A Lisa Inside An FPGA

[AlexTheCat123]

I'm happy to announce that the ESFloppy repo is now public and the emulator is fully-functional for both Sony and Twiggy drives! I haven't updated the LisaFPGA readme to reflect this, and program_board.sh doesn't program your board with the new code yet, but you can install the firmware manually using the Arduino IDE if you want to try it out right now. I'm hoping to have the program_board script updated by tonight or tomorrow, along with the Twiggy fix.

https://github.com/alexthecat123/ESFloppy/

[AlexTheCat123]

Okay, program_board.sh is updated with the new ESFloppy firmware, so clone the latest version of the LisaFPGA repo, connect your LisaFPGA to your computer, run the script, and full floppy emulator functionality will be added to your board!

I still need to do the Twiggy fix that @sigma7 discovered, but that's taking a bit longer than expected because one of the fans in my Linux laptop that I run Vivado on completely killed itself and sounds like a jet engine. It's been a little weird for a while, but it just got 100x worse...

[ried]

Okay, program_board.sh is updated with the new ESFloppy firmware, so clone the latest version of the LisaFPGA repo, connect your LisaFPGA to your computer, run the script, and full floppy emulator functionality will be added to your board!

I jumped in an all went well until:

══ Discover ESP32 Serial Ports ══
[FAIL]  Failed to find serial port for ESProFile (hub port 2)!
justin@MacBookPro LisaFPGA-main %

Eep! What did I do?  The built-in ESProFile still works fine (boots the Lisa normally) and its ACT LED lights up and remains lit. Hmmm...

P.S. https://www.ebay.com/itm/278293940405

 

[AlexTheCat123]

Eep! What did I do?  The built-in ESProFile still works fine (boots the Lisa normally) and its ACT LED lights up and remains lit. Hmmm...

Try pressing and holding the RESET and BOOT buttons for ESProFile simultaneously, and then releasing RESET, followed by BOOT a second or two later. And then right after you do that, run the script again and see if you have better luck. If ESFloppy fails the same way, try the same trick with it.

P.S. https://www.ebay.com/itm/278293940405

 

Wow, that's expensive! I wonder if anyone will be willing to pay that much?

[ried]

Try pressing and holding the RESET and BOOT buttons for ESProFile simultaneously, and then releasing RESET, followed by BOOT a second or two later. And then right after you do that, run the script again and see if you have better luck.

First, thank you for the lightning fast reply. Unfortunately, however, no change here. Still fails at that step. Trying a backup laptop just in case.

Edit: My old backup machines are Intel-based and while they installed Xcode properly when prompted, the remaining arguments and utilities called by the script did not install. They're just too old, I'm afraid (Big Sur 11.7.11 and Monterey 12.7.6).

Back to my Apple Silicon MBP, same result after trying different laptop ports and USB cables. Hmmmm.