Apple Lisa 2

[mrad01]

My summer project. Yes, I am mad.

So I have a Apple Lisa 2 - which doesn't go. Why? Battery leaked onto the motherboard. Turns out it wasn't too bad (only the motherboard is bad) and for those who know the Lisa, the motherboard is a minor, but important part.

So, I am on the lookout for any great Lisa "repair" sites people may have stumbled across - and contacts, relatives, friends who may have a dead Lisa 2 which they would love someone to take off their hands. Who has one in their garage and intended to fix it - but didn't? I'm keen to give you that space back in exchange for money.
I'll probably import some boards, but any local salvages would be good.

Thanks in advance! Lets hope I can get it going over the summer break...and I'll post progress here....

Marcus

[tezza]

Whoo hoo, a Lisa 2. Is it a Lisa 2/5 or Lisa 2/10 (Mac XL). They have different CPU boards.

When you say the motherboard, do you mean the smaller horizontal board with the slots (the motherboard in the Lisa) or the CPU board, which contained the battery? Usually it's the CPU board that's destroyed although if it's bad enough fluid can also drip to the motherboard.

I've played around with Lisas. The articles are on the blog site under Apple Lisa heading.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/index.htm

You might also be interested in this one
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... s-lisa.htm

Happy restoring! Do you also have a Profile or Widget to go with it?

[mrad01]

Yes, it's the motherboard (at the bottom) which is borked. The CPU board seems to have survived. It is just a Lisa 2, so no disks in sight - only a 3.5" floppy.
I've read all your material and re-watched your youtube videos - it seems worth the effort! The X/Profile looks like the way.

Locating a motherboard is first on the list, so I better get hunting!

Whoo hoo, a Lisa 2. Is it a Lisa 2/5 or Lisa 2/10 (Mac XL). They have different CPU boards.

When you say the motherboard, do you mean the smaller horizontal board with the slots (the motherboard in the Lisa) or the CPU board, which contained the battery? Usually it's the CPU board that's destroyed although if it's bad enough fluid can also drip to the motherboard.

I've played around with Lisas. The articles are on the blog site under Apple Lisa heading.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/index.htm

You might also be interested in this one
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... s-lisa.htm

Happy restoring! Do you also have a Profile or Widget to go with it?

[tezza]

Right.

My "spare parts" Lisa also has a faulty motherboard so I can't help you there.

How do you know the CPU board has survived? Just from a visual check or do you know someone with a spare machine you can swap the board into?

[mrad01]

The motherboard was covered with green stuff - but after white vinegar and circuit cleaner it looks 'OK'. Only testing will tell. Might check every track manually.

The CPU board had virtually no green stuff on it - a little bit around the battery - but visually looks very clean. Again, I'll check tracks. This is one set of boards I'll go the extra mile on fixing for sure!

Great project!

Right.

My "spare parts" Lisa also has a faulty motherboard so I can't help you there.

How do you know the CPU board has survived? Just from a visual check or do you know someone with a spare machine you can swap the board into?

[mrad01]

Lisa is alive. Very happy.

Here is the story. Purchased a Lisa 2 with known battery leak damage. The Lisa was known to be working before it was put into storage. So it was worth the work.

Disassembled the system and found the battery had leaked all over the bottom motherboard, and there was bit of battery leak damage here and there. Here is what the motherboard looked like:



Messy. Looking at the other boards - they all looked fine. I used a mixture of 50/50 white vinegar/water mix to stop the alkaline continuing. Then used circuit board cleaner with a soft toothbrush, compressed air, brushes - about 4-6 hours of cleaning work. Phew.

Here is about 2/3 of the way through the cleanup:



Here is one of the 512k memory boards:



Here is a track that was badly damaged on the I/O board with my little fix:



Next was the PSU. Very cool design. Opening it up revealed a blown cap. I replaced them all.







Performed all the repairs, cleaned, tested, re-cleaned, tested, assembled... power on



Wow. It worked. Of course there is a lot more to do like get the floppy drive working, making a boot disk, cleaning the plastics, checking/fixing the keyboard. I guess now at least I know it is worth investing more time into!

UPDATE: All working fine!

[tezza]

Very cool and congratulations. It was a good idea to replace the caps in the PSU. One cap blew in one of my Lisa PSUs so I replaced all the caps too.

Keep us posted on progress.

[mrad01]

Small update: MacWorks XL Floppy

So I took out my SCSI drives and one of the Mac SEs with 800k floppies to create a couple of floppies. While they imaged OK with DiskCopy 4.2 - Lisa didn't like them and spat and error 38. Tried again with DART - error 38. This either points to bad disks - or a hardware error with the disk drive. Probably worth checking out the disk drive I'd say.

The disks are double density disks (new too!). Next trick is to get the floppy drive operating in a Mac 128k - and if it works there, Lisa should (in theory) be happy.

Good times!

[tezza]

The drive on one of my Lisas just refused to work properly too.

This from my repair blog article at
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... sa2-10.htm

The floppy drive issue

I'd cleaned up the Sony 400k 3.5 inch floppy drive even before I'd started serious work on the 2/10. Sticky drives are common with old Lisa 2s and it doesn't hurt to give them a good clean before shocking them out of retirement.

With the Lisa passing all checks, I left the widget unplugged and tried to boot off this cleaned and regreased floppy drive. Hmm..the floppy drive didn't spin the disks. Actually it did spin the disk, BUT only if the spindle was in certain positions prior to a disk being inserted? Then it managed to load software..but only sometimes and very slowly. Clearly there were a lot of read errors going on.

After A LOT of investigative work (assisted by Tony Duel of the Classic computer mailing list) which included replacement of the TA 7259 motor IC and associate capacitors the problem still persists. Tony feels the fault lies within the spindle itself with the hall-effect devices. Interestingly the 400k drive from the parts-only Lisa (my third Lisa) has the same problem!"

In the end I had to source a replacement. I never got to the bottom of the problem.

[mrad01]

There is also an adjustment screw on those 400k disks which I didn't know about. This page from low end mac discusses it. Might try that also.

http://lowendmac.com/tech/after.html

(Page has errors, but shows the info)

[tezza]

Interesting. I didn't know about that. Let us know how it goes.

[mrad01]

400k Floppy #1 is all go! Followed the instructions on the low end mac page - and managed to get a non-working 400k drive out of a Mac 128k working.
I thought I would try it on the Mac drive before the Lisa drive.

Sadly, as I was about to shutdown and start work on Floppy #2 - BANG! - a capacitor in the Mac 128 PSU board.

I'll fix the Mac tomorrow and then try fix the Lisa 400k drive (although the same part number - actually slightly different). I'll also plug the fixed Mac 400k drive into Lisa and see if we can get a boot.

Stay tuned.

[mrad01]

Short answer - no.

Back to the drawing board. I'll get the Lisa 400k drive working and go from there. Still getting error 38 from Lisa - which is either hardware, or the disk not having a bootable OS on it.

http://www.macmothership.com/lisacontent/TIL/n8153.html

[tezza]

What OS have you got on the Floppy? I used Macworks for my Lisa drive tests and for that version anyway, you needed two disks. One to turn the Lisa into a "mac emulator" of sorts and the second (with the system) you load after that.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... -lisa2.htm

Are you using the images from my article? They definitely work, unlike some of the other images I've found on the web.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... s-lisa.htm

[mrad01]

Thanks Tezza!!! Your floppy images were the last ingredient I needed!

Happy Lisa.