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[ried]

Hi all. A friend of mine recently came across a bundle of Twiggy disks that were owned by an Apple engineer in 1981-83. The disks appear to have been used and erased several times, and most recently used as backup disks. The interesting part is that these disks came with printouts: a list of files contained in the backups. There are several eyebrow-raising files listed here, including Apple UniFile and DuoFile disk drivers, files in the Apple ///'s SOS file format, and more. This gentleman and I are both interested in ensuring that these disks are imaged and archived, so any thoughts on what these disks contain would be greatly appreciated.

Hopefully these disks contain items that were either lost or unknown to the community until now. Pretty neat find in any case 

Full gallery: https://imgur.com/a/mrcVaRo

[sigma7]

... interested in ensuring that these disks are imaged and archived

Intriguing for sure... if you don't already have a Lisa 1 lined up to archive them, I expect we can find a volunteer to help... approximately where are you located?

[ried]

I do have a Lisa 1, but no direct experience archiving Twiggies. This gentleman is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Do we have anyone up there in Silicon Valley that would be able to help?

[sigma7]

... anyone up there in Silicon Valley that would be able to help?

We don't have many locations listed in the "Twiggy Archiving - List of Lisas w. Twiggy drives, by location" thread yet... more volunteers needed, please!

[stepleton]

Very happy to help, but unless the owner travels to London with some frequency, there are likely to be much more convenient options!

[compu_85]

If you have a Lisa 1, you should be able to archive them with Basic Lisa Utility!

-J

[ried]

Thank you, all. I think we have a solution at hand. More to come.

[ried]

Good news: Thanks to sigma7, we have 100% complete images of most disks, including the entire 6-part backup dated 5/19/83. I do not know how he accomplished this, or how to extract individual files from the .dc42 backup disk images he created, but hopefully someone else in the community does. I would imagine that someone needs to write all 6 of the images to actual Twiggy disks and then run a restore program of some kind (onto a ProFile?).

Looking at the list of files contained in the backup, I suspect it was created on an Apple /// using a UniFile or DuoFile drive. That would explain all of the Apple /// software, SOSfiles, etc.

https://imgur.com/a/apple-lisa-fileware-twiggy-backup-disks-mrcVaRo

What does everyone else think? Were these backups made on an Apple /// with a Twiggy drive attached? Or on a Lisa?

[stepleton]

It's hard to say for certain without the disk images themselves. With those in hand, it should not be too hard to determine whether the filesystem is from Lisa OS or the Monitor or whether it's an Apple /// filesystem (from SOS I suppose).

The first thing I'd try naively would be to boot the Workshop or the Monitor on my Lisa 1 and try to mount physical copies of the disks.

There is a chance that the disks are from Apple /// Pascal and so use a P-system sort of filesystem. The Monitor uses a similar filesystem, though I haven't investigated how compatible they are. But if it's a P-system filesystem, then there are some utilities for modern computers that may be able to make sense of it.

If we do hypothesise a mutually-compatible filesystem (i.e. something that could be read by both /// and Lisa), then a next step would be to look for signs of byte order inside the files. The /// is a little-endian machine, while the Lisa is a big-endian computer.

But there's one final consideration:

The file listing appears to show a hierarchical directory structure with / as the directory separator. With the exception of the Unixes, no Lisa operating system to my knowledge supported hierarchical filesystems until version 3.0 of the Lisa OS (PDF page 3). Furthermore, this OS used - as the directory separator.

But SOS on the Apple 3 had a hierarchical filesystem with / as the separator. (PDF pages 40-41)

So I think these are properly Apple /// disks with SOS filesystems. There are probably access tools for modern computers out there --- you wouldn't need to use vintage hardware. But if there aren't, the PDF linked just above appears to have quite detailed information about the SOS filesystem, enough that I'd be optimistic about pulling files from these disk images with some Python code and a rainy weekend.

[sigma7]

Disk images uploaded to the files section:

Justins Twiggies 2024

They may be deleted once they appear on BitSavers (thanks Al!) to save our limited space/traffic.

[stepleton]

Even just running the strings command on disk images turns up interesting things:

#Apple /// Pascal Compiler [A3/1.0 ]
(C) Apple Computer, 1983.  Disk /// Formatter Driver.g
!Name of Apple Writer /// volume :
@Insert APPLE WRITER /// UTILITIES diskette in built-in drive and

PROGRAM DOSTRAN;
-(*   COPYRIGHT  1980   *)
-(*   APPLE  COMPUTER   *)
-(* ALL RIGHTS RESERVED *)
-(*  12 SEPTEMBER 1980  *)
-(*      JIM STEIN      *)
"(* TRANSFER FILES BETWEEN PASCAL  *)
"(* DISKETTES AND DOS3.3 DISKETTES *)


Someone's homework?
{E** P. G**, MATH 4700-3, due 28 April 1983}
{This program is a stack oriented Virtual Machine Simulator that executes
 RPN internal source code. The program instructions and data are loaded into
 separate arrays from disk files.}


Hmm --- there's someone's Apple performance evaluation here. There might be some personal info on these disks that maybe ought to be treated with care.

Anyway, there's clearly a lot of Apple /// stuff in these backups.

Admin edit: name redacted

[stepleton]

Random.dc42 has what looks like source code for the LisaWrite spellchecker:

{----------------------}
FUNCTION startSpelling: TF;
{----------------------}
(*Init Houghton-Mifflin's spelling software.  If something goes wrong, give an
 appropriate alert and return FALSE.  If all goes well, read in all dialog box
 check forms from {T1}Dbox.text, set up some constant strings for later use,
 and return TRUE.*)


This same text is found in APPS/APLW/APLW-UNITSPELL.TEXT.unix.txt in the Lisa source code released by CHM.

[stepleton]

Moving on to Level II Video Board 4_22_83.dc42, I think it's more than what's found in the Hardware Reference Manual, at least as far as I'm familiar with it:

The following procedure will show an individual how to diagnose a problem on a video board.  These procedures are in three sections:
        o Section I - describes how the video board works.  It is adopted from the Lisa Hardware Manual.
        o Section  II - describes (section by section) procedures for troubleshooting a video problem.
        o Section III - contains the appendicies.  The Appendicies are:
                o  Appendix A - list of the possible video problems and the area or component that might cause them.
                o  Appendix B - list of components most likely to fail.
                o  Appendix C - list of components and their position on the video board.
                o  Appendix D - video board schematic

[stepleton]

LisaTerminal, Crossley 5__.dc42 has very few ASCII strings that look like English text; mainly some phrase file contents for LisaTerminal.

[stepleton]

Backup.Volume[12]/Backup.Volume1.dc42: Software for some financial function? Probably Apple /// as a lot of the backup disks appear to be. From the program's help function (one assumes):

H       H       EEEEEEEEE       L               PPPPPPPP        !
H       H       E               L               P       P       !
H       H       E               L               P       P       !
HHHHHHHHH       EEEEEEE         L               PPPPPPPP        !
H       H       E               L               P               !
H       H       E               L               P
H       H       EEEEEEEEE       LLLLLLLLL       P               !

Also some kind of demo for Apple /// productivity software.

Backup.Volume[12]/Backup.Volume2.dc42: continues the above.

********************************************************************
 *                                                                  *
 *                 Apple /// Managers Solutions Demo                *
 *                             by                                   *
 *                         Pete Burnight                            *
 *                                                                  *
 ********************************************************************

This software helps managers stay in the game!

a$="Managers stay in the game":secs=3:
300:a$="by being on top of the":secs=0:
300:a$="information they manage.":

Later....

$APPLE ///  BUSINESS SYSTEMS  (C)1982
 Enter Today's Date (mm/dd/yy).
 Enter Correct Time (hh:mm)....
  You Are at Floppy Disk Control
 ________________________________
                                 
  ````````~   ```````~  ````````
  ``     `\   ``    ``     ``   
  ````````    ```````\     ``   
  ``     `~   ``           ``   
  ````````\   ``        ````````
 ________________________________
                                 
     S   Y   S   T   E   M   S   
 ________________________________

Moving on...

+ __________________________________________
,|         Apple  ///  Pascal   1.1         |
,|__________________________________________|
Current  date  is 
!(C) Apple Computer Inc. 1981,1982
(C) U.C. Regents 1979
Version: Nov.  1982
Based on  U.C.S.D. Pascal II.1