More or less precisely 5 years ago news broke that the Apple Lisa software had been handed over to the Computer History Museum and its software curator Al Kossow and was due to be open sourced in 2018. However, everything about this went dark and quiet, including Al Kossow’s introductory post on the subject, announcing the soon to be awaited for publication.
Not long ago, as all hope seemed to be gone, the publication was re-announced for 2023. But, as it happens, we haven’t to wait for next year, as there is now a software repository and an extensive trove of documents found on Bitsavers already! (No idea, if there’s even more to come.) The documents section is especially interesting, while the software section is (still) a bit obscure. (The firmware seems to be in blobs only, and the LOS-files are in a rather obscure “.a2r” format. See below.)
Here you are:
- Documents: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/
- Software http://bitsavers.org/bits/Apple/Lisa/
Here’s a nice introduction to the system by Bruce Daniels, “The Architecture of the Lisa™ Personal Computer” (Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 72, No 3, March 1984):
Update: The official “source drop” is announced for Jan. 19th, so there is more to come!
https://twitter.com/bitsavers/status/1607935736518701057