#### Back to index | # Info for lisa2

#### Apple Lisa

Usage :
This driver is still buggy. Neither the hard drive nor the serial port are supported. There are
many other bugs remaining with MMU emulation. Only Macworks will boot.

When you boot up the Lisa, you can see a self-test progress indicator. At least one test will fail :
you must discard the error message by selecting the 'Ignore' or 'Start-up from...' button. Then,
you get a boot device menu. Select the floppy drive unit, since it is the only available device.
If the mouse temporarily refuses to work, you may use the keyboard shortcuts Apple+2 and Apple+3
(the Apple key should be mapped to Control ; you must use the numeric keys on the main keyboard, not
on the numeric keypad). If the computer does boot, you will see an icon representing a weird floppy
disk with a cross (maybe it actually represents a twiggy disk).

History and Trivia :
The Lisa project started in the summer of 1979. At the time, the idea was merely designing
a powerful business computer, with scheduled release in march 1981. After his legendary visit
to the Xerox PARC research center, Steve Jobs realized the GUI was the future of computing.
So, in March 1980, a GUI was added to the Lisa specs.
Despite huge support from Apple, the project got behind schedule, and Lisa was introduced
on January, 19th, 1983.
The Lisa was an impressive computer for its time. It had TONS of memory (1Mb on Lisa 1),
a high-resolution graphic display, and it was fairly expandable. Its OS (weirdly called
"Lisa 7/7 Office System") featured a complete GUI, and full preemptive multitasking
with memory protection (something neither Windows 98 nor MacOS offer !).
Its 68000 CPU was one of the fastest microprocessor in its time.
Unfortunately, Lisa was never too successful. It was quite expensive, and relatively few units were
sold (possibly about 10,000 Lisa 1 and 80,000 Lisa 2). Little software was developed for it.
Also, it was extremely resource hungry : it was reportedly slow, and its memory requirements were
the major cause for its high price.
On 24th January 1984, Lisa 1 was replaced by Lisa 2, with 3.5" floppies and several small
hardware changes. In January 1985, Lisa 2 was replaced by Macintosh XL, which had a modified video
hardware, and used a variant of the Macintosh system instead of the 7/7 Lisa OS. Mac XL was
discontinued in May 1985 (although it was still available at much later dates). Rumor has it that
an enhanced, 68020-based, Lisa was in development when Apple discontinued the Lisa.
Note that, contrary to a common belief, the Macintosh is not a mere offspring of the Lisa, since
both projects were led simulteanously. While the Macintosh borrowed many ideas from the Lisa project
(which had more financial resources), the reverse is often true, too : for instance, the Macintosh
included a GUI from the beginning.

The significance of Lisa :
Lisa is a milestone in the history of computing. Arguably, the Xerox PARC research center invented
most GUI concepts (along with Object-Oriented programming and Ethernet) 10 years before Lisa was
introduced. However, although Xerox research was public, and some Xerox Altos were actually sold,
or given to universities, these experiments remained little known, and raised little interest.
I guess this was because computing was mostly the field of highly-trained professionals who did
not care about ease of use (you know, the same kind of guys who laughed at Macintosh and worshipped
the early IBM-PCs). So, Lisa made the world aware that GUI could exist, all the more since Apple
was a major computer maker. Also, Lisa (along with Macintosh, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga)
introduced GUI to hobbyists and home computer users, which enabled GUI to live.

created on Tue Jan 01 12:56:01 2002