General Category > LisaList2
Deserializing UniPlus UNIX?
stepleton:
I've never known the Office System to yield those kinds of printed console messages. Very strange. I'd be interested to run `strings` on a ProFile image with the Office System installed and see if you can find that message buried in the binary data somewhere.
In the Workshop, the key to get into the debugger is usually the keypad minus. I think the ToolKit documentation also talks about some kind of online debugger, but nothing that looks like this.
jamesdenton:
--- Quote from: blusnowkitty on July 15, 2020, 10:02:12 pm ---I've been using some old Prolific USB-RS232 adapters before and they were working great with my Lisa until recently. Still works fine for PC to PC transfers; I'm not convinced it's the adapter - though I have heard that USB-RS232 adapters generate lower voltage data pulses than a "real" RS-232 port puts out. I have tons of 486 and Pentium PCs so that might be worth exploring at some point.
As far as the MacWorks + Floppy Emu idea - tried that, but when trying to write back to a real diskette Disk Copy immediately errored out with -17. It could still be weird Floppy Emu emulation tripping me up though - if it won't boot UniPlus right, will it even read the DC42 images right?
Pulled the Mac Plus apart and it's got the AMD variant of the Z8530. It should still be compatible thanks to the rule of second-sourcing from back in the day, I'm just not really looking forward to desoldering all those pins and fighting with the ground plane stealing my iron heat. Bleh.
Dropping the $350 on that quad serial board is pretty tempting. We'll see... Looks like it's gone out of stock on VintageMicros right now.
As a side note, is Office System kernel known to dump debug messages onto the desktop when something goes really wrong? I got the attached on my desktop after recovering from a failed shutdown. Weird part is, when the message appeared it shifted my desktop up one line as if the graphical shell was just another text element. It worked fine after the message appeared and dragging a window around to force a redraw got rid of the weird graphical corruption issue. I also remember reading an article about how the Lisa devs would press a special key combo and it would switch from Office System to some text-mode debug console. Weird stuff.
--- End quote ---
I've used a FloppyEmu fairly successfully with a 2/5 and 2/10. There is a special 'Lisa' mode you will want to make sure it's in to ensure it works properly. I can't recall the process for that.
John builds the 4-port serial cards on-demand, so you might try reaching out to see if he can put one together for you. As Ray mentioned, it includes a Xenix and UniPlus CF card, though you may need to specify with John which model you have (2/5 or 2/10). The Xenix distro is funny that way. UniPlus works with 10mb on either system.
rayarachelian:
--- Quote from: blusnowkitty on July 15, 2020, 10:02:12 pm ---I've been using some old Prolific USB-RS232 adapters before and they were working great with my Lisa until recently. Still works fine for PC to PC transfers; I'm not convinced it's the adapter
--- End quote ---
Yeah, not saying it is, saying it's possibly the adapter, could be anything from the I/O board, to the Z8530, to the motherboard, to the DB25-to-db9 to the USB adapter, to software, etc. Trying to say to eliminate it as a factor.
--- Quote from: blusnowkitty on July 15, 2020, 10:02:12 pm ---As far as the MacWorks + Floppy Emu idea - tried that, but when trying to write back to a real diskette Disk Copy immediately errored out with -17. It could still be weird Floppy Emu emulation tripping me up though - if it won't boot UniPlus right, will it even read the DC42 images right?
--- End quote ---
Nah, that's probably just a bad floppy - you're restoring from an image to a physical disk yes?
--- Quote from: blusnowkitty on July 15, 2020, 10:02:12 pm ---Pulled the Mac Plus apart and it's got the AMD variant of the Z8530. It should still be compatible thanks to the rule of second-sourcing from back in the day, I'm just not really looking forward to desoldering all those pins and fighting with the ground plane stealing my iron heat. Bleh.
--- End quote ---
Or you could buy a Z8530 or equivalent off ebay and hope the one in the Lisa was the issue.
--- Quote from: blusnowkitty on July 15, 2020, 10:02:12 pm ---Dropping the $350 on that quad serial board is pretty tempting. We'll see... Looks like it's gone out of stock on VintageMicros right now.
--- End quote ---
Just remember, those ports will only work with Xenix and UniPlus. AFAIK they won't work at all with BLU. But it will come with preinstalled Xenix/UniPlus on CF cards for the X/ProFile and will avoid the whole install floppy dance.
--- Quote from: blusnowkitty on July 15, 2020, 10:02:12 pm ---As a side note, is Office System kernel known to dump debug messages onto the desktop when something goes really wrong? I got the attached on my desktop after recovering from a failed shutdown. Weird part is, when the message appeared it shifted my desktop up one line as if the graphical shell was just another text element. It worked fine after the message appeared and dragging a window around to force a redraw got rid of the weird graphical corruption issue. I also remember reading an article about how the Lisa devs would press a special key combo and it would switch from Office System to some text-mode debug console. Weird stuff.
--- End quote ---
Whoa, that's a pretty neat screenshot!
Yeah, it's Command-(numpad) Enter to do that if the LPW debugger is installed.
I think the way it works is you install LOS, then you install LPW on top of LOS and use the environments window to boot between LOS and LPW but since they share the hard drive you can compile tools for LOS in LPW and then switch the shell to the desktop manager or something like that.
rayarachelian:
--- Quote from: jamesdenton on July 16, 2020, 12:28:53 pm ---I've used a FloppyEmu fairly successfully with a 2/5 and 2/10. There is a special 'Lisa' mode you will want to make sure it's in to ensure it works properly. I can't recall the process for that.
--- End quote ---
I think I remember having the upgrade the firmware to do that. There's info and binaries for the CPLD+firmware here: https://www.bigmessowires.com/efw
You have to hold next+previous during reset for one, and select+previous for the other part, or something like that.
Then you'd flash the Mac+Lisa firmware on there, and then on top of that there's a mode to switch. Fun times.
But the one I have worked on two Lisas 2/5s, but wouldn't work right on the 2/10 at all.
blusnowkitty:
What I heard from Steve over at BMOW (and I think some people here or on 68kmla too) is that previously Lisa floppy emulation only worked on a 2/5 if you had the original Model A or B and until recently the Model C would only work with the 2/10. I did end up bugging Steve into fixing Model C for the 2/5 which is why that new firmware is out so, woo.
--- Quote from: rayarachelian on July 16, 2020, 07:45:02 pm ---Yeah, not saying it is, saying it's possibly the adapter, could be anything from the I/O board, to the Z8530, to the motherboard, to the DB25-to-db9 to the USB adapter, to software, etc. Trying to say to eliminate it as a factor.
--- End quote ---
Heh, I didn't mean it to be taken that way, I knew you meant it could be a variable :)
--- Quote from: rayarachelian on July 16, 2020, 07:45:02 pm ---Nah, that's probably just a bad floppy - you're restoring from an image to a physical disk yes?
--- End quote ---
That I am - weird thing being that LOS and BLU can format the disks I'm using okay and BLU was even able to write the images without issue but for some reason MacWorks just... can't. I'm fairly certain my 2/5 was very much a cobbled together system; I wouldn't be surprised if there's just some weird little hardware glitch or hiccup somewhere in there. I'll probably end up splurging on a 2/10 at some point; every Lisa owner I've heard of has multiple so why shouldn't I? :D
--- Quote from: rayarachelian on July 16, 2020, 07:45:02 pm ---Whoa, that's a pretty neat screenshot!
Yeah, it's Command-(numpad) Enter to do that if the LPW debugger is installed.
I think the way it works is you install LOS, then you install LPW on top of LOS and use the environments window to boot between LOS and LPW but since they share the hard drive you can compile tools for LOS in LPW and then switch the shell to the desktop manager or something like that.
--- End quote ---
I knew I had to take a picture of it when it occurred. I'm sure such a bug has probably never been seen since at least the early days of LisaEm, if not 40 years ago when the Office System was still in development.
Yeah, that sounds about right - I read a copy of some interview out of a magazine that got republished to one of those early 90s Web 1.0 sites - the ones that only used 16 colour VGA, Times New Roman, designed for 640x480... I can't find the site now of course, but what the interviewer did first was to set the scene of where he was (at Apple's Lisa department) and what was going on, which included a line about a developer hitting a bug, pressing a special key combo to drop to some sort of debug console, and then hitting the combo again to return to Office System.
Far as the UniPlus issue goes, I got it to kernel panic tonight! That's something, right? Ah well... I'm just gonna shelve it for now until next payday, then see what John at VintageMicros has to say about new quad serial boards.
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