Re: Availability of Lisa 1's?

From: <jlewczyk_at_email.domain.hidden>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 15:31:30 GMT


There are two IO boards and motherboards in the Lisa line. The early IO Board came with the Lisa 1, the Lisa 2, and Lisa 2/5, while the latter came with the Mac XL. Each IO board was designed to be used with a particular motherboard and are NOT interchangable. The CPU boards are interchangable between the Lisa 1, etc. and the Mac XL (except sometimes the video ROM on it!).

The first motherboard had two key differentiating features from the latter: a external parallel port on the back, usually used to hook up an external "Profile" hard drive, and two internal ribbon connectors for connection of the two "Twiggy" floppy disk drives. For Lisa 2 and Lisa 2/5 units, upgraded by Apple from a Lisa 1, one of the internal floppy ribbon connectors was connected to an adapter board (called a "Lisa Lite Adapter") that connected to a 3.5" Sony floppy disk drive. The other "twiggy" connector was left unused.

To upgrade from a Lisa 1 to a Lisa 2, you replaced the front bezel designed for two Twiggy floppy drives with one designed for a single 3.5" Sony floppy drive. You removed the two twiggy drives, and mounted a 3.5" drive connected to a "Lisa Lite Adapter" board. You also changed the EPROMs on the IO board that controlled the floppy and you had a Lisa 2! Add a 5mb profile and you had a Lisa 2/5! One can get the ROM images for Twiggy drives and 3.5" Sony drives.

The Mac XL version of the Lisa used a redesigned IO board and matching motherboard. This motherboard has an internal, not an external, parallel port, designed to connect to an internal hard drive (a "Widget"). There was one internal ribbon cable that went to the single 3.5" floppy drive. Because of the extra power requirements of the internal hard drive, a heftier power supply (1.8amp) replaced the original one (1.2amp).

Incidently, the modification for square pixels has nothing to do with the IO Board/motherboard combination.

I don't know if the Lisa 2's sold by Apple always had the first generation IO Board/motherboards in them or if Apple changed to the latter IO board/motherboard combo and still called it a Lisa 2. Did the latter version debut with the Mac XL?

Hope this helps,

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: LisaList [mailto:lisalist_at_email.domain.hidden]On Behalf Of Black Ice
> Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 4:59 PM
> To: LisaList
> Subject: Re: Availability of Lisa 1's?
>
>
> In adition to the twiggy drives and face plate, I *beleive* that you also
> need the Lisa 1 I/O card (which apparently is different than the Lisa 2 I/O
> Card)... Can anyone verify this?
>
>


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