But there is no beep and the screen show a strange patern; grey with vertical bar with an inch ass on the top with black and white squares.

Can't find anymore help on the web…

After 20 years i checked him (and it was working) i open back the box where my Lisa was. I coudn't find the mouse and i have one cap stuck'ed down.

BUT i found out that a board show corrosion where the backup batteries stand and that the switch located near the batteries is stuck;
http://i56.tinypic.com/91f6h1.jpg

I've heard there is way to clean this and repair.
I have good hand a voltmetre and iron sold ready, may be someone here can help ?

Regards
Bernard

Later, I stumbled upon a mint condition Lisa 2/10 for $200 in 1992 complete with Imagewriter printer. It had the System 7/7 software package and spare ProFile 5 meg external HD which I could never get to work with the Lisa. I had a great time modeming with it but could never get it to work above 2400 bps. I even managed to obtain the Pascal workshop software development package which Sun Remarketing (they still around..?) tried to negotiate for it. Unfortunately, the internal HD Widget drive failed about 1 year later and my Lisa 2 has been dead since then.

In 2003 I donated my entire Apple collection except for the Lisa. I'd like to get it operating again but internal HD's can no longer be had. If anyone knows of any tricks or spare HD's that can be put in, please let me know. I'd love to get her back running again.

As far as Lisas go, my problem was that I was always stubbornly trying to find one out in the wild, and I figured out long ago that they had mostly become extinct in the rough around 2000 or so. But I thought I would keep looking anyway, as a cheap Lisa would make all that more stunning a find under those circumstances. I always knew I could get one on eBay for an arm and a leg, but I felt like that would be cheating (aside from not having the money to burn on one anyway).

The good news is that my father (a veteran electronics engineer), in his glorious retirement, has been helping me clean up the acid-corroded boards on my Lisa with minimal damage. It's looking like we might be able to get it working without having to replace any (or perhaps only a few) components. We're planning on testing it out soon, perhaps around Thanksgiving. Cross your fingers and wish us luck. Also, thanks for the cleanup / battery tips.

Oh, and the shipping center at VCF is a great idea. If I can make it next year, I'll probably have to use some of your services.

As you now know, the battery leakage issue is a known problem with the Lisa. Clean it up with vinegar and a soft-bristled toothbrush (more recently I learned that hydrochloric acid works even better, but don't go splashing it on your PCBs until you figure out in what concentration) then wash it off with distilled water, then drip dry.

The way to prevent this in the first place is to turn the battery switch located near the batteries on the I/O board to the OFF position. This should then prevent the batteries from leaking in the first place (too late for this now though, as most Lisas are now over 20 years old).

Lisas are not hard to find. They're just hard to find for cheap. In recent years, the price has stablized to about $400-$600 for a good condition Lisa with manuals and system software. A lot of these have been going over to Japan, as the Japanese go fucking apeshit over anything Apple or Mac. Some people have made a career out of exporting old Lisas to Japan. If I was smarter I would have done the same. Instead I have about 6 Lisas of various types (yes, including the 1 ) in my collection, plus a bunch of parts. I got my first Lisa from an old boss in 1992. I then picked up a pile from a guy that used to work for Apple on the Lisa development team as a contractor. I got a ton (literally) of useful spares, documentation, software, etc. That was a group buy and about 5 of us ended up with a Lisa out of that haul (I came away with two). I then subsequently picked up one here and one there. Now they've mostly dried up out in the wild, and the only way to find them reliably is on that disgusting enterprise known as eBay.

As far as taking vintage computers onto planes with you, it's never really been a big deal. In the late 1990s, my job brought me to your neck of the woods (Raleigh) and I scoured every thrift store and flea market within a 20 mile radius. I brought back on the plane literally tons of computer hardware, software, manuals and books (if you wondered why you weren't finding anything from the 1997-1999 timeframe then now you know) and shipped about another ton. Man, the books I used to find out there were incredible, thanks in part to the proximity to Research Triangle Park and all the baggage that 20 years of its existence leaves behind.

Baggage, yes. So I used to never have problems bringing boxes of old hardware as check in and even carry-on baggage. The tech economy was jumping so crazy back then that they probably saw all sorts of bizarre techno-crap come through the X-ray machine.

Things didn't change too much after 9/11. One just got more scrutiny. And ones lucky enough to have a Middle Eastern name got even more scrutiny. The first time I flew after 9/11 was November 6, 2001, to Vienna, then to Munich where I picked up the Robotron I'd bought earlier that year at VCF Europa. Robotron was a company in the former East Germany that made their own computers as well as clones based on Western designs. The model I bought is a CP/M compatible business computer based on a U880 microprocessor, a clone of the Z80 (or was that the 8080?) Anyway, you think bringing a Lisa onboard a plane is tough, try something that's at least one half the size larger than a Lisa and about two times its weight (the Robotron has two built-in 8″ floppy drives). I got pulled onto the tarmac at London Heathrow to open the box in front of a security guy who looked like he was afraid it was going to blow up and take us both out. I had my VintageTech business cards with me and had a good cover story (I was coming back from an archaeology conference) so I didn't have to endure an anal probe or anything (unfortunately).

Anyway, it got back in mostly one piece, but my lack of foresight lead me to stuff it into a too-small box and some of the cheap plastic sidewalls got broken in transit. Anything you're going to bring onto a plane has definitely got to be packaged in a box adequate for the item with lots of bubble wrap or foam peanuts (preferably both).

You were probably better off shipping everything via UPS, if only to avoid the hassle of bringing everything onto the plane with you (and you saved maybe $25?) For future reference, Fedex Ground is a bit cheaper. Let me know next time and I'll let you use my account and I'll bring some packaging material to the VCF with me for you to use. In fact, this is a good idea for next year. Must make a note of it: "setup shipping center in back of VCF exhibit hall for out of town visitors"

And that Lisa 1, it's for sale (but not for cheap I'm afraid )

Well hey, I might need another one for parts soon, or perhaps some software. We'll see. If you'd like to sell any of it, send me an email.

And thanks for the congrats, Jay.