A Lisa Inside An FPGA

[AlexTheCat123]

Nice, I'm glad that was the problem!

That behavior is not intentional, but it aligns with what other people have told me. There's a 5V power line on the HDMI connector that's supposed to be supplied to the HDMI sink (the monitor) by the HDMI source (us). From what I understand, the monitor isn't supposed to supply any power of its own on this line, and mine doesn't which is why I didn't discover this during testing, but it appears as if a lot of other peoples' monitors do and that backflow is keeping the 5V and 3.3V rails just alive enough to keep the OLED and a few LEDs on. Don't worry about it though; it's not going to break anything.

[ried]

Who's ready for some Twiggy COBOL? "Here we go..."

Pretty awesome to be able to experiment with Twiggy disk images without exercising and potentially damaging the original media. Thank you, Alex!

P.S. COBOL Workshop 1.0 ESProFile 5MB drive image attached, just in case someone wants to get down like that.

[stepleton]

At last a chance to come back from that time in 1999 when some hoser sniped me on a Cobol Workshop 1.0 auction on eBay!

[ried]

At last a chance to come back from that time in 1999...

And your implementation is free! He who laughs last, laughs best 

[slewis1962]

I know this is probably irrelevant at this point but I wanted to try one of your suggestions before I gave up on Linux.

"Try adding the line mkdir "$TMP_OFL/build" in between the git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/trabucayre/openFPGALoader.git "$TMP_OFL" and the cmake -S "$TMP_OFL" -B "$TMP_OFL/build" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release in the script. If that helps, then I'll add it to the official version of the script."

I did this on the version of the script posted several days ago. I get this error:
══ Checking / Installing Dependencies ══
[ OK ]  git: git version 2.17.1
[ OK ]  pyusb: 1.0.0
[ OK ]  ftdi_eeprom: v0.17
[ OK ]  arduino-cli: arduino-cli  Version: 1.5.1 Commit: 01f3d4f2b Date: 2026-06-05T10:22:17Z
[ OK ]  ESP32 Arduino core: esp32:esp32 3.3.11    3.3.11 esp32
[ OK ]  SdFat: SdFat 2.3.0
[ OK ]  U8g2: U8g2 2.36.19
[INFO]  Installing openfpgaloader...
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
[INFO]  Building openFPGALoader from source...
Cloning into '/tmp/tmp.EHNiBrMpCc'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 299, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (299/299), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (257/257), done.
remote: Total 299 (delta 54), reused 167 (delta 36), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (299/299), 3.92 MiB | 15.02 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (54/54), done.
mkdir: cannot create directory 'TMP_OFL/build': No such file or directory
scott@scott-ThinkPad-T520:~/Downloads/LisaFPGA-main$

Anyway, I gave up on Linux and pulled out my MacBook Pro and ran the latest script posted last night. It was successful! Now this weekend I'll try out my Twiggy drives. Thanks again for a great device!

[slewis1962]

At last a chance to come back from that time in 1999 when some hoser sniped me on a Cobol Workshop 1.0 auction on eBay!

What did it go for back then? I wasn't buying Twiggy stuff at that time, I got my Lisa 1 around May 2002, but I did get quite a bit of Twiggy software during the mid 2000's. I may even have Cobol. I know I have Basic plus the Workshop. I also bought Fortran on Twiggy plus Xenix on Twiggy. I'll have to look and see if I have Cobol.
Has anyone archived any of those Twiggy disks that you know of?

[ried]

I may even have Cobol. I know I have Basic plus the Workshop. I also bought Fortran on Twiggy plus Xenix on Twiggy. I'll have to look and see if I have Cobol.
Has anyone archived any of those Twiggy disks that you know of?

I archived COBOL 1.0 last year, and it's available here on LisaList2. That is the first time anyone has done so and made it available to the community.

BASIC Plus 1.0 on Twiggy has yet to be archived. If you have that set of disks, we would sure love to archive those. 

According to the Apple Lisa - Software Release List, Fortran '77 was mentioned in a brochure as a potential Apple product but has never been seen publicly. There was, however, an SVS FORTRAN release for UniPlus+ in 1983 (by UniSoft). There may have also been an RM/FORTRAN release for UniPlus+ and XENIX by Ryan-McFarland Corp. I am not aware of any Twiggy disk archives of any of these.

[AlexTheCat123]

plus Xenix on Twiggy

Did anyone else know that this existed? I had no clue that there was ever a Twiggy Xenix release! Please archive it!!!

[stepleton]

What did it go for back then? I wasn't buying Twiggy stuff at that time, I got my Lisa 1 around May 2002, but I did get quite a bit of Twiggy software during the mid 2000's. I may even have Cobol. I know I have Basic plus the Workshop. I also bought Fortran on Twiggy plus Xenix on Twiggy. I'll have to look and see if I have Cobol.
Has anyone archived any of those Twiggy disks that you know of?

I think it was a bit over $200. I was a college student at the time, so it would have been quite dear, but even then it was more the sniping than the price that shut me out.

One of my goals had been to archive the disks, but obviously I couldn't do that. I was also excited to be able to write code for the Lisa 1, as at the time there was no widely available Workshop of any kind, and I didn't really think about writing bare-metal assembly like I do now (it would have been a steep learning curve for me back then, I think). I wasn't thrilled about having to write Cobol, but you take what you can get. Or can't get as the case may be.

But I got a chance later on to achieve a similar goal. I remain proud that the 1.0 images of the Pascal Workshop on Bitsavers are from my own copy, purchased still shrink-wrapped about fifteen years later. That was a lucky find!

[slewis1962]

plus Xenix on Twiggy

Did anyone else know that this existed? I had no clue that there was ever a Twiggy Xenix release! Please archive it!!!

Here are photos of some of my Twiggy disks.

Xenix Payroll, Xenix Accounts Payable, Xenix Accounts Receivable, and Xenix General Ledger.

Xenix Team Manager Programs, Xenix Team Manager Date Files, Xenix Version 2.3 Boot Diskette, and Xenix Version 2.3 Backup Boot Diskette.
These photos were taken in October 2022 so I'll have to dig out the disks from my storage area in the basement.

[slewis1962]

Here's some more Alpha pre release software.

Basic 0 and Basic 1 A5 release, Cobol 0 and Cobol 1 A5 release, and another set of Basic 0 and Basic 1 A5 release.

[slewis1962]

Any ideas about this one?

An Apple /// diskware program diskette.

[slewis1962]

Here in the lower right corner is an A5 pre-release of Lisa List along with other various disks.

I have other disks also along with I think more A5 pre-release disks but I'm not positive on that. Everything is boxed up in my storage area not easily accessible.

[slewis1962]

I actually used BLU about 20 years ago to archive my Basic disks but one had several bad sectors. Since then I found another set of Basic, other than the A5 release disks, but have not had the time or area to set everything up to archive. I'm hoping with the new FPGA board that I can start archiving sooner than later.
Also, when I first got my Lisa 1 it had no working boot disks. I bought the entire set of tools including Lisa Terminal but the Office System diskettes didn't work. I found a copy of Fortran on Ebay along with the manual and that bootable diskette was how I verified my system worked. Shortly after that I was able to get a working set of the OS disks. This was all in mid 2002.
I guess I also need to figure out how to set up a serial transfer in order to use BLU again. In the old days I made a cable and used HyperTerminal on windows 95 or 98.

[ried]

Holy macaroni.    You even have the Twiggy Alignment Disk. Would you consider allowing one of us to archive these? Where are you located?

I have the Pascal A5+ release (which is also available for download in the Files section) and you have both BASIC and COBOL. That is incredible.

sigma7 has developed a a new version of BLU that can use multiple damaged Twiggy disks to "fill in" the bad sectors of a disk with data from another to create a complete image. It worked well when I backed up the BPI System Install disk (I had two copies, each with a couple of bad sectors).

We would love to archive these.