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Picked up a Lisa for testing and evaluation and questions to follow

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Chromedome45

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Ok So I picked up a Lisa for some testing to see if it works etc. The board look in really good shape surprisingly. Whoever had it before was smart and pulled the NiCad batteries out do the is little if any corrosion.

Ok the problem is it will not power up. I did replace 2 bulging 2200uF caps in the power supply. Fuse is good as well.

Now with all covers in place will not turn on. I am guessing the white push button in the lower right is the power switch.

Does the I/O board need batteries in it to turn on? Also near the power switch is an extra 3 wire plug any idea where that might go?

I can only guess the interlocks are good. Also what is the purpose of SW1 near the battery area?

Any ideas folks?
 
My dad had a Lisa, which he gave away to the recyclers several years ago. I wish he hadn't, now that I'm into the retrocomputing thing.
 
Well working or not I just need to let the owner of it know. So he can either recycle it or try to get it going. It does not have a KBD or a Mouse. Also no boot disks
 
I would say, tell him not to recycle it whether it works or not. Prices I've seen for Lisas on eBay have been downright silly lately.

It's been close to 30 years since I've used a Lisa, but I seem to recall that the white square front power switch/light is a soft power switch, and the machine turns itself off after completing a software-initiated shutdown sequence. So, the backup battery might be required for the power control circuitry to work?

I don't remember whether there's a hard power switch. It's just been too long since I've seen the back panel of a Lisa. I seem to recall a power switch that can be pushed and/or turned that determines whether it will automatically power up or not when AC power is applied, but I might be confused by a dim memory of an entirely different computer.
 
>I am guessing the white push button in the lower right is the power switch.
Correct.

>Does the I/O board need batteries in it to turn on?
No.

>Also near the power switch is an extra 3 wire plug any idea where that might go?
This connector is unused.

>I can only guess the interlocks are good.
There are two interlocks, one on the lower front near the CRT, and one on back on the power supply.

>Also what is the purpose of SW1 near the battery area?
This switch disconnects the battery when the board is removed. Since the battery is gone, the switch does no function.

>Any ideas folks?
Try reseating the boards in the card cage, clean the card edges.
The power supply may still be bad. The COPS chip on the I/O board can fail, it controls the soft switch. Look closer at the IO board and mother boards, maybe the battery did leak and was cleaned up. This type of damage will slowly rot it out from the inside out and may not be very visible.

Lisa2 IO boards and motherboards that to not have battery damage have value. If you can't fix it, part it out rather than recycle.

Hope this helps,
Rick
 
Ok reseated the COP chip the ROM and a PAL chip. Also de-soldered some chip pins and applied new solder that had some mild corrosion on them. Pushed the power button and got it to power up. All I had was a raster though and the RIFA cap in the power supply went snap crackle pop. And spewed a ton of smoke and yanked it out and will replace. Just wondering why only a raster? CPU RAM I/O who knows. Think I will replace the 2200uF caps, some don't look to healthy.
Especially after the power up.
 
Good to see you're already making progress! I'd start with measuring all of the power supply outputs. But I don't know if service information about what they ought to be is easily available, though.
 
I seem to recall (again, from 30 years ago) that the interlocks are two microswitches: One in the power supply which is pressed by a protrusion on the rear cover, and another attached to the main cabinet which is pressed by a protrusion on the front panel. I recall both being typical microswitches with sheet metal levers. So without bypassing the interlocks, both the front and rear panels need to be in place.
 
Yep those panels have to be in place. I did remove the back panel and defeated the interlock and held in the power button. I then got 5 volts on all the TTL chips and 5 volts on the COP 421 chip pin 9 as well I did testing only on the (I/O) board. Easily accessible. But still does not power up as it did last night.

Plan on recapping the power supply in the next few days. So for now I am leaving it alone.
 
Raster is good. It means that the analog board is doing /something/.

Poke an oscilloscope on the TTL video pin for the card and if ANYTHING is trying to be displayed you will see the signal on the scope change.
Lisa's have a peculiar "blind" way of diagnosing them. When you turn them on you will hear an initial "click" from the speaker indicating that CPU tests have passed and there should be video output. With no Profile attached or even no keyboard you will eventually get a beep error. In my case the presence of a raster and only the raster from the machine was fixed by marking the locations of the pots on the analog board, then twisting them back and fourth a few times. If you still question the video but you have a converted Lisa 1 or a 2/5 you can plug a composite monitor into the rear VIDEO OUT port. It's not a resolution a monitor will sync to but you should still see something get displayed repeatedly in a vertical fashion.

Interlock on the front is located at the bottom of the bezel frame, pretty much under the CRT. I just jam a piece of cardboard in there.
 
Ok so I got the iconic hardware test screen.

What was happening or not happening was I was missing the reset pulse. I read somewhere in an older newsgroup post about swapping or just cutting C8 which sits next to the 68000. After I did that I got the hardware test icons.

Now after the test runs I get an error on the I/O board code 57. My understanding is being caused by the IWM ROM or more like IMHO the disk drive. Opinions please.
 
Is there such a thing as a PC keyboard to Lisa keyboard adapter plug? Can a Macintosh (original) with the "phone jack" type plug be adapted to a Lisa?
Also any place to obtain Lisa software?
 
I have heard of the IWM failing in these machines before. I think it was Tezza who had a similar problem (yes, here it is.)

As for a keyboard, you're out of luck. You gotta find an original Lisa keyboard as there are no substitutes.

For software however you are in luck as Mac Mothership has ALL of the available software available online (and I believe Apple approved of it, else it would of gone down years ago) however their list of Utilities are a bit unorganized. You might also like a copy of Basic Lisa Utility
Finally, as for documentation for all the software AND a nearly full set of schematics, there is this site.

In comparison to the later Macs and the Apple II, I still can't believe how well documented and available pretty much everything is for the Lisa.
 
Tezza's board looks different than mine. I have a Lisa 2 board I think and only has the rom chip at the far left hand corner and a 6504 next to it. No IWM chip that I can find on it unless the 6504 is acting like an IWM.

Well I guess I will need to attempt to find a Lisa keyboard.

FYI I have the "H" version ROM

See pic of my I/O board

Almost the same as this one minus the chip in F1: http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/apple/lisa/pcb_pictures/620-0117-R_LISA2_IO_T.jpg

@NeXT thanks for the input and location of some software. Plus other good to have stuff.
 

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Oh well in that case you have a Lisa 1/ Lisa 2/5 I/O board. On those the drive controller logic is the 6504 and a bit of basic TTL stuff. There's also the Lisa Lite board in the drive cage which converted the signals yet again to support the Sony floppy drive.
 
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