As promised earlier, here's the first installment of info on Apple's LISA workstation. Each installment will contain stuff from the LISA spec sheets which I received at the Philly OAC, as well as comments and pointers where appropriate. I'll also place all of these summaries in one of the MC;CPM archives. ------------------------------ Hardware Specifications: Apple LISA Display: 12 inch (diagonal) screen Bit mapped display: 720 x 364 Up to 45 lines of 144 characters 60 Hz refresh rate Keyboard: Detached, N-key rollover, sculptured keycaps Full ASCII Character set Numeric Keypad All keys are programmable Mouse: Optomechanical, using small "trackball" and shaft encoders One button Main Processor: MC68000 CPU running at 5 MHz Main Memory: 1 Megabyte RAM, with parity checking 16K bytes of boot ROM Disk storage: Two 5 1/4" floppy disk drives, 860K each ProFile 5 Mb hard disk Automatic disk eject and head loading under software control Uses MOS6504 as controller Memory Management: Segmentation into 128 variable length blocks dynamically controlled through memory map table Operating System may relocate segments in memory Provides access controls for blocks of memory Comm I/O: Two serial I/O ports Supports async, bisync, SDLC, and HDLC RS-232, half or full duplex, with full modem control on one port Baud rate and other attributes under software control One parallel Port, MOS6522 I/O chip 8 bit bidirectional port with handshake signals Real Time Clock: Interval and event timing Time of Day Clock Software on-off control Battery Backup Audio Output: Built-in Speaker with software controllable oscillator Expansion board slots: Three slots, ZIF connectors Access to system bus DMA, Memory Mapped I/O, and Vectored Interrupts +5 V, -5 V, +12 V, and -12 V provided Weight and Physical Dimensions: Main Unit: Weight: 48 lbs (22 kg) Height: 13.8 inches (350 mm) Width: 18.7 inches (475 mm) Depth: 15.2 inches (388 mm) Keyboard: Weight: 4 lbs (1.8 kg) Height: 2.7 inches (68 mm) Width: 18.7 inches (475 mm) Depth: 6.5 inches (165 mm) Power Requirements: 115 or 230 VAC 48 to 68 Hz 270 Watts Maximum Environmental Requirements: Ambient Operating Temp: 40F-108F (5C-42C) Relative Humidity: 15-80% noncondensing ---------- Additional Comments and Observations: From a servicing standpoint, the LISA is a dream. The whole unit, except for the monitor, is modular and snaps apart, including the drives. So, for ultimate realiablity, one could keep spare boards and drives on hand. The diagnostics are quite extensive, and can determine specific faults under most circumstances. The CRT has a non glare shield on it, and the picture is very sharp. Brightness and contrast are software controllable. While the LISA has alot of memory and uses a 68000, the hardware specs are acceptable, but by no means revolutionary (or even special). Apple claims that the "Twiggy" floppy drives have a very low error rate. I guess this was a problem in 1980, when the LISA was being designed, but what they wound up with is a drive not significantly more reliable than a Tandon DDDS 5 1/4" floppy, but COMPLETELY non-standard. One of the problems with the old double sided drives was excessive media wear from both heads touching the diskette at about the same place. Drive manufacturers performed "Tap Tests" to see how many head loads and unloads were required before the diskettes and/or heads gave out. Apple's solution to this problem was to put the top and bottom heads on opposite sides of the diskette. So, what you have is a 5 1/4" diskette with two slots for heads, one in the normal place, and the other where the label normally goes. Other companies, such as Tandon, solved the problem by always having the heads loaded. It turns out that this is much easier on both the heads and the diskettes, and removes the need for a head load solenoid. Thanks to Apple, we now have a new (yeech!) media type, not to mention format, because they use CLV rather than CAV, to keep density constant. I'm sure the magnetic media manufacturers are overjoyed. The ProFile hard disk is not exactly what I'd call state-of-the-art... as a matter of fact, it is pretty slow. The fact that the hard disk is in a seperate box is another problem, because now you have to put it somewhere. In summary the LISA would be even nicer if it had one Thin-Line DDDS Drive and one SyQuest Removable Hard Disk. What I'm getting at is that the LISA is not amazing from a hardware standpoint. Rather, it is the software which makes this machine so flexible and powerful. We'll be looking at the LISA applications programs in the next installment of this newsletter. Dan