Getting Einstein running on your Mac

Now that Paul Guyot’s Einstein, the Newton emulator for Mac and Windows, is available for Snow Leopard, users with up-to-date Macs can play around with the Newton OS.

This seemed like the perfect time to give Einstein a spin on my new iMac.

First, I downloaded the latest Einstein app from Google Code, plus the Users Manual. The Users Manual is handy because it gives instructions on how to grab a ROM image of your OS 2.x Newton device. In my case, I’m grabbing my eMate’s ROM with a package of file called Lantern DDK (thanks to Macintosh Garden).

Lantern DDK gives you ROMs from an eMate and an MP2000, along with a few other pieces of debugging software.

Einstein setup screen

Einstein has you pick which Newton device you want to emulate, and point it toward a viable ROM image. Then you pick how much RAM you want the thing to have, native or full-screen resolution (warning: full screen is a bear), and how to run the screen and sound.

Eintein booting

After a few minutes of booting, Einstein pops up with a Newton screen showing that it’s working fine.

Einstein setup

From there, the pseudo eMate runs through the name, address, and time setup process. What’s nice about Einstein is that it grabbed my Address Book information automatically.

Then you get a simple Notes interface. And that’s about it, at least from what I saw, so it could be that the ROM only has certain features from the eMate. But it’s a fun little project to get running on your Mac. Note, though, that Einstein also has a Windows version.

[Thanks to Riccordo Mori for the inspiration to give it a try, and NewtonTalk for the link.]

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