Oh, I can use newer Macs to write out Lisa disks? I was under the impression that the 1.44MB SuperDrive SWIMs couldn't generate the right encoding for Lisa disks. I have far, far too many SuperDrive-enabled Macs so that makes things a bit easier.
Yes, yes you can. I think there's some issue with formatting over floppies that were already used on a Lisa because the r/w head is much wider than the one in the superdrive so it may leave some data behind that the larger head will see that the narrower head will not. But you can solve that with a degausser. I think
I do have an X/ProFile along with a MacWorks CF card, and I also went and got a Sapient I/O board a while back and that's what I'm using in mine. Floppy drive is fully working too. Haven't done any testing on Port A as of yet; I'll give it a shot tonight.
Well. There you go then.
But, if you got a Sapient I/O card, it's SIO should be working, if it's not contact John and see about getting another - that is once you swap it and find the old one was at fault, and not something else.
Also BLU will not use serial port A at all. You'd have to use ZTerm in macworks and then DiskCopy 4.2 in macworks to use port a.
I did somehow manage to get things working just long enough to transfer the root fs image over via serial. Imagine an error rate so high it could only get two bytes every 30 seconds, see picture. Ouch... I also picked up a Mac Plus not too long ago. If it's equipped with a Z8530, I'll likely borrow the SCC out of the Plus and stick it in the Lisa and see what happens.
Amazingly, even though it took forever to transfer BLU said that the dc42 checksum was correct and wrote the root fs disk without issue and... still hangs when it finds serial ports in the installer.
There's bunches of Z8530's on ebay, (I just searched for "Zilog 8530") but ofc, no guarantee that they're functioning, still they're around $15-20 each, so might be worth a gamble if swapping with the MacPlus one works. It could also be other components on the I/O board, motherboard, or even the serial cable.
I've had a weird experience using an FTDI quad serial USB adapter and a Linux laptop running Minicom and connecting to BLU. Without a null modem adapter, whenever it sends something to the Lisa, it receives garbage, so it looks like it's sort of working, but it isn't. Maybe you could try adding an inline null modem adapter and see if that helps - perhaps your USB adapter - if that's what you're using, has some logic in it to implement that internally but it doesn't quite work right. But from your screenshot, I don't think that's the issue - looks like a very noisy connection.
If you have another computer you can transfer from, I'd also try that.
You could also use the MacPlus to make disk images into disks.
If your Lisa is a real 2/10 maybe that's why the floppyemu doesn't work right, I've noticed that kind of an issue myself when trying to install LOS from the floppyemu to a Widget. In my case it booted the LOS installer disk just fine and erased the widget, but after that it kept failing when copying disk 2 and beyond randomly.
Also since you have an X/ProFile, I have some good news for you, once I'm done with the CPU tests, I'll add X/ProFile image support to LisaEm, so you'll be able to use it too - well, not for UniPlus, but for LOS at least and there'll be some tools to convert to dc42.
John also sold the Quad Serial Port card with a set of UniPlus and Xenix preinstalled CF cards, so that's also another option since you have an X/ProFile.