Lisa Emulator Project | Hacker News Reader

Lisa Emulator Project

lisa.sunder.net

81 pointsrcarmo22 comments

Thanks for posting the link to this.

BTW, everyone -- I managed the Computer History Museum's Lisa 40th anniversary event earlier this year -- if you haven't already watched it, check it out:

Event info: https://computerhistory.org/events/happy-40th-birthday-lisa/

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCvQbGXPtBU

Recap blog post: https://computerhistory.org/blog/happy-40th-birthday-lisa/

The author of the referenced emulator, Ray Arachelian, unfortunately passed away early this year, a few days before the Lisa source code was published by the CHM. Since you are one of the responsibles at the CHM, you might consider archiving a copy of his website, which includes numerous valuable documents about the Lisa, not all of which may be available elsewhere.

Mentioned source code for the Apple Lisa:

Press release:

https://computerhistory.org/press-releases/chm-makes-apple-l...

Source: https://info.computerhistory.org/apple-lisa-code

Edit: I really like the sources, especially knowing how old they are (1983, 1984, Apple Computer Inc), they are aesthetically fulfilling to me.

Here is a tool to view, cross-reference and navigate the source code: https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal; Pascal, Clascal and assembler files are supported.

That sounds really cool. This link came up 404.

https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal

Oops, HN adds the semicolon to the URL; I should have used a dot instead.

Wow, thanks!

Reading the doc. Fantastic work:

"The source tree is converted to a virtual file system using the original file names, considering Pascal files only. All program and unit files of this file system are parsed and include directives are resolved"

Now, is the final state of Lisa source:

"The full source tree" "has 12 missing include files and 7 syntax errors"

Should some initiative be made for Apple to publish these missing 12 too or is it something that can be now guessed enough to fill the gaps?

It's difficult to say whether these file are indeed missing, or whether the files referencing them are not used by themselves for the build. I came to the conclusion that I would also have to implement an interpreter for all the build related files (EXEC etc.) and try to reconstruct a complete build with the correct options (which I don't know yet) in order to be able to make any statement about the completeness and integrity of the code. That would take a lot of time at the expense of my other interests. That's why I've put the project on hold for the time being.

Also thanks for mentioning Clascal, I wasn't even aware of it. Also fascinating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clascal

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/toolkit_3.0/Package_2_E...

There is also a "Clascal Reference Manual for the Lisa" (1983) available on the web, and Larry Tesler talked about it (https://youtu.be/OloLXE4I5fw?t=7665). They needed an OO language, but Smalltalk was too slow, so they came up with Clascal.

Some years later Apple joined with Wirth to co-design Object Pascal.

It was really unfortunate that more wasn’t talked about or shown from the actual source release. The people involved in that deserved way more time than they got.

(At least it wasn’t as bad as wasting the second half of the Alto event being an advertisement for OpenAI. WTF was that about?! Had nothing to do with Alto or PARC, just hype.)

Remembering Ray Arachelian (sunder)

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/lisa-remembering-ray...

WHAT?! Aw, man that's terrible news that I'd not heard yet.

I worked with Ray in the late 90's in NYC. I remember that "I'm working on a Lisa Emulator" distracted us for an extra hour of geeking out during his job interview.

"Why I'm doing this": https://lisa.sunder.net/why.html

> On my Windoze machines, on my Macs, on my Unixen, and maybe, if it's feasable, on my Newt2k.

what is Newt2k supposed to mean? Google isn't helping

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/stats/newton_m...

It's not easy to find from the linked website, but this appears to be the most recent code on github: https://github.com/rayarachelian/lisaem

There is also this repo which was last updated in 2018: https://github.com/rayarachelian/lisaem-1.2.x

It’s so sad. Almost none of the reference links at the bottom of Ray’s homepage work (at least the dozen or so I clicked). Definitely could use some restoration. Great walk down memory lane of my childhood Apple Lisa (a hand me down from my uncle’s business).

Hmmm... no Linux version.

There are instructions for installing the Lisa emulator on Linux:

https://github.com/rayarachelian/lisaem-1.2.x

Thanks!

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