
LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum - mpweiher
https://twitter.com/6502lane/status/944965691710496769
======
dreamcompiler
In the earliest days of the Mac (1984) you had to have a Lisa to develop for
the Mac, because that was the machine the Pascal compiler ran on. I bought a
Lisa _and_ a Mac for this reason. It'll be fun to see the source code.

~~~
userbinator
_In the earliest days of the Mac (1984) you had to have a Lisa to develop for
the Mac_

Looks like the concepts of strictly separating users and developers, as well
as paying extra to develop for the platform, have been with Apple for a very
long time. From what I've read, even developing for and on the Lisa itself was
a huge hassle.

The other concept which Apple might've pioneered with the Lisa is forced
obolescence --- the software as well as the _custom_ RTC chip were designed to
not handle dates beyond 1995, less than 15 years after it was released:
[https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/01/lisa_cloc...](https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/01/lisa_clock_date-100023037-orig.jpg)

(In contrast, while the original IBM PC didn't have an RTC, DOS was able to
handle dates up to 2235. Plus, for better or worse, users and developers were
considered simply different extremes of the same demographic for much of the
PCs early history --- computer magazines would print Asm listings or hexdumps
to be entered in DEBUG, essentially letting users gradually become developers
too.)

I certainly agree the Apple Lisa was "ahead of its time"... but not in a good
way.

~~~
ancarda
>the software as well as the custom RTC chip were designed to not handle dates
beyond 1995, less than 15 years after it was released

Why did they do that? Did they have an explanation that doesn’t just boil down
to “we wanted customers to keep upgrading”?

~~~
kalleboo
The year was stored as a 4-bit integer

> we wanted customers to keep upgrading

After _15_ years? Who was going to be seriously using a 5 MHz Lisa in 1995
(yes you can spare me the "this broke school district is still using an Amiga
to run their HVAC!" stories)

~~~
userbinator
The C64 was introduced in 1982, discontinued in 1994, and remained in
widespread use for several years after that.

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zitterbewegung
I think a better name for this would be Mac OS series 0.

Going back to being serious seeing the source code for LisaOS sounds exciting
. Apple changed my life when I used an Apple 2 in grade school. My first
computer I got for Christmas was a G5 iMac. In college I used MacBooks and
they replaced one with a newer model. I’m not sure I would have my current job
if I wasn’t in Steve’s paradise .

~~~
eesmith
I feel that calling it "Mac OS series 0" comes too close to a touchy subject
for it to be considered a better name.

Raskin's original vision for the Macintosh project was a text-based UI. (The
Canon Cat was a descendant of that design.) Only later did Macintosh gain
support for the Lisa-style graphical programs.

I don't know the timeline, but I can point to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh)
which says:

> Smith's first Macintosh board was built to Raskin's design specifications:
> it had 64 kilobytes (kB) of RAM, used the 8-bit Motorola 6809E
> microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256×256-pixel black-and-
> white bitmap display. Bud Tribble, a member of the Mac team, was interested
> in running the Apple Lisa's graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked
> Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa's Motorola 68000 microprocessor
> into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980,
> Smith had succeeded ...

Then at
[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Scrooge_McDuck.txt&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date)
you read that "the very first prototype of the very first Macintosh sprung to
life early in the first month of the new decade, in January 1980" with the
6809E. That would be before the 68000 was added.

If that prototype - or any prototype before the 68000 was added - had an
operating system, then that should be called "Mac OS series 0."

~~~
DonHopkins
Wow, the 6809 was the Chrysler Cordoba of 8 bit microprocessors! It was
tastefully luxurious and highly orthogonal, sporting a powerful hardware
multiply instruction, and soft Corinthian Leather.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809)

[https://youtu.be/tfKHBB4vt4c?t=10s](https://youtu.be/tfKHBB4vt4c?t=10s)

But I'm sure glad they ended up using the 68K for the Mac.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Using a 6809 they could have made a far cheaper, far more accessible machine.
Moving to the 68000 meant moving to more expensive support chips, and required
more RAM, and the like.

But it did mean they could use the QuickDraw code from the Lisa. And in the
end the Mac interface ended up being a kind of dumbed down ripped off version
of the Lisa, instead of the Jeff Raskin thing with hot keys and the like of
early prototypes.

I just wish they'd worked instead on making an actual cost reduced Lisa, using
the same Lisa OS, but without the crappy copy protection and the overpriced
hardware...

~~~
protomyth
Looking back, I wonder how much the switch from the cheap 6502 to the
expensive 68000 killed the original 8-bit companies. Both Commodore and Atari
had higher market shares than the Apple II. It seems like playing in the
higher price bracket moved them too close to the PC. It feels like people
making the opposite decision of the 6502 over the 6800.

Plus, I did love the 6809 and its ISA. It was fun to program.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Tramiel's Atari Corp did manage to keep 8-bit-ish pricing on its ST line,
despite the 68k switch.

But yeah, if the 65816 had come out a year or two earlier, I wonder if Amiga
and Tramiel and friends would have chosen to develop on that instead. An 8/16
processor that could address larger memory regions but still could use 8-bit
memory and 6502 support chips, and had the cycle efficiency and simplicity of
the 6502. Apple came out with the IIgs based on it, but overpriced it.

~~~
protomyth
Well, the 520ST was $799.99 for the monochrome computer, so it was quite a bit
more expensive than the Atari 65XE at $99.99. If I remember correctly the
68000 itself cost north of $200 in quantities, so it was impossible to stay in
the old price range.

I remember a story of Commodore / Amiga trying to use the Amiga chipset with a
cheaper processor. Of course they also tried it with a PA-RISC.

~~~
rwallace
I thought the 68000 was down to something like $10 by that time? Given that,
the price discrepancy is surprising, since the ST was intentionally a rather
simple design. What exactly made the ST have to cost that much?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Indeed this article seems to indicate that the 68000 was $15 by 1984:
[http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-
powerf...](http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerful-new-
chip.html)

But 512KB or 1MB of RAM was really expensive then. Atari cheaped out a bit by
running their RAM a bit over its spec, tho. There were a few custom chips in
it too (the Shifter [video], the MMU, the GLU [logic], and DMA chip.

------
djsumdog
Lisa was the really expensive Apple aimed at businesses right? I think I've
seen it mentioned on the 8-Bit Guy's show.

I wish I had visited the CHM when I was out on the west coast. I'll have to
add it to the list for next time.

I have been to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. For those of you
travelling there, I highly recommend it and Recycle PC (in the same area).
They've got a ton of old working systems you can actually play with;
everything from TI-99s to HP-UX machines to a NeXT system to a fully working
Alto.

~~~
SwellJoe
I bought a Lisa system and lots of accessories at a garage sale when I was a
kid. The guy had kept all the receipts for everything, and the total,
including a couple of 5MB and one 10 MB hard disk, was over $20,000. He used
it for business, and it had some business apps that I don't recall. I sold the
whole pile of stuff for a few hundred dollars (and I paid less than that for
it, I don't remember how much, but I was usually spending less than $100 on 8
bit stuff or PCs that needed work, so it couldn't have been much), and it's
probably the machine (of many really cool/weird/rare things) that I wish I'd
somehow kept through all those years. Such an interesting piece of history.
But, I was a Commodore fanatic at the time, and didn't really get excited
about Apple products (and still mostly don't, kinda for the same reason,
summed up by an old Tramiel slogan "for the masses not the classes").

And, yes, the CHM is _well_ worth a visit. I used to take everyone who came to
visit me in Mountain View to see it, even if they weren't nerds. It is an
enjoyable and educational afternoon, I think, for anyone with even a little
curiosity about the history of the devices we all rely on.

~~~
DonHopkins
Have you seen the TV series "The Americans", which is set in the early 80's,
and has spot-on era props and scenery? They have a Commodore Pet (with the
adult-sized non-chicklet keyboard ;) in their real estate office! It makes
sense that deep cover KGB spies like Phillip and Elisabeth would have the
computer for the masses not the classes, comrade!

The kids Paige and Henry even have the exact same Star Wars blanket I had
(which their parents tuck them into at bed time, then sneak out and skulk
around stealing Star Wars secrets from the US Government).

~~~
SwellJoe
I haven't, but I've heard good things. I was watching _Halt and Catch Fire_
which is also fantastic bit of history on several fronts (in addition to the
computer history on the show, I happen to also love punk rock from that era,
especially Texas punk rock, like Big Boys and the Dicks, etc., and so the
soundtrack is fantastic), but I kinda drifted away from watching TV a while
ago. I'll probably get back to it at some point, as I've heard the later
seasons improved.

------
tyingq
Cool. I see there's a Lisa emulator that exists and works on the raspberry pi:
[http://lisa.sunder.net](http://lisa.sunder.net)

Sounds like access to the source code might allow for some more progress.

------
intrasight
That's pretty neat - from a computer history perspective. I assume the museum
has a Lisa. It's one of the few Apple products I've never seen in person.

~~~
armadsen
They not only have a Lisa, they have a Lisa 1, which is very rare. The last
one that sold at auction (in the past few months) sold for around $50,000.
I've seen estimates for the number remaining in existence as low as 30. It
didn't sell well originally, but more importantly, Apple offered all Lisa 1
owners a free upgrade (via modification) to a Lisa 2 when it was released, and
most took them up on it.

Lisa 2's are much easier to come by, especially as the "Mac XL" which sold
decently as a high-end Mac. I've got a Lisa 2 running Lisa OS myself.

------
jorisw
Wasn't this called the Lisa Desktop Manager and never 'LisaOS' ?

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emh68
I'm looking forward to the Lisa hardware clones this will spawn...

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ethan_harris
This is so cool. I can’t wait to comb through it looking for great code
comments from a bygone age. The folks who wrote the code for the lunar lander
have set a high bar.

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tssva
I remember when it was released the Hecht's department store at my local mall
was selling them, at least trying to, and had one on display that I played
with a few times. They also later briefly sold the original Mac.

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gdubs
I’m reading Jaron Lanier’s new book on VR and he mentions coding some of the
earliest haptics on a Lisa.

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cmrdporcupine
This is a great Christmas present!

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jwilk
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16000606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16000606)

~~~
gaius
This one has more comments already so maybe that one is the dupe

~~~
blcArmadillo
Except the other one was posted two hours earlier...

~~~
yvsong
Is the difference due to promotion or randomness? Reminds me of business
competition.

~~~
shagie
Likely the descriptiveness of the title. This one has three “things” in the
title - Lisa, open source, computer history museum. The other has just one -
the Lisa. Nothing about the license, nothing about the museum.

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yuhong
This reminds me of this debacle:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638220)

