MacWorks XL

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "MacWorks XL" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

MacWorks XL is an

Soon after the debut of the Macintosh, which sold over 50,000 units in the first 100 days compared to only a few thousand Lisas during its entire first year, it became clear to Apple that the Lisa (then Lisa 2/10) would benefit from the ability to run the Macintosh system software as well as reduce the development platform resources required to maintain two separate operating systems.

In April 1984, Apple introduced MacWorks v1.0 for the Lisa.^[1] Essentially it allowed the Lisa to run a Macintosh environment from a floppy disk, but did not support a hard disk environment. By the fall, Apple had introduced versions 2.0 & 3.0 which allowed MacWorks to run from the Lisa's internal Widget or attached ProFile hard disk. With the introduction of the re-branded Macintosh XL in January 1985, MacWorks was likewise renamed for the release.

Features

MacWorks XL shipped on two diskettes. The first booted the Lisa into the Mac OS bootloader. When that process completed, the system displayed an entirely white screen, ejected the first disk, and displayed the usual blinking question mark (with a Macintosh XL graphic below it) to indicate that a boot volume (the second disk) was needed. With this disk, titled the "MacWorks XL System Disk", the Lisa would boot Macintosh System 5.

When the Lisa was discontinued,

-based Macs.

Timeline of Macintosh operating systems

Timeline of Mac operating systems v t e

Timeline of Lisa models

See also:

Timeline of Apple Macintosh models

References

External links

• Lisa Emulator supports MacWorks