LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum • Hacker News Board

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#41

Post by protomyth » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:14 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #37

DonHopkins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, the 6809 was the Chrysler Cordoba of 8 bit microprocessors! It was tastefully luxurious and highly orthogonal, sporting a powerful hardware multiply instruction, and soft Corinthian Leather. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809 https://youtu.be/tfKHBB4vt4c?t=10s But I'm sure glad they ended up using the 68K for the Mac.

Using a 6809 they could have made a far cheaper, far more accessible machine. Moving to the 68000 meant moving to more expensive support chips, and required more RAM, and the like. But it did mean they could use the QuickDraw code from the Lisa. And in the end the Mac interface ended up being a kind of dumbed down ripped off version of the Lisa, instead of the Jeff Raskin thing with hot keys and the like of early pro…

Looking back, I wonder how much the switch from the cheap 6502 to the expensive 68000 killed the original 8-bit companies. Both Commodore and Atari had higher market shares than the Apple II. It seems like playing in the higher price bracket moved them too close to the PC. It feels like people making the opposite decision of the 6502 over the 6800.

Plus, I did love the 6809 and its ISA. It was fun to program.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#42

Post by cmrdporcupine » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:16 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #41

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a 6809 they could have made a far cheaper, far more accessible machine. Moving to the 68000 meant moving to more expensive support chips, and required more RAM, and the like. But it did mean they could use the QuickDraw code from the Lisa. And in the end the Mac interface ended up being a kind of dumbed down ripped off version of the Lisa, instead of the Jeff Raskin thing with hot keys and the like of early pro…

Looking back, I wonder how much the switch from the cheap 6502 to the expensive 68000 killed the original 8-bit companies. Both Commodore and Atari had higher market shares than the Apple II. It seems like playing in the higher price bracket moved them too close to the PC. It feels like people making the opposite decision of the 6502 over the 6800. Plus, I did love the 6809 and its ISA. It was fun to program.

Tramiel's Atari Corp did manage to keep 8-bit-ish pricing on its ST line, despite the 68k switch.

But yeah, if the 65816 had come out a year or two earlier, I wonder if Amiga and Tramiel and friends would have chosen to develop on that instead. An 8/16 processor that could address larger memory regions but still could use 8-bit memory and 6502 support chips, and had the cycle efficiency and simplicity of the 6502. Apple came out with the IIgs based on it, but overpriced it.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#43

Post by exikyut » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

armadsen wrote: post #22

dreamcompiler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In some ways LisaOS was ahead of where MacOS is now. It had stationery pads, for example, and it just felt snappier. On a processor 1/1000 as fast as a current Mac.

macOS actually has stationery pads! https://www.macworld.com/article/1161619/software-utilities/... But Lisa OS was amazing, and was ahead of the original macOS in many ways: preemptive multitasking, way nicer error messages, hierarchical files system, a more fully fleshed out desktop/document metaphor, etc. I think the Lisa OS's error messages are still better than macOS's.

The GP quoted "MacOS" when the correct capitalization would indeed have been "macOS". What you're referring to is most correctly termed the Macintosh System Software, which is way too long and could also be referred to as the System Software or System.

The camelCase capitalization is a 2017 thing, not a 1984 thing.

I'm not sure what point MacOS got its name.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#44

Post by eesmith » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #35

eesmith wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that calling it "Mac OS series 0" comes too close to a touchy subject for it to be considered a better name. Raskin's original vision for the Macintosh project was a text-based UI. (The Canon Cat was a descendant of that design.) Only later did Macintosh gain support for the Lisa-style graphical programs. I don't know the timeline, but I can point to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh which says: > Smith'…

Geh, in reality the Mac didn't get an operating system in the true sense of the word (proper process separation, memory protection etc.) until like... System 7.6 or maybe even later in OS X. Classic Mac OS was more like an overgrown API than a proper OS environment. A real step backwards from the Lisa... It's baffling to me that instead of cost reducing the Lisa, Apple ran two parallel product lines (Mac and Lisa), s…

If I accept your "True sense of the word", then many early operating systems, like the "SHARE Operating System" from 1959, are not, actually, operating systems.

I prefer to believe that you are using a stricter definition of the word/phrase, rather one which encompasses how that word/phrase was actually used by practitioners in the field.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#45

Post by unadopted » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

fallous wrote: post #36

kkylin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, Macintosh XL ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_XL ). I remember a company (forget the name, likely long gone) at a Macworld Expo (in Moscone!) in the late 80s or early 90s selling refurbished Lisas and Mac XLs.

Sun (something or other)... they were an Apple reseller that not only did the refurbs but also wrote the software that allowed the Lisa to run 128K ROM Mac stuff.

SunRem I think

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#46

Post by yuhong » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:28 AM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #19

In the earliest days of the Mac (1984) you had to have a Lisa to develop for the Mac, because that was the machine the Pascal compiler ran on. I bought a Lisa and a Mac for this reason. It'll be fun to see the source code.

Of course, part of the reason is the only 128K of RAM. It was only one year later that 64K and 256K DRAM prices fall fast, leading to US makers leaving the market and dumping charges.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#47

Post by unadopted » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:34 AM UTC

exikyut wrote: post #43

armadsen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS actually has stationery pads! https://www.macworld.com/article/1161619/software-utilities/... But Lisa OS was amazing, and was ahead of the original macOS in many ways: preemptive multitasking, way nicer error messages, hierarchical files system, a more fully fleshed out desktop/document metaphor, etc. I think the Lisa OS's error messages are still better than macOS's.

The GP quoted "MacOS" when the correct capitalization would indeed have been "macOS". What you're referring to is most correctly termed the Macintosh System Software, which is way too long and could also be referred to as the System Software or System. The camelCase capitalization is a 2017 thing, not a 1984 thing. I'm not sure what point MacOS got its name.

It was around the time of System 7.5 when the MacOS bootscreen was added I think. But names like “System 7.5” were also used. A confusing time!

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#48

Post by protomyth » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:38 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #42

protomyth wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, I wonder how much the switch from the cheap 6502 to the expensive 68000 killed the original 8-bit companies. Both Commodore and Atari had higher market shares than the Apple II. It seems like playing in the higher price bracket moved them too close to the PC. It feels like people making the opposite decision of the 6502 over the 6800. Plus, I did love the 6809 and its ISA. It was fun to program.

Tramiel's Atari Corp did manage to keep 8-bit-ish pricing on its ST line, despite the 68k switch. But yeah, if the 65816 had come out a year or two earlier, I wonder if Amiga and Tramiel and friends would have chosen to develop on that instead. An 8/16 processor that could address larger memory regions but still could use 8-bit memory and 6502 support chips, and had the cycle efficiency and simplicity of the 6502. Ap…

Well, the 520ST was $799.99 for the monochrome computer, so it was quite a bit more expensive than the Atari 65XE at $99.99. If I remember correctly the 68000 itself cost north of $200 in quantities, so it was impossible to stay in the old price range.

I remember a story of Commodore / Amiga trying to use the Amiga chipset with a cheaper processor. Of course they also tried it with a PA-RISC.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#49

Post by cmrdporcupine » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:48 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #44

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geh, in reality the Mac didn't get an operating system in the true sense of the word (proper process separation, memory protection etc.) until like... System 7.6 or maybe even later in OS X. Classic Mac OS was more like an overgrown API than a proper OS environment. A real step backwards from the Lisa... It's baffling to me that instead of cost reducing the Lisa, Apple ran two parallel product lines (Mac and Lisa), s…

If I accept your "True sense of the word", then many early operating systems, like the "SHARE Operating System" from 1959, are not, actually, operating systems. I prefer to believe that you are using a stricter definition of the word/phrase, rather one which encompasses how that word/phrase was actually used by practitioners in the field.

Sure, fine, I agree that back then the definition of OS was more fluid. Though in reality I don't think that in those early days they even called what was running on the Mac an operating system at all. The term "Mac OS" didn't arrive til much later, and it wasn't until there were later revisions that they used the phraseology "System" for it.

But to the original point, my understanding is that the Lisa had a more classic OS architecture when compared to the Mac: multiple processes, dynamic memory allocation, etc. But until I can actually read the source for it (soon!) I'm just repeating hearsay. I've run the OS on emulators, but that doesn't tell you much about its inner workings.

Re: LisaOS to be open-sourced and donated to Computer History Museum

#50

Post by adventured » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 2:05 AM UTC

armadsen wrote: post #21

beamatronic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that enormously expensive? Was it purely for fun or did you recoup your investment?

It sure was. The Lisa originally sold for $10,000 in 1983. The price dropped to about $5k (IIRC) for the Lisa 2 which came out the same day as the original Mac, but that was still very expensive. 128K Mac ($2500) + Lisa 2 ($5000) = $7500 in 1983 (~$18,600 in 2017 dollars).

To put that into perspective, in the early 1980s the average new car was around $7,000 to $8,000 and the median new home price was ~$75,000 in 1983. It'd be like a personal computer costing $30,000+ today, in relation to those other major purchase items.