LisaList2

I just sent you a 10MB UniPlus image that I use on my ArduinoFile. So that should hopefully work! I would attach it here, but I know that LisaList2 has limited storage space for attachments, so I don't want to do that unless I get the go-ahead from an admin!

Alternatively, does someone have a stock full installation of UniPlus on a ProFile image they'd be willing to send me to try out?

I have a folder named "10MB ProFile Uniplus Image by Gilles" containing a 9.9 MB file named "profile_uniplus.raw" that I will be happy to zip and email to you if you'd like it, but I don't know what it contains.

It corresponds to the link Ray posted here: Re: Copy II Mac

Gilles is the author of the IDLE emulator; he had worked on supporting UniPlus, eg. IDLE 0.10 now running Uniplus

I seem to remember running into the same issues when I was trying to get UniPlus up on my 2/5. First question, are you running a 5MB image or a 10MB image? I was trying to install UniPlus on a real 5MB profile and one thing I noticed is that UniPlus always tried to shoot the heads out way past end of disk, which lead me to assume that UniPlus's installer only works with 10MB disks and so I gave up on it. I think the only image we have of an installed UniPlus came off a 10MB ProFile, too. Maybe UniPlus is doing something that ArduFile can't handle, too?

I also believe that Ray only got experimental XENIX support working in LisaEm before he passed, nothing too terribly stable.

So, I've been working with Xenix for the last little bit trying to get some things going to port Infocom's "Dungeon" over to it, but it's being an absolute pain to deal with and I keep running into snags. Also, the C compiler Xenix uses is... interesting, to say the least. It's K&R C, which isn't the end of the world (definitely taking some getting used to), but it's throwing errors for things that run completely contradictory to how my contemporary "C Programming Language" manual describes should be done. I'm getting weird syntax errors for things like for loops that are formatted exactly how my old-as-dirt C manual describes, or const declarations that are otherwise perfectly acceptable in just about any other compiler. All that to say, I've found that UniPlus has a Fortran compiler and have wanted to give that a try instead of trying to port the available C code for Dungeon (Fortran Dungeon source is also available and the C code that's out there was converted using f2c back in the early 90s). Additionally, UniPlus treats the serial ports a little different (better) than Xenix and the cu command appears to work differently as well; this version looks like it was made for serial-based communications and isn't telephone-based like Xenix's cu is. Getting UniPlus running has been a complicated journey of its own, though...

I can get the deserialized boot disk to copy the bootloader to my ArduinoFile and can boot into the sunix kernal on the root filesystem disk, but that's when I run into problems. It prompts me for whether I'm using a ProFile or Corvus and what port it's on (0 for built-in parallel), but then it prints out that two serial ports are available and locks up. The only key that produces a response of any kind is the backslash/pipe key (and it throws an invalid key error); pressing anything else does nothing. There's no activity on the ArduioFile/ProFile or the floppy (via my FloppyEmu) and it just kind of... sits there. I've swapped out memory boards to no avail and deleted my ProFile image and started fresh, but I keep hitting the same wall. I've also been trying to get UniPlus running in LisaEm to try to build a bootable hard disk image, but I can't even get the boot disk to load without LisaEm just crashing. Also, I'm running this with an I/O card whose ROM I patched to have system ID 88 instead of A8 so I could use a 10MB ProFile image with it (Xenix); I doubt that's causing an issue but I might try to swap those ROMs out and try again.

Has anyone got UniPlus running on, well, anything recently that might have some advice (or has run into the same or similar issue that figured out how to clear it up)? Alternatively, does someone have a stock full installation of UniPlus on a ProFile image they'd be willing to send me to try out? I'm going to keep plugging away at this thing but, dang if this isn't a head scratcher.

Edit: Also, if anyone has any advice for getting LisaEm running with anything not LOS, I'd be very grateful for whatever you can tell me. I feel like I'm just dumb and not doing things right, but I do know the more "recent" RC releases for it had some issues with stability.

I want to complete this unit as a 2/10. Are there any other differences in front of the 2/5's "firewall", such as the video card, that will prevent me from using the 2/10 card cage in this unit?

Chassis differences between the 2/5 and 2/10

Chassis 60 pin card edge connector

• 2/5: mounted directly to the chassis. This results in the two card edge connectors of the 2/5 motherboard to be offset.
  
• 2/10: mounted on standoffs, making it more recessed in the chassis. This results in the two card edge connectors of the 2/10 motherboard to be aligned.
  

Chassis 60 conductor ribbon cable

• 2/5: Terminates in two 26 pin socket connectors (originally for two Twiggy drives, the 2/5 drive cage uses the Lite Adapter to convert one of the 26 pin sockets to the 20 pin cable used by the 3.5" drive), and one 10 pin socket for the power button/keyboard jack
  
• 2/10: Terminates in one 26 pin socket connector (the internal parallel port), one 20 pin socket connector (for a 3.5" floppy) and one 10 pin socket for the power button/keyboard jack
  

Chassis wiring harness

• 2/5: has a 3 pin socket, not used by anything that we know of
  
• 2/10: has an 8 pin socket that provides power to a Widget
  

Chassis sheet metal (revised -- this cutout may not be a sign of a 2/10 or 2/5)

• There is a cutout between the drive cage area and the card cage area aligned with a slot 3 expansion card. The cutout appears to be suitable for a 60 pin card edge connector; typically unused except for eg. routing a SCSI cable for an internal drive.
  

Some of the things that are the same:

• Video Board
  
• CRT, flyback transformer
  
• power switch & keyboard jack assembly
  
• speaker and front panel safety interlock
  
• card edge connectors for the power supply and the motherboard
  
• plastic panels, aside from the dual Twiggy front panel
  

So, to convert a 2/5 chassis for use with a 2/10 motherboard:

• remount the 60 pin card edge connector on standoffs.
  
• If you wish to use a floppy drive, you will need to change / alter / adapt the chassis ribbon cable. It is possible to split off 20 conductors and crimp on the 2/10 specific floppy connector.
  If you modify the cable, it is wise to label it as mismatching the internal drive cable(s) and motherboard can result in damage.
  
• If you wish to install a Widget, you will need to install an 8 pin Widget power connector.
  

edit: I observe the expansion slot 3 connector cutout is not on all 2/10 chassis, so perhaps I had it backwards, or perhaps it is unpredictable which chassis have it.
Emphasised that mods to the ribbon cable should be labelled.

Hello gang!

I have had a battery bombed Lisa 2/5 since June 2023. I just bought another Lisa2 I thought was a 2/10 bc the drive cage is from a 2/10.

HOWEVER: It seems my Computer is a 2/5. The 2/10 card cage is not compatible as the 2/5 edge connectors in the body have staggered depths, & the 2/10 seems to have evenly spaced connectors. 

The staggered connector is part of the Drive Cage/Power Switch harness.

I want to complete this unit as a 2/10. Are there any other differences in front of the 2/5's "firewall", such as the video card, that will prevent me from using the 2/10 card cage in this unit?


Thank you in advance!!


-Mark

Unfortunately I am confused now My immediate interpretation of what you're saying is that Xenix is managing to read 532 bytes from a floppy disk sector that has only 524 bytes!

Is it possible that the raw-to-dc42 tool is assuming 20-byte tags? Checking the source code for the tools that shipped with LisaEm and... hmm, if you're using that, I may have sent you down a garden path, since that does seem to be for ProFiles, not floppies.

I think that Xenix may actually be using the full 524 bytes per sector since you don't seem to be missing any of your data. The easiest way to confirm that I can think of is to use dd to copy the entire floppy into a file. Look at the size of the file and divide by 800: that's the block size. If it's 524, that's Xenix using the full block.

Just a quick response/correction - the 20 bytes doesn't eat into the 512 preceding bytes, it's just 20 bytes instead of 12. So, 0x0000-0x01FF is still intact and the tag is the next 0x14 bytes (0x0200-0x0213), followed by the next 512+20 bytes starting at 0x0214.

Sector tags on floppies are 12 bytes, 20 bytes on hard drives, except for Priam hard drives, where they're 24. (I have experience with the first two but not the Priams --- I get that fact from the BLU manual.) The explanation that they're treating floppies like hard drives makes the most sense to me, but if you're not going to go for the full 524 bytes, why you'd choose anything besides 512 (504 bytes??) is a big mystery to me.

I'm almost wondering if block device access on Xenix has some tricky behaviour --- I suggested the dd argument bs=1024 as an easy way to get 4 kilobytes of dumped data, but maybe block devices need to receive reads that are some correct size. Maybe some experimentation would confirm this: trying dd if=/dev/<floppy> of=/tmp/foo count=1 bs=X | ls -l /tmp/foo with X values of 400, 504, 512, 524, and 600 should result in /tmp/foo files that have those same sizes, and if they don't, we'll know that the floppy block device needs special treatment.

If you have the hard drive space for it and the patience, then I wonder what the size of a full floppy image on Xenix would wind up being. If it's also 800*504 = 403200 bytes, then that confirms it. dd if=/dev/<whatever> of=/tmp/weird bs=??who knows?? to see.

Anyway, thanks very much warmech for running the experiment you've run!

It'll be a while before I'm anywhere near north Texas, but you never know! 

I'm not super knowledgable about Lisa floppy formatting, but I do know a decent bit about the ProFile. And the ProFile uses 20 tag bytes per block (each block is 532 bytes, so you still have 512 left over for data), so maybe Xenix is treating floppy sectors like ProFile blocks or something? Maybe other operating systems like LOS only use 12 tag bytes per floppy sector, but Xenix treats floppies and hard drives identically?