LisaList2

I'm glad if Teslerpoint is helpful! To your questions:

1. There should be no problem running this app on a 2/10 or any Lisa with a hard disk, provided no screen mod is fitted. I believe I have run it on my own 2/10 but can't remember anymore. If there's any problem at all then it will be from running on a disk that isn't attached to the internal connector (because it didn't remember or pay attention to which disk was used for booting), but I don't think I messed that up.

2. As written now, it's only manual, and there's no loop-around. Adding auto-advance would not be all that hard to do.

In re Googling for Lisa information, a long, long time ago (early-to-mid '90s) there was not a lot of Lisa information on the web. I can remember being annoyed that the search results from AltaVista and other contemporary search engines were always for USENIX's LISA conference, which was about system administration and not about our favourite old computer. The lack of info was one of the reasons I made a webpage about the Lisa back in those ancient days. But then I went on to publish a paper at LISA about seven years after that.

Quote from: stepleton on January 20, 2026, 07:19:23 PMSo far as I know there is no easy way to do this. No facility exists to convert modern formats to any Lisa Office System format. Copying and pasting text from LisaTerminal is about as close as it gets.

I have these recommendations if you wish to show a bitmap graphic at screen resolution:

0. (Doesn't really count.) Painstakingly recreate your graphic on the Lisa itself in LisaDraw. Impractically slow for complicated graphics.

1. Using LisaEm with emulation speed boosted way, way up, recreate your graphic in LisaDraw on a modern computer, then transfer it to a real Lisa via the routes that involve a disk image. (E.g. virtual floppy disk -> Floppy Emu -> Office System; virtual floppy disk -> BLU -> real floppy disk -> Office System; virtual hard drive -> hard drive emulator -> Office System.) I've done this once or twice; it's nice if you have spare time and an audiobook.

2. Fake it. Using LisaEm, set up a typical Office System usage session. Open a new LisaDraw document and position the empty window on your screen. Take a screenshot of the emulator --- only the screen image, and use raw pixels (your screenshot must be exactly 720x364 pixels; on a modern display it will look vertically squished). Open the image in your favourite image editor and add a black and white (no grayscale!) graphic. Save the result as a black and white gif or png image. Use my Teslerpoint gimmick to create a hard drive image that boots into showing your picture. This is the approach I would take.

3. Install the Lisa Pascal Workshop and write a Pascal program that uses QuickPort to display a bitmap image of your choosing in a window in the Office System. The LisaMandelbrot Port program I wrote a while ago is an example of a QuickPort program that deals with a lot of bitmap data. Needless to say, this approach is a fair amount of work if you are starting from scratch.

Good luck!

This is really helpful info - thank you!

0. The pic I attached to my original question is about as close to the real logo as I'm likely to get, both because my artistic skills are garbage, and because the real logo uses a modern font with a unique look that the Lisa's fonts don't really resemble.

1. This is a viable option, but again I'd be limited by my crappy artistic skills. I do want to set up LisaEm just to play with, so I may end up trying this anyway

2. I love this option! I'm sad that I wasn't able to find your clever app when I was Googling prior to posting this question. I think the challenge I've run into is that the words "Lisa" and "image" are so drowned out by talk of disk images, it's actually quite difficult to find anything related to graphical images. I'm going to give this a shot immediately after I figure out why my Lisa refuses to boot from my external ESProfile gadget

EDIT: Two quick questions about Option 2:

• Is there any problem running your app on a Lisa 2/10? I'm new to all this but it seems that the architectural differences between the 2/10 and earlier models sometimes causes challenges for some apps and tools...
• Does Teslerpoint have any ability to automatically progress through images, or does it require the user to manually advance from one to the next? It would be pretty neat to have a set of screenshots and/or infographics about the Lisa that just loops infinitely while the Lisa is being exhibited...

3. I'm no programmer (getting "HELLO WORLD!" scrolling infinitely in BASIC is about as far as I go LOL) so I might play with this as a way of determining if ChatGPT can "vibe code" in Pascal 

So far as I know there is no easy way to do this. No facility exists to convert modern formats to any Lisa Office System format. Copying and pasting text from LisaTerminal is about as close as it gets.

I have these recommendations if you wish to show a bitmap graphic at screen resolution:

0. (Doesn't really count.) Painstakingly recreate your graphic on the Lisa itself in LisaDraw. Impractically slow for complicated graphics.

1. Using LisaEm with emulation speed boosted way, way up, recreate your graphic in LisaDraw on a modern computer, then transfer it to a real Lisa via the routes that involve a disk image. (E.g. virtual floppy disk -> Floppy Emu -> Office System; virtual floppy disk -> BLU -> real floppy disk -> Office System; virtual hard drive -> hard drive emulator -> Office System.) I've done this once or twice; it's nice if you have spare time and an audiobook.

2. Fake it. Using LisaEm, set up a typical Office System usage session. Open a new LisaDraw document and position the empty window on your screen. Take a screenshot of the emulator --- only the screen image, and use raw pixels (your screenshot must be exactly 720x364 pixels; on a modern display it will look vertically squished). Open the image in your favourite image editor and add a black and white (no grayscale!) graphic. Save the result as a black and white gif or png image. Use my Teslerpoint gimmick to create a hard drive image that boots into showing your picture. This is the approach I would take.

3. Install the Lisa Pascal Workshop and write a Pascal program that uses QuickPort to display a bitmap image of your choosing in a window in the Office System. The LisaMandelbrot Port program I wrote a while ago is an example of a QuickPort program that deals with a lot of bitmap data. Needless to say, this approach is a fair amount of work if you are starting from scratch.

Good luck!

> AFAIK, the composite video driver circuit is a bit different on the two motherboards.

You would hope that by now I would have learned not to make hasty assumptions!

It grows late here in London Town, but both of these simple circuits might be fun to emulate in everyone's favourite in-browser circuit simulator. It might illustrate the difference between the signals. VID is the pixels and should be TTL, and I think CVOUT should be TTL too... gathering evidence from here and here it looks like it is known on the CPU board as \CSYNC and is made here.

So I think that's about all we need to know with the possible exception of the parameters that the circuit simulator would need to more accurately reproduce the transistors' behaviour. To approximate VID and CVOUT in the circuit simulator, I would make CVOUT a 380 Hz 0V/+5V square wave with a 90% duty cycle and VID the product of ANDing CVOUT with a 280 KHz square wave.

Quote from: bmwcyclist on January 20, 2026, 04:51:08 PMHow do we add Karma and thank people now, I don't see a button...

The 'karma' functionality of the forum disappeared in the update from 2.0.x to 2.1.x. We were able to restore karma values (as they were prior to the update) but modifying +/- karma is simply no longer a thing.

I hope you'll all forgive another beginner question: is there a method or technique by which I could display a simple black-and-white logo in Lisa OS? I have done a clumsy recreation in LisaDraw, but my ideal outcome would be to literally display the actual graphic.

I guess there are two problems I'd have to solve:

• How to get the logo loaded onto the Lisa?
• What image / document format would be needed for the Lisa to be able to load / display it?

I have the image in question saved on my Macintosh SE/30 in a variety of vintage-friendly formats (GIF, TIFF, PICT, etc.), and I also have a registered version of GraphicConverter too. I believe some early versions of MacPaint could open LisaDraw images, but is there any option for going the other way around?

I think I have a few options available for actually moving the file from my SE/30 over to the Lisa:

• Copy the image onto a 400k floppy image using my Floppy Emu and shuttle it from the SE/30 to the Lisa
• Connect the SE/30 to the Lisa with a serial cable (not sure if there's any sort of AppleTalk option under Lisa OS?)
• Use a WiFi232 modem to download the image via LisaTerm (presumably this would be the most challenging option?)

Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions!

How do we add Karma and thank people now, I don't see a button...

Quote from: AlexTheCat123 on January 20, 2026, 11:56:10 AM

Quote from: bmwcyclist on January 20, 2026, 07:44:57 AMMy hope is that the profile used on Adrians digital basement might work for me.

If you want, I can text Adrian and see if he can send me the profile!

wow! yes!

Quote... works on my Lisa 1 but not my 2/10. I haven't investigated why, but I doubt that there is much difference between the way either computer makes video

AFAIK, the composite video driver circuit is a bit different on the two motherboards.

The 2/10 design uses a conformal coated circuit (essentially SMT on a ceramic substrate), while the Lisa 1 design uses discrete components.

The 2/10 design has a bias to -5V that the earlier design does not, as well as numerous component value changes.

Something like the drawing below, although someone (else) should check for accuracy.

We might want to coordinate around this to work things out systematically.

The profile I posted at the start of the thread that ried linked works on my Lisa 1 but not my 2/10. I haven't investigated why, but I doubt that there is much difference between the way either computer makes video; it could be that the RGB2HDMI is quite sensitive to certain kinds of noise when processing signals specifically like the kind the Lisa makes (whatever that means).

We can discard the old Lisa profile that was made without access to a Lisa, but perhaps sharing multiple profiles in the same spot and seeing how they are similar or different would be enlightening.

Note that if the RGB2HDMI really is "noise fragile" for Lisa video signals, then variations in the RGB2HDMI itself could be a factor; in other words, a profile that works on my device may not work on yours.