Hi all,
I've been working on getting a Lisa onto the internet through a FujiNet (fujinet.online), the Wi-Fi network adapter that many 8-bit machines now use. The FujiNet does all the networking (Wi-Fi, HTTPS, JSON); the Lisa just talks to it over a serial port. Here is where things stand.
LISAFUJI (tool 419312, pencilled in)
A Lisa Office System tool, written in Lisa Pascal on the Workshop, that talks to an RS-232 FujiNet on Serial B.
- Test functions: FujiNet ready, adapter and Wi-Fi status, network clock, and fetching a web file, each reported as PASS or FAIL in plain words.
- A news reader: nine categories from the FujiNet news service, nine headlines a page, articles paged to fit the window. About 4 seconds a page at 9600 baud.
LISATWINCLOCK (tool 419313, pencilled in)
Sets the Lisa's clock from today's date. The clock only counts 1981 to 1995, so it uses a "twin year" with the same calendar: 2026 becomes 1987, so every date falls on the right weekday. It also saves the real year so other tools can show true dates. Apple's own Clock tool agrees with it.
HOW IT WAS TESTED
Both tools are built and running on my Lisa.
My FujiNet RS-232 board hasn't arrived yet, so a PC stands in for it: a small Python program that answers the same FujiBus protocol over a USB-serial adapter and a null modem, and fetches the real pages over HTTPS. So the Lisa side is the real thing (Serial B, framing, checksums, timeouts, screens), but nothing is proven on a stock 2/10 yet. That comes next, along with the real board.
The FujiNet developers have seen it on their Discord and were very welcoming. A firmware release with the RS-232 fix I'm waiting for is planned "soonish".
WHAT'S NEXT
- A timing fix: waits currently run about three times too long.
- The real FujiNet board.
- A text web browser for the Lisa Office System, with a small Raspberry Pi gateway that turns web pages into plain-text pages the Lisa can show quickly. Has anyone ever made a native Lisa Office System browser before? I'd love to know before I get ahead of myself.
- Later, a Mac version for the Macintosh XL under MacWorks Plus II (thanks sigma7 for the answers in my MacWorks thread).
I'm also very interested in PappaDF's LisaShare (AppleTalk and AFP for the Lisa Office System). I run an AFP server on LocalTalk through a TashTalk, so I'd be glad to try it on real hardware.
Video and screenshots attached. The work was done with AI assistance (Claude); I chose the projects, did the testing, and made the decisions.
Questions and suggestions welcome.