ProFile Drive Emulator for Lisa?

[Zhinü]

Does anyone here sell or have files for emulating a ProFile drive for an Apple Lisa? I have a dead Profile 5MB drive i'd like to convert over (doesn't go through full seek) but the two options I know of aren't the most desirable. IDEFile (or whatever) is pretty expensive and afaik isn't the best at emulation, while the ArcaneByte emulators are out of production due to the boards they use going out of production.

 

[Kai Robinson]

@DosFox may be the person you're looking for, AFAIK

 

[warmech]

You're in luck - my friend and fellow Lisa nerd, Alex, has pretty much exactly what you're looking for. The Cameo/Aphid setup was fantastic, but the evaporation of PocketBeagles has made them hard to find.

Alex's ProFile emulator uses an Arduino Mega 2560 and runs Tom Stepleton's "Selector" software (what the Cameo runs) and is very nice. I can't recall all the limitations it has vs. the Cameo but, for general HD emulation, they are probably not going to impact you. I've had mine connected to both of my Lisas running pretty much all the OSes the Lisa will run and without any issues: LOS, MacOS via MacWorks (including the PFG version), UniPlus, and Xenix. At VCFSW this year, Alex even had GEM running off of it. His GitHub repo is here.

I may have a couple blank PCBs floating around my shop; I'll take a look this weekend and see if I can find one. If you're in the US (and I have one), it's yours for the cost of shipping.

 

[wottle]

You're in luck - my friend and fellow Lisa nerd, Alex, has pretty much exactly what you're looking for. The Cameo/Aphid setup was fantastic, but the evaporation of PocketBeagles has made them hard to find.

Alex's ProFile emulator uses an Arduino Mega 2560 and runs Tom Stepleton's "Selector" software (what the Cameo runs) and is very nice. I can't recall all the limitations it has vs. the Cameo but, for general HD emulation, they are probably not going to impact you. I've had mine connected to both of my Lisas running pretty much all the OSes the Lisa will run and without any issues: LOS, MacOS via MacWorks (including the PFG version), UniPlus, and Xenix. At VCFSW this year, Alex even had GEM running off of it. His GitHub repo is here.

I may have a couple blank PCBs floating around my shop; I'll take a look this weekend and see if I can find one. If you're in the US (and I have one), it's yours for the cost of shipping.

I have some as well. I just swapped out my Cameo/Aphid for one because I never liked having to have a UISB cable running out the back. I did print a cover that made it more palatable, but the full internal connection, and the alignment of the activity LED, as well as the cost makes it an awesome device.



@Zhinü , Let me know if you want one and we can work something out. I doubt I'll be picking up 9 more Lisas any time soon.

 

[Zhinü]

@warmech @wottle That would be great you two! I’d be willing to take two or three at the very least, cause one of my friends is also looking for one.

 

[wottle]

Which version are you looking for? I have 4 of the internal and 5 of the external. Adding up my costs, the boards, fully assembled were $13 each. The ESP32s were $6.50 each. I'd be willing to give them to you at cost, so $20 each? Plus whatever shipping ends up being. Where are you located?

I actually don't have any cables yet for the externals, as I was planning on doing those later. The cables are about $7 each to make, looking at Alex's Digikey cart for the cables. I was also thinking of making a simple 3d printed case, but that project may have to wait a bit since I've been working on some other big projects. But if I make one, I'll post the models on Thingiverse for people to add later.

 

[Zhinü]

I'm located in California! I'll take 2 internal and 1 external if you're willing to do that, along with a cable if possible.

 

[wottle]

Sure. I don't have the connectors yet, so it may be a while before I get the cables made., if that's OK. I try to batch up my Digikey / Mouser orders to make the shipping less painful.

 

[Zhinü]

Sure. I don't have the connectors yet, so it may be a while before I get the cables made., if that's OK. I try to batch up my Digikey / Mouser orders to make the shipping less painful.

Sounds good! HMU when you've got everything made.

 

[wottle]

Sounds good! HMU when you've got everything made.

Had some things I needed to order so I added some connectors into my Digikey order. Hopefully will be here next week and I can make the cable and test it.

 

[wottle]

@Zhinü I got the components to make the cable. However, I have a Lisa 2/10 which doesn't have a built in parallel port. It does have a Parallel power card, but I've never used it. I did try to use the external version with the cable I created, and I was able to get the selector to show up and give me a choice of drive images, but when I tried to boot either LisaOS or Macworks, it would not boot. I know the device is good, because if I power it externally and plug it into the internal parallel connector for the widget, it boots into both OSes just fine.

So, either the parallel card is bad, or my cables. I made the cables to mirror what the creator of the ESProfile shows on GitHub, but I could have done something wrong. I suspect maybe it is the parallel card, but I don't have any way to confirm. So, if you want an external one with cable, just know it would only be partially tested.

DM me and we can figure out what you want to order. Also do you have SD cards and know how to throw Lisa drive images on them, along with the selector drive image? I can provide instructions. I have some microSD cards, but they would also be extra.

Thanks!

 

[Zhinü]

@Zhinü I got the components to make the cable. However, I have a Lisa 2/10 which doesn't have a built in parallel port. It does have a Parallel power card, but I've never used it. I did try to use the external version with the cable I created, and I was able to get the selector to show up and give me a choice of drive images, but when I tried to boot either LisaOS or Macworks, it would not boot. I know the device is good, because if I power it externally and plug it into the internal parallel connector for the widget, it boots into both OSes just fine.

So, either the parallel card is bad, or my cables. I made the cables to mirror what the creator of the ESProfile shows on GitHub, but I could have done something wrong. I suspect maybe it is the parallel card, but I don't have any way to confirm. So, if you want an external one with cable, just know it would only be partially tested.

DM me and we can figure out what you want to order. Also do you have SD cards and know how to throw Lisa drive images on them, along with the selector drive image? I can provide instructions. I have some microSD cards, but they would also be extra.

Thanks!

My bad on the late response! I’ll send you a DM soon!

 

[wottle]

I've had some discussions with the creator of the ESProfile (@AlexTheCat123 ) and it seems there was a potential issue with speeds when using the external version with the parallel interface card. I tried the new firmware and I still get an issue booting the external one from my Lisa. the external ones do work when I plug them into the internal parallel cable, so I think the device mostly works. It just either has a problem with my Parallel Interface card, or possibly all parallel interface cards. I do have a 3d printed case now, so at least it is packaged up nicely.

Send me a DM and we can work out the details. I also have designed a 3d printed mount that I can include to make it easier for the internal ones to be mounted.

 

[AlexTheCat123]

I've had some discussions with the creator of the ESProfile (@AlexTheCat123 ) and it seems there was a potential issue with speeds when using the external version with the parallel interface card.

Yeah, and it's really strange because I'm able to get it to work with my parallel cards just fine! I know that there are two different ROM revisions used in the parallel card; I wonder if yours is the other one and that's causing the timing problem?

 

[wottle]

Yeah, and it's really strange because I'm able to get it to work with my parallel cards just fine! I know that there are two different ROM revisions used in the parallel card; I wonder if yours is the other one and that's causing the timing problem?

I still haven't had a chance to try a clean instal to a new image from floppies. I'll test that out this weekend.

Is there a way to check the ROM on the parallel card? Worst case if it does turn out to be a difference in parallel interface card ROMs, and you need one to test, I'm just up the road from you and I could maybe drop mine off if you wanted to try to add support for the other ROM.

 

[AlexTheCat123]

Assuming your parallel card ROM has a label on it, let me know what it says and I can compare to mine. I'm honestly not sure what the differences are between the revisions, but my cards all have the 341-0193-A ROM installed.

If it does end up being a ROM mismatch issue, I'll try burning a copy of the other type of ROM and seeing how it behaves. But if that still doesn't give all the info that I need for whatever reason, I might take you up on your offer of borrowing your card. I didn't realize that you were also in SC!

 

[wottle]

So I spent some time this morning with it. I created a new 5MB blank disk image. I then used my FloppyEmu to perform a fresh LisaOS 3.1 install. And it worked great. I installed all the apps. However, when I reset the ESProfile and select the newly created and freshly installed LOS3.1 image from the selector, I'm now back to the 49 error when trying to launch LisaOS.

Here's the details from my parallel interface card:



The one thing I haven't tried, but will now, is to see if I can do a clean install, then restart the Lisa without going through selector and see if it works. Could it be some issue with selector and the timing during the re-mounting of the new disk image?

UPDATE: I forgot that during the install you have to reboot to the newly installed image, which obviously worked when I did it the first time before installing all the apps. I did run another couple tests and it does seem like when the blank image is mounted in selector, and a new install is done, the disk image will run LisaOS just fine. As soon as I restart and use selector to choose it again, I get the 49 error. So maybe an issue with timing when using selector?

UPDATE #2: OK, I can get it to boot again by booting from the Lisa OS floppy and choosing repair. After that, the disk is bootable. If I reset the ESProfile and boot to selector again, and select to boot from it again, back to error 49... So there is some bad state it gets into when selecting from the selector that can be repaired using the repair feature of the LisaOS floppy.

 

[AlexTheCat123]

Wow, that's really interesting. You have a Lisa 2/10, right? I'm assuming that based on your internal ESProFile mount, but tell me if I'm wrong. If you're a 2/5 owner, then maybe it has something to do with a parallel card configuration that I haven't tested.

I've been using LOS and the Workshop pretty extensively from a parallel card on one of my 2/10s, and my ESProFiles haven't ever given me this issue, so it's really strange! Maybe I'll try some other parallel cards too, just in case the particular one that I'm using is "lucky" or something.

 

[Zhinü]

Assuming your parallel card ROM has a label on it, let me know what it says and I can compare to mine. I'm honestly not sure what the differences are between the revisions, but my cards all have the 341-0193-A ROM installed.

If it does end up being a ROM mismatch issue, I'll try burning a copy of the other type of ROM and seeing how it behaves. But if that still doesn't give all the info that I need for whatever reason, I might take you up on your offer of borrowing your card. I didn't realize that you were also in SC!

I assume the parallel card that you reverse engineered and rebuilt on GitHub has the same ROM as the one you've tested with the ESP? I built one of those (and have 4 spare boards) that I still have yet to properly test.

 

[AlexTheCat123]

Yeah, the ROM that I link to on GitHub is the same one that I've tested. And interestingly enough, I've been able to replicate the Error 49 problem using one of my other parallel cards. It's the same ROM revision, so I guess it has to do with the hardware, but there aren't multiple different hardware revisions of the card as far as I'm aware. So I don't know what's going on.

After some investigation, it looks like the disk image isn't getting corrupted at all! It's just that block 0 gets loaded into the Lisa's RAM incorrectly. And it's only when you try to boot straight into the image from the Selector that this is a problem. If you get the Error 49, you can just try starting up from the disk a second time in the Startup From... menu and it'll work fine. Alternatively, you can choose S)elect in the Selector instead of B)oot, then exit to the ROM Monitor, and start up from the disk using the Startup From... menu there. So we've got a pretty easy workaround, but I'm definitely going to look into it more to see what's going on here.