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Author Topic: List of All Lisa Software  (Read 79432 times)

blusnowkitty

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List of All Lisa Software
« on: September 23, 2020, 08:40:10 pm »
Was looking at ToastyTech's old pages on Lisa screenshots, and found where he asked if anyone had a list of all the software developed for the Lisa. So I decided to take a shot at it and was actually quite surprised at what I found - did anyone realize there was potentially this much software available? I'm sure much of it is vaporware but it seems to hint at how rich the future could have been.

Sources are what's generally available on the Internet, and a couple of docs from Bitsavers. There's also a few other links to Google Books which I think at least indicates certain titles were available to purchase - whether anyone actually did is another story.

Let me know if anyone has any sort of proof any of the titles here existed or if there's any more concrete evidence for some of the ones I think made it to market!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1STG0Le_8dMHRLf026x6YfXzRQm2hD0igeZVb2Hx0Lxo/edit?usp=sharing
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rayarachelian

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2020, 09:18:00 pm »
I mean... https://lisafaq.sunder.net/single.html#lisafaq-sw-los_about

Best proof is to get disk images up on bitsavers and other places. :)

Some updates to your spreadsheet:

IDOL and Thoroughbred accounting software is for Xenix. I have disks for these but they have errors and won't image properly

There is a C language addon for LPW, that exists, there are docs on bitsavers for it.

Don't know about a Xenix SDK, but the development disks for it are part of the xenix distro, so presumably that's part of it. I don't know if a separate SDK was available.

Lex I think is the unix lex command, i.e. flex/yacc, etc. see: https://arcb.csc.ncsu.edu/~mueller/codeopt/codeopt00/y_man.pdf - I don't think this is a word processor. It's used to build syntax for languages and help build compilers.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 09:28:43 pm by rayarachelian »
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blusnowkitty

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2020, 09:52:40 pm »
Quote from: rayarachelian on September 23, 2020, 09:18:00 pm
I mean... https://lisafaq.sunder.net/single.html#lisafaq-sw-los_about

Best proof is to get disk images up on bitsavers and other places. :)

Some updates to your spreadsheet:

IDOL and Thoroughbred accounting software is for Xenix. I have disks for these but they have errors and won't image properly

There is a C language addon for LPW, that exists, there are docs on bitsavers for it.

Don't know about a Xenix SDK, but the development disks for it are part of the xenix distro, so presumably that's part of it. I don't know if a separate SDK was available.

Lex I think is the unix lex command, i.e. flex/yacc, etc. see: https://arcb.csc.ncsu.edu/~mueller/codeopt/codeopt00/y_man.pdf - I don't think this is a word processor. It's used to build syntax for languages and help build compilers.

Thanks for this, I've updated my list. The largest source was the February 1984 Marketing Binder up on Bitsavers starting at Page 268. The "XENIX SDK" in my document is a little bit shaky admittedly; the Apple document lists a separate "XENIX Software Development Environment" as its own product, and the "Lex" product as a word processor. It could be the document's wrong; Wikipedia says that Yacc's first full spec was first published in '75 so it very well could be that this UniPlus Lex is an implementation of that. Hard to say without having the software...

I assume your IDOL and Thoroughbred disks are Sony 3.5" disks?
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rayarachelian

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #3 on: September 24, 2020, 09:27:34 am »
Quote from: blusnowkitty on September 23, 2020, 09:52:40 pm
Apple document lists a separate "XENIX Software Development Environment" as its own product, and the "Lex" product as a word processor. It could be the document's wrong; Wikipedia says that Yacc's first full spec was first published in '75 so it very well could be that this UniPlus Lex is an implementation of that. Hard to say without having the software...

I assume your IDOL and Thoroughbred disks are Sony 3.5" disks?

Although it's possible, I'd be surprised if lex wasn't included in both Xenix and UniPlus as it's pretty standard.

Yes, IDOL/Thoroghbred disks are all 3.5" floppies, they came with a Lisa that had a Widget, and Tecmar Quad Port Serial card installed, and a batch of also deteriorating bad Xenix floppies. I'm pretty sure I imaged them with CopyIIMac to dc42 and set the ignore errors flag, but pretty much every single floppy had many bad sectors. (The Widget on this drive had MacWorks installed and Lotus Jazz, which is the one that's on Macintosh Garden now.)

One thing that's missing from the Lisa and hasn't ever surfaced was LisaPaint. It ofc became MacPaint, but I don't think it was ever released. I'd love it if it made its way to bitsavers. Possibly it was buggy or whatever, and then just got ported to the Mac.

Inversely, there was a MacDraw (as well as MacTerm, MacProject, MacWrite.) I don't think that Calc, Graph, List, were published for the Mac, likely because they would compete with MicroSoft Word, and Jazz, and other third party products, and drive away developers, or something.)
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blusnowkitty

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2020, 12:23:35 pm »
Quote from: rayarachelian on September 24, 2020, 09:27:34 am
Yes, IDOL/Thoroghbred disks are all 3.5" floppies, they came with a Lisa that had a Widget, and Tecmar Quad Port Serial card installed, and a batch of also deteriorating bad Xenix floppies. I'm pretty sure I imaged them with CopyIIMac to dc42 and set the ignore errors flag, but pretty much every single floppy had many bad sectors. (The Widget on this drive had MacWorks installed and Lotus Jazz, which is the one that's on Macintosh Garden now.)

One thing that's missing from the Lisa and hasn't ever surfaced was LisaPaint. It ofc became MacPaint, but I don't think it was ever released. I'd love it if it made its way to bitsavers. Possibly it was buggy or whatever, and then just got ported to the Mac.

Inversely, there was a MacDraw (as well as MacTerm, MacProject, MacWrite.) I don't think that Calc, Graph, List, were published for the Mac, likely because they would compete with MicroSoft Word, and Jazz, and other third party products, and drive away developers, or something.)

Thanks, got all that added as well. I've also found this article which had a couple test apps listed for development; if I'm going to list the BBC weather app why not any known internal apps too? Smalltalk-80's in there as well now. Interestingly there's a mention of "Lisa Unix" there - I have to wonder if that was a working title for XENIX or UniPlus, or if Apple themselves licensed and intended to port UNIX.

Also, I noticed that Lisa Workshop C made it to Bitsavers just a couple months ago so I might have to see about playing with that to see if you can write Office System applications in Lisa C. Pascal is interesting; I don't really know the syntax but I do a lot of C# work and well, Pascal just feels like a much more primitive version of that. http://bitsavers.org/bits/Apple/Lisa/c/
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rayarachelian

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2020, 12:56:15 pm »
UniPlus comes from real AT&T unix (lowercase I believe), made by UniSoft - they made bespoke unix software for many vendors, Apple included. A/UX comes from UniPlus as well, but possibly a later versions. bitsavers has source code for some of the kernel and tools.

I first learned Basic, then 6502 assembly on the commodore lines (first Pets, then vic20, then c64, then c128), then in high school had access to real IBM 5150 PCs and learned turbo pascal. I really liked Pascal, but mostly because of the IDE. That is, until I learned C and then never looked back at Pascal again. :) I dislike pascal now. Like you said, too primitive. I know some folks around these parts like it and will defend it.
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D.Finni

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #6 on: September 24, 2020, 01:11:23 pm »
Quote from: blusnowkitty on September 24, 2020, 12:23:35 pm
Also, I noticed that Lisa Workshop C made it to Bitsavers just a couple months ago so I might have to see about playing with that to see if you can write Office System applications in Lisa C.
Don't count on it unless you have an early beta version of Workshop C. The newer versions of Lisa Workshop C are cross-compilers only for Macintosh.

I have only a single Workshop C disk, version 0.9.6.
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stepleton

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #7 on: September 24, 2020, 01:19:24 pm »
Whoa, what? When did these Lisa C things turn up? I think I need to subscribe to some kind of newsfeed...

That marketing binder mentions that there was a company out there working on an APL environment for Lisa, if memory serves. I would love to get my hands on anything like that, assuming it ever saw the light of day!

It does occur to me that there are a few more recent pieces of Lisa software that are absent from your list :)
Minimally I think BLU ought to be mentioned---it's probably one of the most popular Lisa programs around!
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D.Finni

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #8 on: September 24, 2020, 01:23:54 pm »
I just investigated the Workshop C on Bitsavers and on Disk 2 it has headers only for Macintosh, dated August 1985. I think it's safe to say that this is the Macintosh-only version of Workshop C.

As for my single Workshop C disk, I am less sure. But the file catalog shows an awful lot of Mac-only files.
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blusnowkitty

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2020, 02:31:57 pm »
I suppose if someone really wanted to, they could adapt the Macintosh C SDK into a Lisa C SDK. If the compiler runs on Lisa...

New tab's added for more modern-day releases like BLU and Tom's various github releases.
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blusnowkitty

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #10 on: October 02, 2020, 11:00:18 pm »
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Informix-V3-11-for-SCO-Xenix-for-the-Apple-Lisa-2-Complete-Disk-Set-Verified/402471817430

Rare find on eBay tonight - Informix 3.11 for XENIX 3.0! Since the price wasn't too bad I went ahead and bought this set, and hopefully the disks are still good and can still be read. Plus I always wanted some of those manual shutter floppy disks anyway...

Dumping should be fun though. My Lisa's decided to not play nice over serial again, so I'll probably pull out the Powerbook 150 and try to dc42 dump them that way. This is now a confirmed release on the list!
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blusnowkitty

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #11 on: October 06, 2020, 12:52:10 pm »
Found a few more XENIX applications from the same seller I bought my copy of Informix from... unfortunately, they all sold before I saw them. Here's some pictures anyway, and once again the list is updated!
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rayarachelian

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #12 on: October 06, 2020, 01:08:42 pm »
Quote from: blusnowkitty on October 06, 2020, 12:52:10 pm
Found a few more XENIX applications from the same seller I bought my copy of Informix from... unfortunately, they all sold before I saw them. Here's some pictures anyway, and once again the list is updated!

So that Cobol was a loss unless whomever bought it images it and puts it online. The other disks, Text Processing and Development I think are already up on bitsavers, text processing might be listed as Lyrix, I don't recall, but it should be a word processor, either that, or it's standard stuff like sed, ed, vi, grep, etc.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2020, 02:18:55 pm by rayarachelian »
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compu_85

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #13 on: October 06, 2020, 10:02:22 pm »
I think Lyrix is different than text processing IIRC, which has things like wc, spell, cut, and formatting for typesetters.
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blusnowkitty

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Re: List of All Lisa Software
« Reply #14 on: October 13, 2020, 08:12:47 pm »
Got my Informix disks in today and there were no file issues as far as I can tell! Unfortunately, there's another issue - the program requires activation which we can no longer do. It calls /once/brand to serialize the installation, so perhaps some inspiration from OS/2 Museum can be applied here? http://www.os2museum.com/wp/tales-from-the-xenix-crypt/

If anyone wants to take a "crack" at it, I've uploaded the images in a ZIP archive to the Files subforum. Have fun! Anyone got Al Kossow's contact info?
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