• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Apple Lisa 2 (A6S0200) - Is this Fixable

Lutiana

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 26, 2009
Messages
3,298
Location
Dublin, CA USA
So I acquired an Apple Lisa 2 from work during a clean up. It looks pretty good from the outside, but on the inside there are several cut cables and the IO board has been vandalized, with ICs ripped off and passive components cut, though there appears to be surprisingly no damage to the PCB (at least as far as I can tell). I am of a mind to fix this up and get it working, but since I know nothing about this thing, or how it works, I am not sure if it can be fixed.

Take a look here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/d7NMq7pXBmLJL6tL6

There are some high res images of the thing, including the damaged bit.

Are the missing ICs easily obtained? Or are there some custom ones that you just can't get anymore? The HDD will probably never work again, as the data cable from the PCB to the internal head assembly is cut, so I am wondering if there are any modern replacements? Is it MFM/RLL?

Any suggestions on where to start? I am thinking testing the PSU would be good idea, but I am not sure how to do that (it would appear that this is a soft on/off type machine, similar to ATX, though I am not sure about this, could be that the power button is just broken).
 
the condition of the machine is quite nice. If this is a no cost investment so far your already off to a good start. the corrosion doesnt seem major but needs to be addressed and neutralized.

Vintagemicros seems to have cornered the market on apple iii and lisa spare parts. hes no cheap but he has parts. He has helped me on a few uncommon items.

the machine has failsafe switches which need to be activates foe power to come on. one or more.may be damaged or broken. that can be the culprit.
 
Very cool find. I've never had one but I remember as a kid ComputerShopper magazine was blowing them out sale at $99. They were new but just old by the time they were liquidating them. I always thought they looked cool.
 
Vintagemicros seems to have cornered the market on apple iii and lisa spare parts. hes no cheap but he has parts. He has helped me on a few uncommon items.
Because he knows the target audience is suckers who throw money at their problems rather than do their homework and actually fix things/buy the same parts for half the price at Digi-Key. I have nothing but negative words about the guy and recommend everyone deal with him as a last option.

So you have what looks to of been a Macintosh XL (probably late enough to be one of the Sun Remarketing liquidated machines) judging by the extra black circular transformer in the CRT section, the 800k floppy drive and the hard drive configuration. You also still have the help cards still mounted underneath the keyboard, which are actually quite hard to find.
Here is what I see:

-The hard drive is junk. The ribbon to inside the HDA is torn and the Parallel to ST-506 converter board is missing its ROMs. That I am aware of even if you could find a replacement drive and the ROMs nobody knows how to invoke an LLF on the Sun Remarketing board. It's technically emulating a widget but SigmaSeven's formatting tools don't work.
-The CPU board is intact. I don't see why that would not work
-The ram is intact. Unless you got a bad chip or two that should be fine
-The damaged ribbon cabling is an "easy" repair. When I replaced my ribbons I was able to very carefully pry the crimped ends apart, clean and reuse them. You have the 800K floppy drive so you never had a Lisa Lite card. IF you don't want to reuse the connectors I know the IDC bulkhead connectors on the drive cage are on aliexpress for $3-$5 each and are from 3M. The edge connector bulkhead however I don't know where to find that.
-The missing inductors on the card cage you can bypass in a pinch. I do believe they are just filtering for the rear ports.
-The I/O board is a mess. You are missing the 6504, the video ROM, the IWM, the 6522 I/O chips, the 8530 serial chip and the COP421. That last one is the only part you cannot buy off the shelf because it's a mask rom programmed device. A dump of the ROM exists as well as a few variants of an adapter board to substitute a romless version of the chip and an EPROM. I believe the Lisa 2's I/O board is similar enough to the Lisa 1 that the schematics will tell you what discrete resistors, diodes and transistors are missing.
-The analog board looked fine and you didn't show the PSU but I'm assuming it's still okay too. Recapping both are an absolute must at this point and yes, there's RIFA's in there.

IMHO I'd start with the I/O board by removing all the damaged components and sockets and building the BOM. Without a working COP421 at the very least you cannot even turn the machine on.

Full schematics are available for at least the Lisa 1 and 2/5 and the Lisa 2 only has a few minor revisions I think are trivial to guess what has changed. Images of all the ROMs in the Lisa (including the COP421) are also available. I don't see anything that says the system is a write-off but it comes darn close if the option for another I/O board is several hundred dollars in $USD, so you'll be spending quite a few nights at the bench with a laptop open reading schematics.
 
Last edited:
So you have what looks to of been a Macintosh XL (probably late enough to be one of the Sun Remarketing liquidated machines) judging by the extra black circular transformer in the CRT section, the 800k floppy drive and the hard drive configuration. You also still have the help cards still mounted underneath the keyboard, which are actually quite hard to find.
Came from a school. Old boss brought it with him when he started and abandoned it when he retired a few years back. I snagged it as we were cleaning up this last week. There is a carved nae in the top case from the school, but otherwise the outer shell is in pretty good, but dirty condition.
Here is what I see:

-The hard drive is junk. The ribbon to inside the HDA is torn and the Parallel to ST-506 converter board is missing its ROMs. That I am aware of even if you could find a replacement drive and the ROMs nobody knows how to invoke an LLF on the Sun Remarketing board. It's technically emulating a widget but SigmaSeven's formatting tools don't work.

Parrell to ST-506, that's the board on the top of the drive cage? What's the best replacement for an internal HDD then?

-The CPU board is intact. I don't see why that would not work
-The ram is intact. Unless you got a bad chip or two that should be fine
Yep, all the cards deeper in the machine look pretty good to me, and I don't think there's much that can go wrong there, besides maybe a bad ram chip.
-The damaged ribbon cabling is an "easy" repair. When I replaced my ribbons I was able to very carefully pry the crimped ends apart, clean and reuse them. You have the 800K floppy drive so you never had a Lisa Lite card. IF you don't want to reuse the connectors I know the IDC bulkhead connectors on the drive cage are on aliexpress for $3-$5 each and are from 3M. The edge connector bulkhead however I don't know where to find that.
I am not too worried about the cut ribbon cable those are almost certainly going to be reasonably straightforward to replace.
-The missing inductors on the card cage you can bypass in a pinch. I do believe they are just filtering for the rear ports.
There are some other components missing there too. It's hard to see in the pictures. So I am not sure how to build a BOM for there. Those two IC socket looking things seem to be completely damaged to me as well they are labelled RP1 and RP2, thinking they are resistor packs?
-The I/O board is a mess. You are missing the 6504, the video ROM, the IWM, the 6522 I/O chips, the 8530 serial chip and the COP421. That last one is the only part you cannot buy off the shelf because it's a mask rom programmed device. A dump of the ROM exists as well as a few variants of an adapter board to substitute a romless version of the chip and an EPROM. I believe the Lisa 2's I/O board is similar enough to the Lisa 1 that the schematics will tell you what discrete resistors, diodes and transistors are missing.
It is a complete disaster, and this is the card I am the most worried about trying to repair. I have no issue diving in with a soldering iron, but I have little experience with reading schematics and working out a BOM. But I think, from you response, you are saying that nothing on there is unobtanium or stupidly proprietary? Is so, that's good news to me.
-The analog board looked fine and you didn't show the PSU but I'm assuming it's still okay too. Recapping both are an absolute must at this point and yes, there's RIFA's in there.
The PSU looks pretty clean, though I did not open it up, I did plug it in (outside the case) and nothing blew up. There was a sticker that fell out of the case that seemed to indicate that there was an issue of "No Power" which may or may not pertain to this machine. So It's possible that the PSU is bad. Not sure how to test this. Is there a way to force the thing to power up so I can go at it with a meter and check the rails?
IMHO I'd start with the I/O board by removing all the damaged components and sockets and building the BOM. Without a working COP421 at the very least you cannot even turn the machine on.
What exactly is a COP421? First time I've heard of one.
Full schematics are available for at least the Lisa 1 and 2/5 and the Lisa 2 only has a few minor revisions I think are trivial to guess what has changed. Images of all the ROMs in the Lisa (including the COP421) are also available. I don't see anything that says the system is a write-off but it comes darn close if the option for another I/O board is several hundred dollars in $USD, so you'll be spending quite a few nights at the bench with a laptop open reading schematics.
Outside of weird proprietary parts that no one makes anymore, I highly doubt that the IO board is beyond repair. For all the pulling off of parts, the board looks pretty good (no lifted or damaged traces etc). I am just not sure I have the know-how to work out what's missing and get that BOM going. But I guess I'll find out in good time.

Do you know if that board is a single or dual layer board? I am guessing based on it's age, that it probably does not have any layers in the middle?
 
the machine has failsafe switches which need to be activates foe power to come on. one or more.may be damaged or broken. that can be the culprit.
Can you "trick" the PSU to come on when it's out of the case like you can with ATX PSUs? That would allow me to at least verify that I have a good PSU.
 
What exactly is a COP421? First time I've heard of one.
 
I added a few more pictures, including the model number, serial number and the outside of the case from a few angles, including the back.

The model number is A6S0200, which I believe makes it a Lisa 2/10.

I then re-assembled it, plugged it in and turned it on to see what would happen. The high voltage came to life, and I even got a bit of an image on the screen (took a picture). So it would seem that the computer is not as dead as I was thinking.

I'll tear it all the way down this weekend and give it a good cleaning, then look to see if I can start building a BOM for that IO board and source some parts to start working on it. If anyone else already has a BOM, then please let me know, it'd save me a ton of time!
 
What's the best replacement for an internal HDD then?
Either you will have to sub in an old fashioned widget or buy one of the aftermarket emulator boards. Unfortunately there is no low-cost options available.
Can you "trick" the PSU to come on when it's out of the case like you can with ATX PSUs? That would allow me to at least verify that I have a good PSU.
There's a switch on the front that the bezel pushes in and another one that lives inside the PSU that gets pushed in through a hole and a metal leg on the back cover. Both can be bypassed by just pushing the switch in with anything.
Do you know if that board is a single or dual layer board? I am guessing based on it's age, that it probably does not have any layers in the middle?
No promises for the CPU and ram boards (which thankfully are not an issue) but the I/O board and the card cage board (Some people call it the MotherBoard) are both dual layer with no inter-layer traces which is great on the earlier lisas because battery damage would almost certainly ruin them completely beyond repair rather than making it a major job.
 
Can you "trick" the PSU to come on when it's out of the case like you can with ATX PSUs? That would allow me to at least verify that I have a good PSU.
yes of course. I believe its just bridging a couple of pins but I am sorry I havent touched my Lisa in a couple years since I recapped it and I dont remember the connector off hand. Follow the safety switches back to the backplate and then to the psu, it should not be to hard to find.

And you are right,. it was late but I meant to say the widget hard drive should just go in the trash. they never work. And the ribbon cable is an easy repair.
 
I'd still at the very least keep the board. It's an obsolete adapter for an obsolete drive interface but we said the same for the widgets until we were able to reformat and continue using them and paying upwards of $500cad for a drive emulator is insane.
 
I think goal one will be to get the IO board up and running, from there I can worry about the floppy and/or mass storage. And for that to happen I need to find the schematics for my particular board. I did find some, but they were for a different revision, and it did not seem to line up right.
 
I'd still at the very least keep the board. It's an obsolete adapter for an obsolete drive interface but we said the same for the widgets until we were able to reformat and continue using them and paying upwards of $500cad for a drive emulator is insane.
There are several cheaper alternatives available these days, though the silicon drought challenges us all. Googling for "apple profile drive emulator" will show you some options for people of all skill levels, and as you must already be handy with a soldering iron in order to put this beast right again, nearly all of them should be attainable to you with some work.

This Lisa doesn't have a Widget, so it's a bit academic, but I wouldn't pitch these drives straightaway. Use tools to investigate what's wrong with them first.
 
PS: The cylindrical thingy with wires coming out of it that's stuck to the side of your CRT cavity in this image (left) suggests to me that your Lisa has received the Macintosh XL Screen Kit upgrade, aka the "square pixel mod". As such, it can only run the MacWorks software (which allows it to be a Macintosh) --- if you want to run Lisa software, you'll need to reverse this modification and get your tall rectangular pixels back.
 
Can you "trick" the PSU to come on when it's out of the case like you can with ATX PSUs? That would allow me to at least verify that I have a good PSU.
You can: you need to jump a particular line to +5V, and since that line is on the other side of a card edge from the always-on +5V Standby rail, you can accomplish this with a simple metal clip. Don't forget to defeat the case interlock microswitch! (Everyone forgets to defeat the case interlock microswitch. Just wedge a bit of cardboard in there or something.)

There are two kinds of Lisa PSUs, one made by Apple and another made by a firm called DataPower. This latter option was more powerful and was used in 2/10s like yours, but it's good to check as Sun Remarketing may have thrown your system together with whatever they had in the parts bin. If your PSU is 1.2A, it's Apple; 1.8A is DataPower.

I haven't seen ratings for a DataPower PSU, but an Apple PSU needs a minimum load to operate (it shuts itself off otherwise). This is why I have made a device I call a Lisa 0. It works with both power supplies.

Here are the references I would use to DIY your PSU investigation:
Lisa Hardware Manual 1983
Apple PSU schematics
Reverse-engineered DataPower schematics: one, two

Finally, it may be bad form to recommend a different forum to a mod, but there's a lot of knowledgeable Lisa folks over on LisaList2 :)
 
Last edited:
It's the data power PSU. And from my power up test yesterday, looks like it's working fine. So is the CRT and the related components.
There are several cheaper alternatives available these days, though the silicon drought challenges us all. Googling for "apple profile drive emulator" will show you some options for people of all skill levels, and as you must already be handy with a soldering iron in order to put this beast right again, nearly all of them should be attainable to you with some work.

This Lisa doesn't have a Widget, so it's a bit academic, but I wouldn't pitch these drives straightaway. Use tools to investigate what's wrong with them first.
I had not planned on pitching it just yet. I want to get it up and running, then I'll test/clean/fix the floppy drive, and from there I'll turn my attention to the disk drive and it's controller. As some have pointed out, it's missing some stuff, including a ROM chip, which maybe impossible to replace (mostly due to the data on the chip), but you never know. As for the ribbon cable from the inside of the drive to it's controller board, might be worth taking a crack at if the drive spins up, at that point I'd have nothing to loose really.
 
Back
Top