
26 Jun
26 Jun
9:43 a.m.
Unfortunately, it was a classic design at the time - a
lot of people
thought it looked like a dumb terminal (VT100).
If you think about it, though, the case design is quite nice for sitting
on a desktop. It's footprint is at least half that of an IBM PC, if you
discount the dedicated space required for the mouse.
Also I think I read somewhere that they purposefully designed it to look
like a "business-like" dumb terminal to get around the "hobbyist/home
computer" reputation of the Apple IIs. I'd also guess that secretaries
(who the machine was designed for) would feel more comfortable with a new
system if it looked like their old one.
That is why I call it a foul - they gave the ball a
real smack, but into
the side seats. Using the 68000 was a big step, far more powerful than
what powered most desktop machines at the time. The problem is that Apple
tried to do too much with the poor chip. As a system, it really is no
good (I am going to catch at least one rotten peach for this). The
engineers should have seen this and cut down the operating system.
Actually, I've always felt that they didn't do ENOUGH with the 68000.
They clocked the poor thing at 5Mhz... it could have happily taken 8,
but the story goes that at the time they were designing the Lisa, the
68000 wasn't out yet. So Motorola gave them a 68000 "emulator" which was
a box with a bunch of discrete components in it that did effectively what
the chip would do... but it only ran at 5Mhz.
In using my own Lisa, it really isn't that sluggish. Especially if you
compare it to a Mac 128 or 512. The filesystem on the Lisa is VERY
advanced and allows for recovery from errors that'd hork other
filesystems. It has memory protection which keeps it from being as
flakey as the early Macs (and later Macs :), and it truely multitasks
instead of just lame task-switching like it's Macintosh cousin.
The only other machine to squeeze as much out of a 68K would have to be
the Amiga 1000 & 500. And it had helper processors to help keep meanial
things like graphics, sound and disk access from bothering the CPU.
The one thing that the Mac has over the Lisa, however, is SOUND. The
Lisa's sound system is about the same as the Apple II. Beep, Boop.
BTW, Allison, the Lisa wasn't actually a PROTOTYPE for the Mac. Rather it
was the sister machine to the Mac. The Lisa and Mac projects stemmed from
the same research, with the Mac project splitting off from the Lisa
project shortly after its inseption. I'm not sure of all the politics
behind the separate projects but apparantly they had quite a bit of
competition between the two. The Lisa project was supposedly comprised of
mostly older guys that'd worked for HP, IBM and other "old school"
companies and did things the "old school" way. The Macintosh project was
allegedly new guys that weren't steeped in the old traditions of big
machines and just did things less methodicly. This is evident if you take
appart a Lisa and a Mac side by side. The Lisa has a motherboard with CPU
on daughterboard design, like an old mini or something... nice and modular
with thumbscrews... no screwdrivers needed. Steve Jobs supposedly
supported the Lisa throughout this battle, naming the machine after his
daughter (it also stood for something... Logically Integrated System...
Uhhh???). He felt it was the better machine with better software and
would prevail over the Mac and the IBM PC. However, when things started
looking bad for her, he jumped ship and started pushing the Mac.
Overall, it was the Lisa's pricetag that is most responsible for its
demise, I think. At $10,000, it was considerably more expensive than a
similarly configured (1M RAM, 10M HD) IBM PC, which was probably
$5,000-8,000.
However, the Lisa still lives on. Every time you pull down a window
you're using Lisa technology. Lisa was also the first to have an
integrated office suite which could cut-n-paste between apps. Xerox
provided much of the inspiration, but Lisa polished the GUI into a usable
system. It's really quite impressive for a machine designed 78-81 and
released in 82.
Question for any Alto owners - was the original Xerox
GUI machine just as
slow?
Saw one on TV once, but I'm not sure what the Alto's processor was. But
as I recall, it's GUI wasn't as flashy.
Not a rotten peach... but I had to say a few words about my favorite
machine. My girlfriend Holly was quite upset when I started calling
her Lisa after purchasing my Lisa 2/5. But if anyone has a working Lisa
Lite board(floppy controller), I'm in the market for one. :)
*ling
10:03 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great starling(a)umr.edu once stated:
BTW, Allison, the Lisa wasn't actually a PROTOTYPE for the Mac. Rather it
was the sister machine to the Mac. The Lisa and Mac projects stemmed from
the same research, with the Mac project splitting off from the Lisa
project shortly after its inseption. I'm not sure of all the politics
behind the separate projects but apparantly they had quite a bit of
competition between the two. The Lisa project was supposedly comprised of
mostly older guys that'd worked for HP, IBM and other "old school"
companies and did things the "old school" way. The Macintosh project was
allegedly new guys that weren't steeped in the old traditions of big
machines and just did things less methodicly. This is evident if you take
appart a Lisa and a Mac side by side. The Lisa has a motherboard with CPU
on daughterboard design, like an old mini or something... nice and modular
with thumbscrews... no screwdrivers needed. Steve Jobs supposedly
supported the Lisa throughout this battle, naming the machine after his
daughter (it also stood for something... Logically Integrated System...
Uhhh???). He felt it was the better machine with better software and
would prevail over the Mac and the IBM PC. However, when things started
looking bad for her, he jumped ship and started pushing the Mac.
The LISA was the computer designed after Apple had a peek at Xerox PARC.
I'm not sure who ran the department, but I think it may have been Jobs,
trying to work on the Apple ][ replacement. Jobs has always denied the
machine being named after his (illegidament) daughter (although it is
rumored that he did anyway).
The Macintosh was originally the brainchild of Jef Raskin and the initial
design was an information appliance based originally on the 6809 (my
personal favorite 8-bit CPU) and text based.
But, politics being what they are, Jobs was more or less forced from the
day to day operations of running the company, as Mike Markula felt that what
Apple didn't need was a loose Jobs running around [1]. So, to keep Jobs out
of the way, Markula took the Macintosh from Raskin and gave the project to
Jobs, who then wanted to make an information appliance with a GUI, using the
LISA GUI/OS as a base.
Raskin left shortly thereafter (around '81 or '82) to do his own thing,
while Jobs bullied his crew to make the Macintosh into what we know and love
today. When introduced, it was intended that Macintosh development would be
done on a LISA, as it was a much more capable machine, but the price killed
it.
Now, speaking of Jef Raskin, he later went on to make the Swyftcard for
the Apple ][. I've heard the description and ever since, I've been wanting
to either obtain a working Apple ][ with a Swyftcard (plus the
documentation) or failing that, just the documentation alone would be of
interest to me. Has anyone here ever worked with the Swyftcard? I'd like
more information about it.
-spc (Wish more companies did documentation like Raskin did ... )
[1] From what I've read, Jobs is an egotistical bully who would go
around, talking about other employees behind their back, and even
go up to an employee and call their work "shit" and that "he could
do better". Not the type of person I would work for. He would
rub people the wrong way, and Markula felt it would be better for
the company (not to mention morale) if Jobs wasn't around.
Not that I blame Markula any.
11:33 a.m.
On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 starling(a)umr.edu wrote:
However, the Lisa still lives on. Every time you pull
down a window
you're using Lisa technology. Lisa was also the first to have an
integrated office suite which could cut-n-paste between apps. Xerox
provided much of the inspiration, but Lisa polished the GUI into a usable
system. It's really quite impressive for a machine designed 78-81 and
released in 82.
Actually, Xerox had a working GUI-based system (the name eludes me at the
moment) well before the LISA, which is where Jobs got his inspiration
from. So your comment about windows being based on Lisa technology is
not fair to Xerox. Of course Bill would disavow any knowledge of both of
these machines and tell us that Windows is, in fact, the One True God.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
12:07 p.m.
However, the
Lisa still lives on. Every time you pull down a window
you're using Lisa technology. Lisa was also the first to have an
integrated office suite which could cut-n-paste between apps. Xerox
provided much of the inspiration, but Lisa polished the GUI into a usable
system. It's really quite impressive for a machine designed 78-81 and
released in 82.
Actually, Xerox had a working GUI-based system (the name eludes me at the
moment) well before the LISA, which is where Jobs got his inspiration
from. So your comment about windows being based on Lisa technology is
not fair to Xerox. Of course Bill would disavow any knowledge of both of
these machines and tell us that Windows is, in fact, the One True God. from Xerox.
One of the things that originated in the Lisa GUI that never was used
anywhere else was the concept of a "pad of paper". In order to create a
new LisaWrite document, you "tore off" a pice of LisaWrite paper off the
LisaWrite pad. Kind of an odd concept... not particularly useful.
Okay... I'll shut up about the Lisa now... :)
-starling
4:23 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Daniel A. Seagraves wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 starling(a)umr.edu wrote:
Smalltalk was the name of the object-oriented GUI language that was loaded
onto the system.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
> Actually, Xerox had a working GUI-based
system (the name eludes me at the
> moment) well before the LISA, which is where Jobs got his inspiration
Was it Smalltalk?
I got a picture of that, somewhere... 
11:31 p.m.
In message <Pine.BSI.3.91.970626161007.616A-100000(a)bsdserver.tek-
star.net>, "Daniel A. Seagraves" <dseagrav(a)bsdserver.tek-star.net>
writes
On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 starling(a)umr.edu wrote:
Naah, Smalltalk was the first(?) object-orientated language, developed
by Xerox and which I have to learn for my Open University course next
year :-( [It looks incredibly complicated]
--
Eifion Bedford - I prefer MCMXXX technology to MMX technology!
> Actually, Xerox had a working GUI-based
system (the name eludes me at the
> moment) well before the LISA, which is where Jobs got his inspiration
Was it Smalltalk?
I got a picture of that, somewhere...
27 Jun
27 Jun
2:51 a.m.
On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Eifion Bedford wrote:
Eifion Bedford - I prefer MCMXXX technology to MMX
technology!
That should perhaps be MCMLXXX - in 1930 there weren't any Z-80, 6502
or 6809 CPUs available. There _is_ a limit to how far back we can go
with classic computers.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
26 Jun
26 Jun
12:46 p.m.
New subject: Altair Emu
Who wants a Altair Emulator 17k??
Shall i uploaded it to the group
Steve
Emulator BBS 11,000 Emulator Related Files
01284 760851
Keeping 8-Bit ALIVE
2:15 p.m.
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12:16 p.m.
Question for
any Alto owners - was the original Xerox GUI machine just as
slow?
Saw one on TV once, but I'm not sure what the Alto's processor was. But
as I recall, it's GUI wasn't as flashy.
6:03 p.m.
Someone later told me that Xerox used their own cpu,
specially
designed for this kind of work: It was caled the MESA cpu.
That's probably correct. I was once inside a Xerox 1108 (it was running
interlisp-D when I finally got it to boot), and the CPU was 1 or 2 boards
of chips.
Unfortunately they were all house-coded (they had Xerox part numbers, not
ones I could identify), but I remember there being 4 40 pin devices which
I suspect were 2901 4bit bit-slice ALUs, and a lot of what looked like TTL
and probably some RAM as a control store around them.
jeff
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
12:08 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 26, 1997 at 10:03:11PM +0000, A.R. Duell wrote:
Unfortunately they were all house-coded (they had
Xerox part numbers, not
ones I could identify), but I remember there being 4 40 pin devices which
I suspect were 2901 4bit bit-slice ALUs, and a lot of what looked like TTL
and probably some RAM as a control store around them.
Does anyone have information / know where I could find information on
building a computer using 2901's? I know they were fairly common and
I have (I'm almost positive) a few of the bare chips laying around
home.
m@
--
/* Matt Sayler -- mpsayler(a)cs.utexas.edu -- Austin, Texas
(512)457-0086 -- http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mpsayler
Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations? */
6:13 p.m.
Does anyone have information / know where I could find
information on
building a computer using 2901's? I know they were fairly common and
I have (I'm almost positive) a few of the bare chips laying around
home.
Well, there's the AMD 2900-series data book if you can still find a copy.
There's enough info in there if you already know how to design a
microcoded system to make one using the 2901's, etc. I suppose a good
technical manual on a machine that used them would be a good starting
point as well.
Be warned that you need a lot more than the 2901's. They're just the ALU
and registers. You also need some kind of control store sequencer (AMD
would like to you use the 2909, 2910 or 2911), a microprogram (either
stored in ROM or RAM) and a lot of glue logic. I suppose you _could_ go
for a hardwired instruction decode, but you still need a sequenncer for
your machine code program
What I would love to see are the Application Notes for the 2900 series. I
am told there's some fun stuff in some of them - Unibus SMD controllers
etc.
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
1:23 p.m.
Also I think I read somewhere that they purposefully
designed it to look
like a "business-like" dumb terminal to get around the "hobbyist/home
computer" reputation of the Apple IIs. I'd also guess that secretaries
(who the machine was designed for) would feel more comfortable with a new
system if it looked like their old one.
That seems to make sense.
Actually, I've always felt that they didn't do
ENOUGH with the 68000.
They clocked the poor thing at 5Mhz... it could have happily taken 8,
but the story goes that at the time they were designing the Lisa, the
68000 wasn't out yet. So Motorola gave them a 68000 "emulator" which was
a box with a bunch of discrete components in it that did effectively what
the chip would do... but it only ran at 5Mhz.
The very first 68000s, the XC series production samples, are 4 MHz. The
emulator probably was only designed to support up to this speed. Apple
was probably pushing things at 5 MHz.
In using my own Lisa, it really isn't that
sluggish. Especially if you
compare it to a Mac 128 or 512. The filesystem on the Lisa is VERY
advanced and allows for recovery from errors that'd hork other
filesystems. It has memory protection which keeps it from being as
flakey as the early Macs (and later Macs :), and it truely multitasks
instead of just lame task-switching like it's Macintosh cousin.
Oh yes, it did have a real operating system (OK, the memory management
was not great, but considering Motorola had not introduced the 68K MMUs,
not bad).
However, the Lisa still lives on. Every time you pull
down a window
you're using Lisa technology. Lisa was also the first to have an
integrated office suite which could cut-n-paste between apps. Xerox
provided much of the inspiration, but Lisa polished the GUI into a usable
system. It's really quite impressive for a machine designed 78-81 and
released in 82.
With a little more horsepower, it really could have been something special.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
3:56 p.m.
[...]
In using my own Lisa, it really isn't that
sluggish. Especially if you
compare it to a Mac 128 or 512. The filesystem on the Lisa is VERY
advanced and allows for recovery from errors that'd hork other
filesystems. It has memory protection which keeps it from being as
What did they do in that filesystem? I am curious because the PERQ, which
was another machine that came from the Xerox PARC work also had a very
interesting filesystem under POS (the first OS that was written for it).
In particular :
Files are linked lists of blocks. The sector header of each sector on the
hard disk contains pointers to the previous and next blocks in the file,
along with some other info that I've forgotten
Files may be sparse - the fact that block n exists does not mean that
block n-1 does
Block 0 of each file (I think, maybe block -1) contains the 'file
descriptor' - bascially an i-node.
Negative block numbers are the file allocation map. You can use this to
quickly find any block in the file without following the links.
Directories are sparse files. When you access a file in a directory, the
filename is hashed in some way (the algorithm is not in the manual), and
the hash value is used as the first directory block to look in.
If the 'file descriptor' gets mangled it can be recreated from the header
pointers. If the header pointers get mangled they can be recreated from
the file descriptor. Ditto about other important structures on the disk -
loss of any single one is generally recoverable using standard utilities.
Were any of those things done on the Lisa?
*ling
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
11:31 a.m.
New subject: Lisa's Filesystem...
What did they do in that filesystem?
I've always wondered myself. :)
I've only been able to find general information about the filesystem. I
know that the filenames that the user used weren't the actual filenames,
but just "tags" that referenced the actual filename (presumably some sort
of serial number). This allowed the user to make a copy of a file and
have the copy retain the same name as the original. For some reason,
this seemed more "logical" and in keeping with the desktop metaphor to
the Lisa designers. I understand that most Unix filesystems do this sort
of thing, but I think I skipped class the day we talked about filesystems
in my operating systems class.
And I also know that it has extensive abilities to rebuild it's
filesystem if something gets hurt. But I'm not sure of the technical
aspects of it.
I've been meaning to go to my university's library and research the Lisa,
because I know we've got several old computer magazines back to issue 1.
And I'm pretty sure that the IEEE had an article about the Lisa's
architecture in their journal sometime around 1983. Heh. They also have
a book about how to build your own Z80 machine... that's another one I've
been meaning to check out. But it really sucks since the Library is only
open from like 8am to midnight. Who ever heard of a university library
that's not 24-hours?? Anyway...
starling
9887
days inactive
9889
days old
18 comments
13 participants
participants (13)
-
ard12＠eng.cam.ac.uk -
dastar＠crl.com -
dseagrav＠bsdserver.tek-star.net -
eifs＠thenet.co.uk -
gram＠cnct.com -
jeff.kaneko＠ifrsys.com -
mpsayler＠cs.utexas.edu -
shoppa＠alph02.triumf.ca -
sinasohn＠crl.com -
spc＠armigeron.com -
starling＠umr.edu -
steve＠kennard.keme.co.uk -
william＠ans.net