NeoWidEx is a formatting and diagnostic utility for the Widget, a 10-megabyte hard drive that Apple Computer designed and manufactured the 1980s. It runs on the Apple Lisa 2/10 computer, the only computer Apple ever sold with a Widget inside.
Note: The current version of NeoWidEx is now 0.4, which looks nearly identical to the screen image above.
NeoWidEx can easily destroy all of the data on your Widget, quickly and permanently. It might even harm your Widget itself, even if it is used in a cautious and sensible way. If you're not prepared to risk these consequences, don't use NeoWidEx.
NeoWidEx is a powerful tool that issues low-level commands directly to a Widget. To use NeoWidEx effectively, you need to know how a Widget works and what these commands do.
The documentation that comes with NeoWidEx will not give you this knowledge on its own. Get ready to use NeoWidEx by studying the Widget ERS document, particularly PDF pages 81-135.
You can get started right away with NeoWidEx if you have:
- A working floppy drive (or a floppy drive emulator like Floppy Emu).
- A Lisa 2 with ROM version H.
If you're missing any of these things but wish to use NeoWidEx anyway, refer to the "System requirements" section in MANUAL.md.
NeoWidEx will run on a Lisa 2/5---that is, a Lisa 2 with a built-in external parallel port---but it will only be able to access drives attached to that port. Most NeoWidEx options will be unavailable unless that drive is a Widget.
The LisaEm emulator will run NeoWidEx, although because LisaEm does not emulate a Widget, many options will be unavailable.
NeoWidEx is released into the public domain. Nobody owns NeoWidEx.
NeoWidEx is named after Widex, an Apple-internal Widget utility developed when the disks were new. No copies of this software are readily available today, but some usage notes have been archived on Bitsavers.
Other "Widex-like" low-level tools exist. The Basic Lisa Utility provides many useful functions for working with Lisa disks, but provides no direct access to Widget-specific features. UsbWidEx is a hardware peripheral that can do everything that NeoWidEx can and much more---without the Lisa.
NeoWidEx is written in around 10,000 lines of 68000 macro assembly.
It would not have been possible for me to write NeoWidEx without the help of the following people and resources:
- Dr. Patrick Schäfer, whose numerous contributions include disassembly and/or analysis of various Widget ROMs, technical documentation from his various projects, and some helpful emails.
- bitsavers.org's archived technical documentation.
- The LisaEm emulator by Ray Arachelian.
- The Floppy Emu floppy drive emulator.
- The BLU utility by James MacPhail and Ray Arachelian.
- The entire LisaList community.
-- Tom Stepleton, 14 April 2017, London