Thread
Is it a Lisa????? Is it a Macintosh????
Today I acquired this very special Lisa...uh ...Macintosh..uh... machine!
It is Lisa modelnumber A6S0300P, so a Lisa XL. But the inside is totally rebuild. It has a Macintosh motherboard with lots of memory "piggy bagged". In total 2 MB. The monitor of the original Lisa is used and is working. Some kind of hack is made to make this possible. It looks like it is done very professional.
Anyone knows if it is done by a company? Or could you "do it yourself"?
Lots of pictures:











View attachment 6118







It is Lisa modelnumber A6S0300P, so a Lisa XL. But the inside is totally rebuild. It has a Macintosh motherboard with lots of memory "piggy bagged". In total 2 MB. The monitor of the original Lisa is used and is working. Some kind of hack is made to make this possible. It looks like it is done very professional.
Anyone knows if it is done by a company? Or could you "do it yourself"?
Lots of pictures:











View attachment 6118







Looks like a Mac motherboard with say a shall I say a 128 board since it does not say 128 and 512 by the part number upgraded on board to 2 mega of ram. Neat upgrade and really clean. If I had a Lisa case I would do the same thing if the old parts did not work. At this point you could almost put an SE 30 board in there pretty easy.
Thats a first. A 128k in a Lisa Shell. The RAM upgrade is sweet. Add a SCSI card interface and you would have one of the fastest Lisas out there - at least on appearance. And I agree, not a Sun job - they had no need to go to these extremes unless it was some sorta experiment by them.
edit: I wonder what is up with the ROMs? Additional addressing for the RAM? Video modification? 800k drive?
edit: I wonder what is up with the ROMs? Additional addressing for the RAM? Video modification? 800k drive?
Its been so long since I have tinkered with a Lisa - but I think normally the motherboard would interface here. So this looks made for this application and I wonder if it has some video adjustment stuff on it.
I gotta say I keep looking at this hack in awe. Its so cool. But dont so well. Not your typical at home hack job.

I gotta say I keep looking at this hack in awe. Its so cool. But dont so well. Not your typical at home hack job.

Yes - this mod was done with some foresight and care. Without seeing the CRT board and circuitry, it seems like it's completely reversible as well.
Like someone said upthread, I'd like to find the guy and have him do the same mod on one of my donor chassis, but with an SE/30 board instead
Like someone said upthread, I'd like to find the guy and have him do the same mod on one of my donor chassis, but with an SE/30 board instead
The inside of the Lisa is cavernous. If you had a 12" monochrome Mac Monitor('s guts attached to the Lisa's tube or replacing the Lisa's CRT entirely), you could pretty much drop any monochrome capable Mac LoBo in there.
I'd do it with a SE's guts, so it would just be a nice, simple, slightly-overclocked Mac XL with an internal SCSI HDD, and square pixels.
I'd do it with a SE's guts, so it would just be a nice, simple, slightly-overclocked Mac XL with an internal SCSI HDD, and square pixels.
@Byrd
No I did see immediatly that this was not an "ordinairy" Lisa XL. It was also clearly stated. I was amazed because I own a Lisa XL with nothing more then video board, monitor and case. So I already asked on this forum if such a kind of hack is possible.
Quote
https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13945-lisa/
Now I found one with exactly what I wanted. Very nice.
I made some fresh new pictures to show how the video part is done. Will post then later tonight...
No I did see immediatly that this was not an "ordinairy" Lisa XL. It was also clearly stated. I was amazed because I own a Lisa XL with nothing more then video board, monitor and case. So I already asked on this forum if such a kind of hack is possible.
Quote
Not really, no.is it possible to connect the monitor to any kind of more modern Mac? Like a Plus or a Macintosh II?
https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13945-lisa/
Now I found one with exactly what I wanted. Very nice.
I made some fresh new pictures to show how the video part is done. Will post then later tonight...
Per one of the comments I made on that old thread, my gut feeling is that the circuitry that drives the Lisa's monitor might need very little modification to work with a Mac motherboard; both systems had about the same vertical resolution and frame rate; the only real difference would be the pixel clock (IE, number of pixels per line, which in this case would be 512 vs. 720) and that's something that you can generally change, within reason, without modifying the monitor. Does that adapter board that's between the Mac motherboard and the Lisa's card-edge have any active components on it? (transistors, etc? I'm not sure what that white thing is, is it by any chance a piezoelectric buzzer replacing the speaker that's driven by the Mac's analog board?)
I'd need to see what it's connected to on at least the Mac side of the house to venture more than a speculative guess but my first thought is that the 7474 flip-flop IC is being used to convert the Mac's direct horizontal drive output into a standard horizontal sync signal. Buried somewhere on these forums (in more than one place, I'm sure) is a link to a page that explains how the Mac's analog board circuitry has a number of shortcuts on it compared to a "complete" stand-alone monitor; if the Lisa's monitor is more "feature complete" you'd need something that does that.
(Search for posts about DIY "Hackintoshes" in the old meaning of Hackintosh (or "HackMac") vs the current meaning of the word.)
(Search for posts about DIY "Hackintoshes" in the old meaning of Hackintosh (or "HackMac") vs the current meaning of the word.)






