Lisa Repaired, Now Preparing for 30 Days with Black and White Macs

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- 2006.08.30

Today I was looking at my Lisa (see Retro Computing: First Impressions of a Newly Acquired Apple Lisa). It has been sitting on my dresser unused for quite some time because of a vertical hold problem.

I was going to sell it, so I listed it on craigslist and the 68k Macintosh Liberation Army, but I soon found that it wasn't worth anywhere near the $1,200 I thought it was worth.

I have seen Lisas (even broken ones) go for more than that on eBay, so I thought it was a reasonable price. I was wrong.

Why Sell It?

The reason I was tried to sell it is because I thought we were going to have to buy another car. The car we have was not working right. I kept overheating, and I replaced every part in the coolant system (radiator, thermostat, cooling fans, ect.).

I wasn't sure how much longer the car was going to hold up, and I was getting pretty tired of pouring money into it. It seemed like a bottomless pit: timing belt, water pump, front right drive axle, cooling fans, cooling fan control.

Mom and I need the car so we can go to work. if we can't go to work, we can't make money, and if we can't make money, we'll end up living under a bridge.

I found an old 1988 Honda Accord that seemed to be in good shape for $1,000. I figured I could sell the Lisa, get the money we needed to buy the Accord, and be okay.

But then I found the real problem with the car we have. It turns out that the spring on the radiator cap on the newly installed used radiator was worn out, letting all of the coolant into the overflow, causing it to overheat.

The radiator cap is an $8 part at Auto Zone.

Flamed

There hadn't been any new posts on the Lisa's For Sale Thread, and I had forgotten about it. Then I got an email from the site saying there were new posts on it, so I went and looked.

People had started flaming me, saying how selfish I am. Then, before I could reply to all of the flames and explain my situation, the thread was closed.

Time to Fix It

Nevertheless, I decided to follow the advice given to me. Today I decided to open up the Lisa and fix the vertical hold. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

All I had to do was get the top off and adjust a rheostat on the board behind the CRT - problem solved.

Now all I have to do is get a 400K floppy drive and a keyboard for it, and it will be a totally functional Lisa.

Mac 512K I think I found a floppy drive for it on Craigslist, along with a lot of 10 Mac Pluses and 512Ks (maybe they are 128Ks; I don't know for sure). I'm looking forward to getting that stuff.

I had thought about trading the Lisa for that lot of Fat Macs and Pluses, but I think I'll hold onto the

Time for a New Project

Inspired by the hit series "30 Days" on FX, I've decided to start a new project.

Starting on Monday, September 4, 2006, I'm going to set aside my Sawtooth G4, all of my G3 machines, and everything that displays more than 1-bit black and white for 30 days.

The idea is to see just how much of my day to day work I can really get done using nothing but my Plus, SE, Classic II, and PowerBook 170.

The only modern technology I'll be using is my Power Mac 8600, which is a headless IP router for my LocalTalk only machines, and my Power Mac 9600, which will serve as an SMTP server so I can send email. (I use Eudora Lite 1.3.1 on my classic machines. It doesn't support SMTP authentication, so I use Mac OS X Server's email server, because I can disable SMTP authentication on it.)

Wish me luck.

If you have any tips to help me, feel free to email me before September 4th.

Go to the 30 Days of Old School Computing index.

Recent Vintage Mac Living articles

If a Mac Plus can run System 7.5.5, why can't an 800 MHz G4 run Leopard?, 10.19. Apple supported the Mac Plus for over 10 years after its introduction. Why should Leopard cut off support for Macs released 4-6 years ago?
60 Mac models left behind: The ridiculously high cost of Leopard, 10.17. Mac OS X 10.5 officially doesn't support any G3 Macs, most G4 Power Macs, most titanium PowerBooks, half the G4 iMacs, early eMacs, or the first 12" G4 iBook.
What a waste! Some schools would rather store old computers than put them to use, 09.12. Denver Public Schools is one example of a school district so ready to buy new computers that it has tens of thousands of old, usable computers sitting in storage.
More in the Vintage Mac Living index.

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