Spreading the word: a new Lisa emulator is available

[TorZidan]

Written in Rust and runs in a web browser (in addition to command line).

The author's post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/1u4p7z4/apple_lisa_emulator_in_rust_and_webassembly_the/

Project files: https://github.com/ashtree74/LisaEmulator

Online demo: https://experiments.frontierslab.ai/lisa-emulator/?profile=/lisa-emulator/los31-run.image

I'm not sure if the author, Adam Jesionkiewicz, frequents this forum (I assume he does not), so I'll hold off on my comments for now to avoid bias.

[stepleton]

It is an impressive demonstration of Claude.

I couldn't find support for the speaker in the code. A bootable Lisavox demo does not do very much. Curiously, there appears to be code for interpreting Lisa OS filesystems, for some reason. I don't see a way to use it, at least not in the web interface, and the vibe coder, who "create(s) projects at the edge of AI, design, code, and storytelling" seems to have missed this part of the drama --- it is never mentioned.

I wonder if the vibe coder was even aware of LisaEm. My guess is not. The rather breathless Reddit post (which reads very much as at least AI-enhanced) never mentions it; it's another detail that has apparently bypassed our storyteller.

I miss Ray.

[AlexTheCat123]

Ha, for some reason the help menu recommends my LOS Compilation Base.image disk image as a good "starting point" for messing around. It doesn't even have any LOS apps on it!!!

But in all seriousness, it's pretty impressive that most of this thing was generated by an LLM. It's got plenty of issues (as you'll see in a second), but just the fact that it can run LOS at all is more than I would've ever expected.

In terms of accuracy, both the CPU and I/O boards fail in LisaTest. For the CPU board, it fails the ROM checksum test (because there isn't a real ROM installed), the error logic test, and the video logic test. And for the I/O board, it fails the clock/calendar, VIA, and FDC tests. The memory boards pass though, and clearly things are accurate enough to boot LOS!

If you turn off HLE and try to use a real ROM, it gives you an error 42 (video circuit problem) and an error 55 (something's wrong with the SCC).

It also doesn't appear as if soft power fully works. It's like the Lisa sends the power-off command to the COP and then goes into an infinite loop waiting for the COP to turn it off, but then the COP never obeys and the screen just stays on really dim forever. And pressing the power button doesn't seem to initiate the soft shutdown sequence; it appears to just kill power.

Here's the status of every OS on the emulator. I tried all of these with a real ROM to give it the best chance of working:
- GEM: Hangs before even displaying the fish icon.
- LOS 2: Works.
- LOS 3: Works.
- MacWorks Plus II: The Lisa freaks out. It looks like the emulator keeps trying to automatically click the ProFile in the Startup From menu, but the boot keeps failing with an error (can't tell which error) and so it just keeps spamming the button dozens of times per second.
- Workshop 3.0: Works, emulator crashes if you try to do anything with the serial port (like open the Transfer utility).
- Xenix: Fails the same way that MacWorks Plus II does, but I can see the error code this time. It's an error 75.
- MacWorks Plus: Same deal as Xenix and MW+II, gives an Error 23.
- MacWorks XL 3.0: Same Error 23 and freakout as MacWorks Plus.
- UniPlus: Complains that it couldn't read the serial number from the VSROM.
- BLU: Gives a HARD DISK READ ERROR and the same freakout as Xenix and the MacWorks variants.

So it doesn't really seem to work with anything except LOS right now. But the interface and its web-based nature is pretty nice. I'm curious to see where development goes from here!