General Category > LisaList2
Another Prototype Lisa Card
AlexTheCat123:
--- Quote from: ried on August 06, 2025, 09:58:19 pm ---Should I burn a 2716 and add both chips back to the board? Or does this look like it'd do ghastly things to an otherwise working Lisa?
--- End quote ---
I think I'd replace the chips and plug it in! It looks like the resistors are probably just loading the power rails, so it's understandable for them to get hot and burn the board if the card has been plugged in for a long time. Assuming you check for shorts on the power rails before sticking it in a slot, I don't think you've got much to worry about.
stepleton:
That was my conclusion about the resistors too: they are just there to put a load on the power rails, giving this card an additional testing function besides DMA testing.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, there is not a whole lot that's interesting inside the ROM. But it seems better to have it than not!
ried:
It works! Well, it does whatever a DMA Test Card does... Behavior is consistent with other cards in this thread:
https://youtu.be/qFD37dJXe0E
Special thanks to stepleton for making his card's ROM available, and to Lisa2 for burning me a copy. You guys rock. 8)
ried:
--- Quote from: snuci on July 20, 2020, 10:10:38 pm ---FYI, I bought the Apple II/III, Twiggy and Fluke tape lot. As noted in the original eBay auction via the desk name plate, it was from Ed Goodwin. Ed was an engineer at Apple and can be seen in these pictures from Digibarn here with the Lisa Development unit. http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/apple-lisa1/index.html
Among the pictures is an internal Profile drive. In another auction from the same seller, I acquired a prototype internal 5MB Profile controller and mounting plate. I think I may have been able to make a complete internal Profile with this controller and a normal Profile in parts but sadly, the package was lost a few weeks ago in transit and it is gone forever. A picture of the Profile controller is attached. Clearly, this never made it as a product as I have only ever seen one other...
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Well, there is at least one more. Full gallery: https://imgur.com/a/RbNlN3v
This one seems to be a complete drive cage with the internal ProFile, its activity LED, mounting plate, fan connection, and an early (prototype?), somewhat rusty Sony 400K floppy drive underneath. We'll see if this can somehow be resurrected to a working state. If I can get this thing to power up and pass its self-test, assuming it behaves like a regular 5MB ProFile, I plan to use BLU to dump its contents in case there are interesting things on it.
AlexTheCat123:
--- Quote from: ried on September 18, 2025, 10:00:05 pm ---Well, there is at least one more. Full gallery: https://imgur.com/a/RbNlN3v
This one seems to be a complete drive cage with the internal ProFile, its activity LED, mounting plate, fan connection, and an early (prototype?), somewhat rusty Sony 400K floppy drive underneath. We'll see if this can somehow be resurrected to a working state. If I can get this thing to power up and pass its self-test, assuming it behaves like a regular 5MB ProFile, I plan to use BLU to dump its contents in case there are interesting things on it.
--- End quote ---
I was planning on grabbing that drive cage off eBay myself, but you beat me to it. Glad it went to someone who'll take good care of it!
I've got one of the prototype internal ProFiles myself, and it's basically a regular old ProFile in a different form factor with a scaled-down controller board. So if the ROM or anything is bad, you can just throw a standard ProFile ROM in there and be good to go. If you get a chance, try dumping the ROM that's on your board; mine was a previously-unarchived version and yours could be too.
Interestingly enough, yours seems to be a 5MB drive, whereas mine is 10MB. Given that this was the predecessor to the 10MB Widget, I had assumed that they only made these in the 10MB configuration. But your drive proves this isn't true!
And definitely dump the drive too if you get it going! Mine just had a boring MacWorks Plus install on it, but maybe yours will hold something a bit more exciting than that.
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