Alex Anderson-McLeod’s LisaFPGA project does exactly what it promises on GitHub: “The Apple Lisa computer implemented inside an FPGA!” It is an open-source recreation of a complete Apple Lisa computer built onto an FPGA board, with hardware that went on sale in May. The catch is right there in the project’s own README. Under “Features,” the Introduction says the “Onboard ESP32-based floppy drive emulation” is present but “THIS DOESN'T WORK YET.” That is not marketing fluff. It is the current boundary line between a cool artifact and a fully usable replica.

This is also why LisaFPGA is potentially more interesting than it sounds at first. It is not just recreating the look and behavior of an old machine. It is trying to reproduce how you load and run software in the Lisa era. The README further states it “Supports Twiggy drives with an optional breakout board,” while also admitting that this “is CURRENTLY UNTESTED” because the builder does not have a set of Twiggy drives. If you are the kind of operator who cares about execution details, this is the real story: the platform exists, the core OS rebuild happened, and the peripherals are where the uncertainty still lives.

To understand why that matters, you need the background on what made the Apple Lisa such a big deal and such a pain to find. Apple Lisas are rare today, and if you do locate one, it often comes with two problems: it costs a lot and it is not working. That is exactly the trap LisaFPGA is trying to sidestep with modern programmable logic. Historically, the Lisa was strange even by Apple standards, in part because it pushed into new design territory. Apple started the project before the famous Xerox PARC visits that influenced what became the Alto. For those visits, Apple paid Xerox in shares, which Xerox then promptly sold. After the PARC detour, Apple changed course, and the Lisa became notable as the first mass-market computer with a GUI. The “mass market” part did not fully work out; by 1989, 2,700 unsold Lisas ended up as landfill.

So the stakes are cultural and practical at the same time. The Lisa influenced later machines, which is why The Register marked its 30th birthday and why it took another look in 2019. But today, that influence is locked behind scarcity. That is where the licensing and OS source release become the second lever. Apple released the source to Lisa OS for the machine’s 40th birthday in 2023. LisaFPGA’s author, Alex Anderson-McLeod, built his knowledge from an earlier project and then, last year, figured out how to compile and build Lisa OS from Apple’s source code. The project describes that compilation process in depth, and the account is described as “deeply arcane.” In other words, a working recreation required real technical spelunking, not just a superficial HDL wrap.

Even with access to the code, there is a gate. The repo does not contain Lisa OS source code itself because the source is under the “Apple Academic License Agreement,” which allows recompilation and study but forbids redistribution. To get the code, the reader must agree to the license on the Computer History Museum site. For boards and investors, this is more than a footnote. It shapes how open-source projects can behave in practice, especially when they want to distribute binaries or reuse assets. It also explains why this FPGA approach can still feel “open” while not being frictionless. You can reproduce the machine, but you cannot freely bundle everything.

On the hardware side, the current commercial reality looks like boutique engineering, not mass production. The first batch of LisaFPGA boards has already sold out. Completed boards were on sale from two official outlets: MacEffects for £264.89 and Joe’s Computer Museum for $350. Each will take your information and contact you when the next batch is ready. That is a supply-chain story disguised as nostalgia. If you are a decision-maker watching the edges of the hobby market, note what this implies: even small runs require lead times, and “works in theory” often becomes “ship when the peripheral situation stabilizes.”

There is also a parallel path for people who want to go emulator-first. If you cannot wait, the source points to Ray Arachelian’s Lisa Emulator Project. The LisaEm source code is on GitHub, but version 1.2.7 never got past Release Candidate 4 because Arachelian died of cancer in 2023. The Register suggests it would be a good tribute for someone to pick it up and produce a finished release. Separately, it also references the LisaGUI website, which recreates the Lisa user interface inside your browser.

Put together, LisaFPGA is a reminder that “recreation” is not a single thing. It is a chain: OS rebuild, hardware mapping, toolchain decisions, license constraints, and then the messy final 10 percent with peripherals. ESP32 floppy emulation is onboard but not working yet. Twiggy support exists but is currently untested due to missing drives. That is the kind of specificity that separates impressive prototypes from dependable platforms. And for anyone building or investing in modern re-creations, it points to a simple operational truth: the next bottleneck is almost never the headline component. It is usually the one you cannot validate until you have the hardware in hand, and you can measure the risk before customers feel it.