broome@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Jonathan C. Broome) (12/10/85)
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I'm presently looking at buying a Lisa / Mac XL, having found a very good
price, but have a few questions that someone may have answers for ...
There are two possible configurations that I can get, one is the straight
Lisa 2 without any hard disk, the other is the Lisa 2/5 with the 5 meg ProFile
disk. The difference in price is less than $500, so the 2/5 looks rather
attractive, considering that all the Lisa hard disks that I've seen sell
for > $1K. First question: does anyone use an aftermarket hard disk on
their Lisa? If so, whose, what kind of capacity, price, and reliability,
and can it be used with Xenix? Meanwhile, the 2/5 in question, I am told,
is actually a Mac XL, with the "screen fix" that we've heard so much about.
I was also told that this "fix" makes it such that Xenix will not run on it.
So, second question: has anyone had any real experience in this area? What
exactly is the "screen fix"? I am under the impression that it is simply some
different roms to provide square pixels for the sake of Mac compatibility.
If it really does make it impossible to run Xenix (why?), can the fix be
undone? Third question: has anyone used any version of Xenix besides the SCO
port, and if so, any comments? I *really* want to be able to run Xenix on the
Lisa (please, no flames about which o.s. is better, I'd like to use both!),
and any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks much...
===========================================================
Jonathan C. Broome University of California, Berkeley
UUCP ...!ucbvax!broome
ARPA broome@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu
===========================================================okin@sun.uucp (Ken Okin) (12/14/85)
> There are two possible configurations that I can get, one is the straight > Lisa 2 without any hard disk, the other is the Lisa 2/5 with the 5 meg ProFile > disk. The difference in price is less than $500, so the 2/5 looks rather > attractive, considering that all the Lisa hard disks that I've seen sell > for > $1K. First question: does anyone use an aftermarket hard disk on > their Lisa? If so, whose, what kind of capacity, price, and reliability, > and can it be used with Xenix? Meanwhile, the 2/5 in question, I am told, By *all* means get the hard disk. It greatly improves performance and is worth every penny (10 seconds seems like 10 minutes when you're waiting for a computer.) I'd be very careful with a non Apple disk unless the dealer ROUTINELY sells them on other machines (and has several lying around the store.) Otherwise you might get stuck. > is actually a Mac XL, with the "screen fix" that we've heard so much about. > I was also told that this "fix" makes it such that Xenix will not run on it. > So, second question: has anyone had any real experience in this area? What > exactly is the "screen fix"? I am under the impression that it is simply some > different roms to provide square pixels for the sake of Mac compatibility. > If it really does make it impossible to run Xenix (why?), can the fix be The screen fix turns the 768 * 341 screen into a 600 * 400 one. It is done by adding a transformer to the yoke circuitry (to fool the video board), changing the CPU video state prom and the boot Proms. The boot proms had to be changed so the icons used during booting would show up properly and not be smeared across the screen. Unfortunately, the Lisa Office System (and presumably Xenix) both *know* that the screen is 768 * 341, and will produce an unreadable work of modern art if run on the 600 by 400 machine. Now, you could have the dealer remove the "upgrade" and return the Lisa to its 768 * 341 state. There are versions of Macworks that will run on that machine. The drawback is that images on the screen will look stretched (vertically) compared with a normal Mac screen. (I actually prefer the stretched images and think that a normal Mac screen looks a little squished :-)) > undone? Third question: has anyone used any version of Xenix besides the SCO > port, and if so, any comments? I *really* want to be able to run Xenix on the > Lisa (please, no flames about which o.s. is better, I'd like to use both!), > and any help would be greatly appreciated. > I've never used Xenix, but......... You didn't say if you were intending to share the hard disk between Macworks and Xenix. I know that the Lisa Office System (Lisa 7/7 release (an underrated piece of software in my book)) could partition the hard disk and cooexsist (without data sharing) with Macworks. I don't know if Xenix will do that. In any case 5MB is not much to share between Xenix and a loaded Macworks hard disk (I have 3.3 MB of Mac software on my 10MB X/L.) I'd try to see if you could get (for another $500(???)) another Profile and a 2 port parallel expansion card. Then you could put Macworks on a profile attached to the internal parallel port (the only one Macworks uses), and put Xenix Profile on the expansion card. Hope I've helped... Ken Okin ucbvax!sun!niko!okin