is there a Lisa 1 and a Lisa 2? I thought there was just a Lisa... please educate me! ed sharpe archivist for smecc ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 12:06 PM Subject: Re: Apple Lisa 1 Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org mputers ] http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

ok what I suspect the museum has is a Lisa 2/10 - Lisa 2 with an internal 10 MB "Widget" 10 MB hard drive or a In 1985, Apple introduced the Macintosh XL - a Lisa 2/10 when we turn it on all we get are all sorts of squares on the screen! I will now have to keep an eye out for one of the earlier ones. Just should be happy to have a Lisa in any form I guess... The one we have is the only one we have had a chance to obtain! Eric thanks for the history lesson! ed sharpe archivist for smecc ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Smith" <eric(a)brouhaha.com> To: "ed sharpe" <esharpe(a)uswest.net>et>; "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 12:33 AM Subject: Re: *****Re: Apple Lisa 1

If you got a Lisa-1 to sell...I'd gladly pay $1K! I'm a big Lisa fan, but don't have $8-10K to pay for one...I'd rather spend it on my other love - A Lotus Esprit! -Chandra -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Hans Franke Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 1:43 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Apple Lisa 1 met) Everything above 1K is a rip off. I'll bet it stays below the reserve and won't even reach 4K (*1) Gruss H. *1 except of course theusual stupid sniper... -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: Well, I disagree, Herr Franke. Considering there are less than a dozen known Lisa 1's to exist, and considering the demand for one from all the Apple crazies, I sanction a $10K sale price. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: Oh please. My opinions are based on reasoned analysis, not silly whims, and that's always been the case. Yes, around 30, but considering that everyone in the world wants one, and they regularly fetch more than $15K when they do come up for sale (with some RARE exceptions noted), I think it's a reasonable value. The Lisa 1's are no different. There are even LESS of those than Apple-1's in the known universe. And there are 1,000,000 screaming Mac fans who would sell their mother's kidneys for one. $10K -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: Nope, the hobby changed. My reasoning is, as always, based on reasoned analysis. I'd like to see that :) I would agree, which is why I have been saying "known". But, until those machines materialize, the fact is that there are less KNOWN Lisa 1's in existence than Apple-1's. I would not doubt that there are more out there (and would be willing to accept that there are many more), but until they come forward, we can only go off of what is known. Sure, I can agree with that in general. But where are they? And if you just spent $10,000 on a computer that had crappy disk drives that failed most of the time, and Apple was offering you a FREE upgrade (the Apple-1 deal was TWO Apple-1 boards for ONE Apple ][) then wouldn't human nature dictate that such an offer would be taken by most people (where "most" means ">98%")? So your number may well be inflated. First, we need to know how many original Lisa's sold before we can start speculating. No, it tells you how fanatical Macintosh people can be ;) Go to sleep! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: Of course, but then that's the nature of valuation. You can speculate that there are 50,000 Lisa 1's out there but then to factor "those" in to any valuation would be misleading. You shouldn't base prices on the possibility of more being out there just as you shouldn't go to war against a country based on the possibility that it might have weapons of mass destruction (har har). No, he who had ***TWO*** Apple 1's could get an Apple ][. Let me repeat: TWO Apple-1's. The Lisa upgrade was ***FREE***, as in ***NO CHARGE***, as in ***FREE***. Apple even paid shipping both ways. Quite a bit of difference. Gehst du zu haus! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Witchy wrote: Witchy, Where did you get the 70,000 figure from? We had my Lisa 1 running at the Computer History Museum for their AppleLore event as well as during VCF 6.0. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it to boot from the Twiggy's or from a ProFile, so it just sat there displaying error windows :( By the end of the VCF it had died, and I haven't had a chance to figure out what happened. My guess is that the power supply went out. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Witchy wrote: I certainly believe this is the case. And I would imagine initial Lisa sales (of the original machine) were well under 10,000 units. Perhaps as low as 1,000 units. Not really. I just need to swap power supplies to see if that is in fact the problem, then let Tony figure out what's wrong with the bad one ;) The Lisa is the ultimate module swapping computer. I hope it is the PSU. I can't think of what else it might be. The weird thing is that the power switch lamp comes on but nothing else does. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Tony Duell wrote: I knew that would get a rise out of you :) Yes, I can do some tests on it. Swapping the supply is super easy (two thumbscrews on the target and donor units and it's free) and that would at least tell me right away where to look. Then I could focus on either the bad power supply or look elsewhere for the problem. Oh, come now, Tony. You've expressed a desire to have one in the past to examine. If you ever make it over to the States then I'll give you one of my extras. The fact that it is very easy to disassemble should not be a mark against it. It is, after all, one of the first mass-marketed GUI computers. The design is rather elegant. Everything can be taken apart with the thumb and forefinger. It's very easy to work on. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Tony Duell wrote: Yes, but in my experience the thumbscrews on the Daybreak are sometimes murder on your fingers to turn. But yes, the Daybreak and Lisa are designed similarly in terms of their ability to be stripped down with very little or no tools. I see... I only have one bad story to relate but that is Hans' fault :) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Thursday, November 13, 2003, at 06:12 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Those plastic clips annoy me too. There are a lot of things that rely almost entirely on little plastic tabs to hold them together (modern Dell computers come to mind). Another thing that I really hate are those little plastic tabs that hold DEC VT100's together. More and more modern equipment is switching to the method of plastic clips to hold everything together. Sure, it's easier to manufacture, since all the parts can be slammed together with no screws, but then they don't come apart without considerable effort (or a hammer). Then, of course, there are those things that are _glued_ together, which can't be disassembled without a lot of pounding (wall wart power bricks...). Of course, the quality of consumer electronics decreases exponentially at the same rate as Moore's Law increases the technology. Ian Primus ian_primus(a)yahoo.com

You are talking about lareg units, where these things are somewhat accessable and known. That's not the point (except for that I undo caseings a lot, and after some open close cycles these tend to break even when handled properly. My point. these little things, where you can't see from the outside where they are and where you can't get inside to use whatever tool. Gruiss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

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On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Witchy wrote: No, I haven't. Where are they posted? I'm very curious. Hmmm. Well, I have spares in the form of at least one Lisa 2. In fact, I got this one working by swapping out the busboard and the I/O board from a Lisa 2 (the batteries had leaked and corroded some components on the original I/O board plus dripped into the connector socket for the I/O board and damaged one of the pins). It's still at the Computer History Museum and I won't be retrieving it until tomorrow, so I won't be able to tell for sure until I get it back home and can start probing. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Witchy wrote: Yes, I saw that, but unfortunately it does not breakdown the number into how many of each model sold. We're still after the actual number of the first production Lisa computers with the Twiggy drives sold so we can try to guess at how many may still be left. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Witchy wrote: Ok, so assuming this is the correct number of original Lisas sold (which I still believe to be a high number) then using our ">98%" estimate of units upgraded we can say with complete uncertaintly that less than 200 of the original Lisas remain. I firmly believe the number is less than 100, and quite probably less than 50. 80,000 total Lisa machines (Lisa, Lisa 2, Lisa 2/5, Lisa 2/10, MacXL) which explains why the latter machines are so easy to find (and further exemplifies how inflated prices for Lisas are, the original Lisa notwithstanding). -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Any idea what 2 of these chips on a simm should total up to? Mitsubishi m5m482128

"Fred Cisin" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> wrote: The upgrade consisted of replacing the drive assembly, plastic front bezel, boot EPROMs on the CPU board, and disk controller EPROM on the I/O board. The upgrade kit was sold to dealers and fairly expensive, but they got the entire price refunded when they returned the old Twiggy drive assembly to Apple. Apple destroyed the returned Twiggy drive assemblies. Someone suggested that Apple knows how many machines were ugpraded. Back in 1985 they undoubtedly did have this information, but today there is basically zero chance that they still have it. Information like that is not preserved very long.

I wrote: Sellam wrote: I very much doubt that any of the returns escaped, or that anyone (even employees) wanted them. The reason Apple was trying so hard to get rid of them was that they were unreliable, and they didn't want to get sued by customers. As it was, there was a shareholder suit over this. My understanding is that they were destroyed as fast as they came in, so that they couldn't possibly turn into a liability. Certainly various Twiggy drives escaped, but mostly just the ones they shipped in the Lisa 1. They weren't used in any other production product from Apple. I've been looking for a UniFile or DuoFile since 1983. I knew an Apple employee who had two of them, but wasn't about to part with one. Of course, the much more difficult items to find are the UniFile/DuoFile interface cards for the Apple II and Apple ///. (These are, of course, entirely different than the UniDisk and DuoDisk, which are almost but not quite as common as dirt.)

I wrote: Sellam wrote: I wrote: Sellam wrote: How do you know it was a unit returned to Apple as part of a Lisa 1 upgrade?

Sellam wrote: I wrote: Sellam wrote: Then I don't see why you were disputing my statement that Apple destroyed the Twiggy drive assemblies that were returned from Lisa 1 upgrades.

Eric, you forgot to add 'in the US' here. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Witchy wrote: As Eric mentioned previously, Apple made a UniFile and DuoFile drive which was basically either a single or double external Twiggy drive for use on the Apple ][ and ///. Apparently, they never made it to market. Eric can say more or correct me where I'm wrong. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

"Witchy" <witchy(a)binarydinosaurs.co.uk> The Twiggy drive was developed with the intention of using it on Apple's entire product line. The external Twiggy drives were to be available in single drive and dual drive packaging, under the names "UniFile" and "DuoFile". The floppy disks are called "FileWare". The actual drives were sometimes known as "Apple 871 drives". The UniFile and DuoFile were attractively packaged (as per the aesthetics of 1983 Apple computers). There were interface cards for the Apple II and Apple /// family. The products were cancelled before introduction. Very few of these escaped into the wild.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Teo Zenios wrote: That's not true. There are plenty of employees currently at Apple who have been there since at least the early 1980s, and some from the 1970s when they were first founded. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

--- Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de> wrote: hmm, come to think of it, it does seem a few years ago his typical quote was "you should pay me for the privilege of removing your computer", ....now its 10K quotes __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: I still won't pay more than $1,200 for an Altair (notice I have come up on this as well...before I poo-pooed anything over $1,000) but that's because I'm cheap. I'd rather wait for a good deal or a chance encounter, and even then I rarely pay over $300 for any one thing. In fact, I don't think I have ever paid more than $300 for any one machine. I have spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a lot or collection of machines. I paid $300 for a prototype Apple //gs. I can't think of anything else where I spent more. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Uuuuuh ... NASCOM(s) are still on my top list ... And chances to just get one over here are prety rare. :) Like the doubble-Woz I have. Agreed, up to the last Penny. So do I Now we got a number. I'd go for 5% as a bet, that makes some 3.5K (or still 1.4 K if we just use Sallams 2%) ... now ther must be 99% of them beeing trashed to come to Sallams 30 Units. I can't belive that. Now that I can't agree on. What's a machine that you don't turn on? A pice of junk metal! Ok, given that I don't have the time to play with all of my machines on a regulary base,but if I take one out, it will get powered up. No mater if it's just a C64, an MZ80, or my KIM#1. It's one of the reasons why I collect, I want to play around with all of the nice toys I ever wanted to have. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 1:57 PM Subject: RE: Apple Lisa 1 would've %deity% be even Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org mputers ] http://marketplace.vintage.org ] This site mentions 10,000 for the twiggy, and 80,000 units sold for the Lisa 2 series: http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Apple/lisa2.php Twiggy! Unfortunately for Apple, Lisa had an achilles heel. Or two. Yes she was groundbreaking, but bugger me did she cost - $9999 - although when you add up the individual cost of the components and technology it wasn't THAT bad. After all, how much did 1mb of RAM cost in those days? The 2nd and 3rd problems were to be her downfall. She used proprietary 880K double sided 5 1/4 inch floppy drives called 'Twiggy' because they were so thin (named after the 60's model of the same name). While they were an excellent design in themselves they were prone to repeated failure apparently because of the unique way they read data from the floppy. An extra read/write hole was created opposite the 'normal' one; rather than have a read/write head on either side of the disk surface at the front like the DEC RX50 the Twiggy had one side reading from the front and the other side reading from the back! 3rd and final problem was that there was little software available other than Lisa Office System 7/7 which contained the aforementioned applications. She also took ages to boot. Things were helped with the ProFile external hard drive from the Apple 3, which could store a whopping 5 MEGABYTES of data....hell of a lot in those days....but not by much. Only 10,000 were sold. Apple's answer was a free upgrade to the Lisa 2, which lost half the memory and the Jobs-designed Twiggy drives (Apple never made another floppy drive themselves) replacing them with a single Sony 3 1/2 inch 400K floppy that still talked to the Twiggy routines by virtue of an interface card called the 'Lisa Lite'. Also there were now 3 models of Lisa - the bog-standard 2, the 2/5 (with the Profile) and the 2/10 which had the original megabyte of RAM and an internal 10mb hard drive called the Widget. They also slashed the cost to $3495 according to the bumf I've got here, or $4495 if you wanted the 2/5. It must've worked because Apple sold upwards of 80,000 machines. I also wish the people I bought mine from had forked out the extra grand for the 2/5 *g*. Lisa 2 could only run MacWorks since LisaOS needs more available at any one time that a 400K floppy could provide, Lisa 2/5 couldn't run all of the OS owing to not having the full complement of memory, Lisa 2/10 could do it all but still cost over 5 and a half grand. TZ

----- Original Message ----- From: "Witchy" <witchy(a)binarydinosaurs.co.uk> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 3:05 PM Subject: RE: Apple Lisa 1 posting If these things really fetch $10K each Im going to the landfill that 1000's were dumped in and dig a few up. I think EBAY has a broken twiggy with no documentation or software thats over $1000 already. Do companies like apple have warehouses with very old obsolete computers going for a bank loan? Or maybe a few classics just get lost in the back of the engineering building or warehouse.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2765377242&categ… ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 4:21 PM Subject: Re: Apple Lisa 1 1000's when of Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org mputers ] http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

At 02:10 PM 11/11/03 -0500, you wrote: This was an issue even at the time the Lisa was introduced, but Apple (then as now) didn't look at it that way. I was at a trade show (selling Hewlett-Packard 250s, but that's another story) where Steve Jobs was selling the Lisa. I listened to a few of his conversations with people in the crowd and they typically went like this: Steve: You need to buy a Lisa. Customer: Yes, they're nice, but expensive! Steve: Just have your company buy it. Customer: I don't have the authority to approve such an expensive purchase. Steve: Then get your boss to approve it. Customer: I don't know if he would approve such an expensive machine. Steve: Okay, then get yourself promoted so you can buy a Lisa. Customer: I'm a long way from getting any kind of promotion. Steve: Well, quit and start your own company so you can buy a Lisa. ...and so on. This thread does remind me: I have a Lisa 2 in storage that I need to dig out and check to be sure the battery isn't leaking... Cheers, Dan www.decodesystems.com/wanted.html

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, steve wrote: During those days, he never charged me anything to remove computers. He saved me a LOT of removal fees. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

Strewth, sport! :) I have, and I've been meaning to add the software to my Lisa page 'cos a lot of the other web links I ever found were either missing or incomplete. Tremendous fun was had producing 400K floppies though. Not. PC 1.44mb floppy written using a Mac translator (HFVExplorer), over to a Mac that could read 1.44mb floppies but not write 400K ones, so appletalk over to a Mac IIcx onto a 400k floppy :) Now it's less of a pain 'cos I've got the CD so I can just put a CD player on an old Mac. I'll update my Lisa page sometime today. http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Apple/lisa/lisa2.php cheers