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LisaMini case for the LisaFPGA
Posted by: wottle on 2026-09-08 15:52:52
I've been working on a nice, self contained, compact case for the LisaFPGA I picked up in the initial run. Having used @AlexTheCat123 's other wonderful work (the ESProfile in my Lisa 2/10), I knew I wanted to get a reliable, modern device so I don't need to put too many more hours on my real Lisa's CRT. I originally built a standalone pizza box style case for the LisaFPGA. It worked, and I could plug it into a TV and use it, but it lacked the charm of the original Lisa and its compact Mac brethren.

So I designed a modern all-in-one enclosure I've been calling LisaMini.

IMG_1456.jpeg

IMG_1457.jpeg IMG_1458.jpeg

All the files and details are in my Github repo: https://github.com/wottle/lisa-mini/ including a BOM and assembly instructions. Because I wanted to use a 1080p display, but the offset nature of the display opening meant the stock software's behavior wouldn't work, I have a fork of the software you need to install on it so you can adjust the location of the video output to center it in the opening. There's still some improvements I'd like to do, but overall I'm very happy with the results.

Next, I'd like to see if I could improve the USB input support. Currently, the only keyboard and mouse I've found to work with it are the cheap Lenovo ones Alex mentions in his gituhub repo. I'd really love to support my Apple keyboards, or maybe a nice mechanical USB keyboard with some custom keycaps to look more retro. Also, I have stuffed a Logitech M185 wireless mouse into a Lisa mouse shell. I'd love to get that working:

IMG_1461.jpeg

One caveat, due to the size of the 11.6" widescreen LCD and The LisaFPGA board, this is a big print, with the width being 330mm, meaning you need a large 3d printer to make it happen in one piece. I basically bought a Creality K2 Plus just to be able to print this.

I also plan to come up with another version that is essentially the same shell, but with the LCD being a 9.7" iPad 1/2 1024x768 screen, and the compute being a Raspberry Pi running a Lisa Emulator. It would be way more attainable due to the cheaper cost of the Pi vs the LisaFPGA, and the iPad screens are likely much more readily available vs the 11.6" one I used. Technically you can use an iPad screen with the LisaFPGA and my custom build, but the 1024x768 resolution means I had to do some dithering to make it look OK, and it just isn't as clean looking of an image as the 1080p version.
Posted by: Froggy814 on 2026-09-08 16:31:51
Looks great! Thanks for sharing. It looks really good!
Posted by: pax on 2026-09-08 17:07:15
Really special, love it. Well done!
Posted by: CptnCodon on 2026-09-08 19:42:23
Very slick! Thank you for the detailed write-up.
Posted by: wottle on 2026-09-10 08:14:01
Thanks all. I also have a pizza box case I’ll put out there as well. The one Joe’s Computer museum is selling are better (I like their approach for the buttons, as well as the light pipes), tighter tolerances for the port openings, etc. But mine is free so if you want to make your own, it could be useful for some. I just need to clean up the files. I plan to offer two versions. One where you can print the top and bottom piece in one shot (if you have a 350mm print bed) and one that splits it and can be glued together for smaller printers. Hopefully will be able to get that repo set up shortly.

Also printed my first attempt at the raspberry Pi back piece last night. Should fit Pi 3,4, or 5. Now I need to work on the software lisaEm side of the work. And the iPad LCD mount for the front piece. One challenge is I believe there are different mount locations for these, as well as different controller boards I’ll have to take into account.
Posted by: wottle on 2026-09-13 05:03:49
OK, I have the case all set up for a Raspberry Pi and an iPad LCD. So yesterday I moved on to what I thought was the easy part, getting the emulators set up.
Sadly, it seems the state of LisaEm on Raspbian is not good. As in, it doesn't work and it doesn't appear anyone is trying to get it to work. I believe ArcaneBytes forked the repo and has done some recent work, but it looks like it is largely to try to get it to work on Mac (and maybe windows. They seem aware of the Debian issue, at least: https://github.com/arcanebyte/lisaem/issues/43

So, has anyone gotten a Lisa emulator to work on a modern Raspberry Pi machine? I know the guy who created the life-sized 3d printed replica of a Lisa did it, but I noticed in one of his pictures the emulator not in fullscreen mode and it appeared to maybe be using the older IDLE emulator.

If I can get this set up, I will be sure to write up a good guide for others who want to do the same thing. Thanks for any help!
Posted by: wottle on 2026-09-14 13:23:57
OK, making progress on the getting LisaEm running on Raspbian. It seems on Linux/ARM, chars are unsigned versus Windows / Mac... I got those correctly typed and was able to get the ROM to load and display the diagnostics screen. I did get a boot error 45, which I'm tracking down now, but I'm just excited to get an image...

IMG_2042.jpeg

Will try to contribute any fixes to the arcanebyte fork, but may need to create my own fork if they don't accept contributions from others.
Posted by: mikemac on 2026-09-14 18:22:47
Cool stuff! And in OpenSCAD too! Yeah!
Posted by: wottle on 2026-09-14 19:39:28
Cool stuff! And in OpenSCAD too! Yeah!
Sadly, only the raw shell is in OpenSCAD. I struggled trying to make the whole design with mounting points and opening, so those were added in TinkerCAD after the fact. But having the OpenSCAD is nice, and I'll likely need it because the iPad LCD I'm using actually has a bit of a "forehead" that is causing me to not be able to get the image centered in the opening. So I'll probably make a new case a bit larger to accommodate the iPad screens and being interchangeable with the LisaFPGA / RaspberryPi backs.

Also, made some progress on the LisaEm emulator on Linux/ARM (Pi). I got it working now, although it is painfully slow on a Pi 3b. I'm going to borrow a Pi 4 from another project and see if it can perform acceptably. I'm trying to avoid the Pi5 because it is very picky with its power requirements and I'd still like to power this whole thing off one 12v input with a couple of buck converters. Anyway, I made some changes to the emulator to add a new 1024x768 display mode. Originally I tried a "nearest neighbor" approach and the text did not look good (left image), so I switched to use blending and the results are probably as good as I can get (right image)
IMG_2059.jpegIMG_2062.jpeg

I also fixed a centering bug, fixed an issue with the HQX display mode. I also am going to add a setting to the preferences to delay when to leave full screen mode when the mouse moves to the top of the screen. Trying to avoid dropping out of full screen mode for when using in this scenario - we want it to be as close to a Lisa once you've booted as possible. I also plan on giving the option to boot into Basilisk II if you want.

But here it is, running on a Raspberry PI with a cheap iPad 1 LCD as the screen. I'm adding a rocker power switch in the back so you can leave it plugged in but shut down the LCD and the Pi when not in use. Should be able to publish these soon, but have some work to better support centering the LCD. Also want to get a iPad 3/4 screen with higher resolution to see if I can get better dithering results. So I need to possibly change the case to accommodate that as well.

IMG_2061.jpeg
Posted by: wottle on 2026-10-07 21:25:43
OK, I have finished what I hope is the final version. Technically, there are two versions. One which leaves the LisaFPGA board untouched, and another that moves the ESFloppy screen and buttons to the front of the machine, and adds a lighted power button just like the real Lisa.

Also, a big software improvement I added is to support USB hubs and high-speed USB devices. In practical terms, this means you can now use Apple USB keyboards (they have a hub built in so you can plug the mouse into the KB), as well as wireless mice and keyboards!

Here's a video of the latest in action:
Posted by: CptnCodon on 2026-10-07 22:30:40
I like the styling of the floppy slot — very clever integration with the oled!

Are you planning on upstreaming any of the features like usb hub support?
Posted by: wottle on 2026-10-09 05:49:32
I like the styling of the floppy slot — very clever integration with the oled!

Are you planning on upstreaming any of the features like usb hub support?
I am. I'm not sure Alex will want to incorporate my on screen menu changes (I also need to confirm they work well with his ESFloppy functionality, but I can't until I get a working replacement LCD for it). But the USB support seems like something that should be included, assuming he's comfortable with the quality of the implementation and that he doesn't see any reason to not include it. I'm sure he better understands the implications to adding a new soft CPU to handle the full USB implementation. I've not noticed any issue running mine, but he's the expert so I'll probably submit a PR with each separately so he can decide independently. It would be really nice to have these pre-installed into the new batch being produced by @JCM-1.
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