Interview with David Greelish, Apple Lisa Documentary

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays

Sponsors:

• 8-Bit Classics 

• Arcade Shopper 

• FutureVision Research  

Hello, and welcome to episode 150 of the Floppy Days Podcast for April, 2025.  My name is Randy Kindig and I’m the host for this journey through the annals of home computer history.

This month, I’m going to step aside from the ongoing series of episodes about the HP 97/67 programmable calculators to bring you a timely interview with a good friend about an interesting topic.  That friend is David Greelish, a computer historian, and the topic is his recent publication of a film documentary about the Apple Lisa, called "Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa".  David tells us all about the film, why he produced it, why the Apple Lisa was an important part of home computer history, who he interviewed for the film (he had some amazing guests) and much more.  It’s a great film and should interest a lot of the listeners, so please consider going out and purchasing the film in order to support David’s efforts.

For upcoming shows, we do have one more episode in the series on the HP97 with HP calculator historian Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz.  I will air that episode very soon.

New Acquisitions/What I’ve Been Up To

• Indy Classic Expo - https://www.indyclassic.org 

• Vintage Computer Center - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com 

• OmniView 80 card for Atari 800 - https://archive.org/details/Atari_OMNIVIEW_manual 

• Commodore 16 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16 

• 6502 Plus 4 upgrade for C16 from Lotharek - (https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=257 

News

• Reboot of Compute’s Gazette Magazine - https://www.computesgazette.com/iconic-computes-gazette-magazine-returns-after-35-years-expanding-focus-to-entire-retro-computing-community/ 

Upcoming Shows

• The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 2-3, 2025 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ 

• VCF Europe - May 3-4 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ 

• Retrofest 2025 - May 31-June1 - Steam Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon, UK - https://retrofest.uk/ 

• Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo - June 14 - New Westminster, BC, Canada - https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/index.html 

• VCF Southwest - June 20-22, 2025 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ 

• Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - June 20-22, 2025 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ 

• Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 21-22 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start 

• KansasFest - July 18-20 - Virtual only - https://www.kansasfest.org/ 

• VCF West - August 1-2 - Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/2025/03/05/vcf-west-2025-save-the-date/ 

• VCF Midwest - September 13-14, 2025 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ 

• Tandy Assembly - September 26-28 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ 

• Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 17-19 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ 

• Chicago TI International World Faire - October 25 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - https://www.chicagotiug.org/home 

• Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub 

Documentary and Classic Computing Links

• Classic Computing Website - https://www.classiccomputing.com/Classic_Computing/Blog/Blog.html 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psAeTDYezdo - "Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa" Full Documentary Film 

• Exidy Sorcerer at VCFSE 2 - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-17-the-exidy-sorcerer-live-from-vcfse-20 

• Stan Veit podcast - https://www.classiccomputing.com/CCPodcasts/Stan_Veit/Stan_Veit.html 

• Classic Computing - the book! - https://www.classiccomputing.com/Classic_Computing/My_Book.html 

• Documentary link at IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31122934/