Today I tried out another iPhone at the Deathstar store (aka, AT&T).
But lately I’ve been trying to revive the Newton by getting some old macs to work again. I’ve got an LC II, a Quadra, and a PowerBook 5300 – all sitting around unusable, and all because I don’t have a proper display with any of them.
The PowerBook’s screen seems to be DOA, and the two desktops are missing a monitor.
So the Newton has helped me build this blog, but not much besides that. What I’m scared of is entering all the information by hand, which would take forever. My contacts, calendar, to-do items, etc. – that’s what the Newton was built for, but without a proper information input system, it’s damn clunky.
Not like the iPhone: I could plug it into my G4 iBook and be all set. iTunes does all the hard work for me.
The Newton? A poetic brick. The MessagePad came with a Connection Kit, but I need the proper Mac (or, really, any old school PC would work – but who wants that?) to manage it.
Any suggestions?
There are a couple solutions which work to get modern Macs talking to Newts; My 2100 syncs to my Mini at work using NewtSync (http://sourceforge.net/projects/newtsync/) and wifi.
At home, my wife’s MP120 syncs to our Mini using NewtSync and a Keyspan serial-USB adapter.
To bootstrap the NewtSync package onto your newt, you may be able to get Escale (http://www.kallisys.com/newton/dcl/) to work; I find it’s hit-and-miss, but I’ve had some success using it to install packages from PPC Macs (but not Intels, for some reason).
Posted by Eddie on October 29th, 2007.
Thanks! I did try NewtSync with my G4 iBook, with a serial/USB adapter, but it just hangs there. The iBook or the Newton won’t respond at all.
My next move may be to try playing around with the Bondi iMac with the same adapter.
The wifi would be great!
Posted by davelawrence8 on October 29th, 2007.