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I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

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Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#21

Post by morphle »

Great work! I'll buy one for $250. Will it run AppleTalk?

I didn't correct for inflation but I wanted to buy the Lisa before it was released, it felt around 40000 Dutch guilders, maybe 80 times more expensive than this FPGA?

I did a few more back-of-the-envelope calculations of what I can do with these 2MB SRAMs:

Xerox Alto with Smaltalk-80 and Smalltalk-76 for $4. The Alto was the 1972 machine the Lisa tried to be the sucessor of.

Transputer T414/T800 for $50 but much faster than the original. You would make a supercomputer interconnecting hundreds of Transputers.

Vextrex without display but HDMI output for $50, $8 without the CRT/VGA/Oscilloscope, $100 with the cathode ray tube display built in.

200MB SRAM with 16000 cores 180nm WSI (Wafer Scale Integration) emulating most processors at $1000. It would outperform 2025 Blackwell NVDIA and Apple Silicon M3 Ultra Mac Studio because SRAM is faster than HBM or LPDDR5. It is much cheaper than the 2MB Sram on this Lisa FPGA (it costs around $25 per 2MB (16 Mbit) in batches of 1000 chips).

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#22

Post by Joel_Mckay »

musicale wrote: post #20
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one knew the market at the time. From Jobs himself: https://youtu.be/rDqQcmVqAm4?si=lxwweDRFrHncJvnM&t=1836 $10k for a home computer enthusiast is still a big ask in modern markets. Have a great day. =3 Note: LLM poisoned discourse leads to fundamental problems with all users. Hence why YC terms of use prohibit bot slop injection. yolo

> at the time Isn't that interview from 1995, years after the Lisa (and Mac) came out, and long after Jobs had left Apple (but before his very successful return)?

While I disagree with a lot of Jobs opinions... some phenomena never change, and the interview is surprisingly still applicable in many areas. Highly recommended viewing if working with both creatives and engineers. Have a wonderful day =3

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#23

Post by musicale »

rbanffy wrote: post #8
lizknope wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I used Apple II's in elementary school (early 1980's) and then some Macs but I had never even seen a Lisa in person until going to a computer museum about 5 years ago.

It was a fascinating idea - programs were hidden behind a document template metaphor. It was not as neat as Windows “New” menu and its templates folder.

> document template metaphor

The macOS Finder has its own version of the Lisa's stationery feature:

    File > Get Info > Stationery Pad
To make a document template folder, you mark your document templates as stationery. Then drag the template folder to the dock to get a pop-up template menu (or multiple menus if you wish).

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#24

Post by Joel_Mckay »

musicale wrote: post #19
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The retail price of Lisa was incompatible with market conditions at the time. https://youtu.be/1kshrfvkLZE?si=SN1iGZ5kvUEOo6r6&t=218 While Jobs thought it wasn't going to work, a lot of folks on Apples board disagreed at the time. A controversial character at times, yet both Jobs and Woz provably understood their customers better than most. =3

There was animosity between Steve Jobs and the Lisa team (who perhaps not coincidentally chose to name the system after his daughter). Once he decided that the Mac would compete against the Lisa, the Lisa platform was doomed. Jobs basically told customers, software developers, and the press that the Lisa was obsolete because the Mac was coming out soon and would be cheaper and better. He was correct about the cheaper…

Lisa was $9995.00 or $32300.00 in 2025 US dollars.

C64 was $595.00 or $1990.00 in 2025 US dollars.

Note, people still port in new C64 game titles ( https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ )

Not sure what additional software the average consumer could have run to change that value proposition. There were a lot of failed platforms in that time. =3

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#25

Post by rbanffy »

derefr wrote: post #14
rbanffy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xenix is the best operating system Microsoft ever shipped, but they gave up on it because there was no way they could use their PC leverage to corner the Unix market.

What did Xenix did that was so distinctive?

It was a Unix. I believe the distinctive feature is not what it did, but what it didn’t - crash often.

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#26

Post by rbanffy »

musicale wrote: post #23
rbanffy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a fascinating idea - programs were hidden behind a document template metaphor. It was not as neat as Windows “New” menu and its templates folder.

> document template metaphor The macOS Finder has its own version of the Lisa's stationery feature: File > Get Info > Stationery Pad To make a document template folder, you mark your document templates as stationery. Then drag the template folder to the dock to get a pop-up template menu (or multiple menus if you wish).

That’s really neat.

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#28

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #24
musicale wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was animosity between Steve Jobs and the Lisa team (who perhaps not coincidentally chose to name the system after his daughter). Once he decided that the Mac would compete against the Lisa, the Lisa platform was doomed. Jobs basically told customers, software developers, and the press that the Lisa was obsolete because the Mac was coming out soon and would be cheaper and better. He was correct about the cheaper…

Lisa was $9995.00 or $32300.00 in 2025 US dollars. C64 was $595.00 or $1990.00 in 2025 US dollars. Note, people still port in new C64 game titles ( https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ ) Not sure what additional software the average consumer could have run to change that value proposition. There were a lot of failed platforms in that time. =3

A Wang word processor - as used by Stephen King - was around $12,000.

In the CP/M market, small business Z80 systems with a hard drive could easily top $10k.

The Lisa was pitched at those markets, not people playing 8-bit games.

The Mac hit the midpoint between the two markets to create something new - desktop metaphor computing just barely at the absolute high end of the privileged consumer market.

With the original Mac 128 you got the world's most expensive toy computer. But with no significant games.

It was basically a proof-of-concept brand-building product for early adopters and developers. It wasn't until the Mac 512 that you could actually use it without worrying about RAM limitations.

Re: I recreated the Apple Lisa computer inside an FPGA [video]

#30

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #24
musicale wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was animosity between Steve Jobs and the Lisa team (who perhaps not coincidentally chose to name the system after his daughter). Once he decided that the Mac would compete against the Lisa, the Lisa platform was doomed. Jobs basically told customers, software developers, and the press that the Lisa was obsolete because the Mac was coming out soon and would be cheaper and better. He was correct about the cheaper…

Lisa was $9995.00 or $32300.00 in 2025 US dollars. C64 was $595.00 or $1990.00 in 2025 US dollars. Note, people still port in new C64 game titles ( https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/petscii-robots/ ) Not sure what additional software the average consumer could have run to change that value proposition. There were a lot of failed platforms in that time. =3

Nobody (sane) was putting a C64 in an office.

The competitor to the Lisa didn't really exist yet. Closest would have been a Xerox Star Office system or like the other poster said, one of the various dedicated word processing / office systems like the Wang, etc. and they were even more money.

People were wedging Apple IIs into service in the office, but they weren't exactly cheap, actually, and they couldn't do much.

The IBM PC was just starting to take over here, but it clearly couldn't do what the Lisa or the Xerox Star were trying to do; WYSIWYG, etc. Visi Corp, Microsoft, and DRI were all trying to ship GUI office systems for the PC, but they hadn't made anything compelling yet.

It was another 3-4 years after this before Mac or PC systems were powerful enough to handle full GUI office automation, and another 10 before they really took over those kinds of function.

In the end though Apple (and Xerox) was grasping after a market which didn't really long term exist. The "paperless office" market and office automation didn't end up shaking out like this. MS-DOS PCs + Novell NetWare, etc. did have a niche for a bit though.

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