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

#81

Post by anthk » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 11:28 AM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #30

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'…

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.

The Vectrex had it.

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

#82

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 12:32 PM 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.

Wow, thanks for sharing that link. It always amazes me that after so many years with macOS I can still regularly learn of new features.

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

#83

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 12:47 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #77

dreamcompiler wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know about the RTC issue, but the separation of users from developers was strictly because of hardware limitations. The Lisa cost $10k and came from a separate division of Apple from the Mac, which sold for [around] $2500 and only had 128k of RAM and no hard drive. They were completely different target markets. Nobody at Apple at that time knew how to make a Pascal compiler run in the limited environment of…

Does anybody know how to make a Pascal compiler run on such a system? The executable for Turbo Pascal for x86 was 39kB and likely needed more to run on a character-based screen. After subtracting video memory and sound buffers (combined about 22kB) and what the OS used, that 128kB Mac had, IIRC, about 28kB available for applications to use.

I think the biggest issue was probably the IDE support and the Object Pascal features, given the existence of Pascal compilers on 8 bit OSes.

I owned a few ones for ZX Spectrum, but they were basically standard Pascal + Z80 low level extensions.

And plain single pass compiler with zero optimizations.

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

#84

Post by exikyut » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #72

unadopted wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Pretty sure it was System 7.5, and then Mac OS 7.6.

Thanks.

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

#85

Post by exikyut » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

armadsen wrote: post #73

exikyut wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for the nitpick :). I’m usually really picky about that stuff too. I have Macs from the 128K running System 1.0 though macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

Wow, awesomeness. :)

(I need to get myself some classic Macs at some point.....)

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

#86

Post by cmrdporcupine » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #59

protomyth wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought the 68000 was down to something like $10 by that time? Given that, the price discrepancy is surprising, since the ST was intentionally a rather simple design. What exactly made the ST have to cost that much?

Indeed this article seems to indicate that the 68000 was $15 by 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerf...

But 512KB or 1MB of RAM was really expensive then. Atari cheaped out a bit by running their RAM a bit over its spec, tho. There were a few custom chips in it too (the Shifter [video], the MMU, the GLU [logic], and DMA chip.

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

#87

Post by AstroJetson » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #25

djsumdog wrote: post #3

Lisa was the really expensive Apple aimed at businesses right? I think I've seen it mentioned on the 8-Bit Guy's show. I wish I had visited the CHM when I was out on the west coast. I'll have to add it to the list for next time. I have been to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. For those of you travelling there, I highly recommend it and Recycle PC (in the same area). They've got a ton of old working systems you…

I bought a Lisa system and lots of accessories at a garage sale when I was a kid. The guy had kept all the receipts for everything, and the total, including a couple of 5MB and one 10 MB hard disk, was over $20,000. He used it for business, and it had some business apps that I don't recall. I sold the whole pile of stuff for a few hundred dollars (and I paid less than that for it, I don't remember how much, but I was…

Pro tip, never keep receipts for computer gear you buy. If my spouse knew how much I spent in "then" dollars for IMSAI's, S100 systems, Apple II, Mac's, Lisa's, etc. instead of investing them in some kind of bond/stock/retirement they would kill me (for the insurance money).

It was expensive to be a pioneer, I think it was worth it, since it helped a long successful IT career. But other may not. There are posts later on going "I paid that for a car!" but to pick up an extra $100-300 a week makes it good in the long run.