Newton Poetry

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 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.

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

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.]

Genius: a Newton eMate serving as a light-up wall clock, using BigCountdown, naked as the day the screen was born.

Check out the photo gallery to see the nitty-gritty.

[Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.]

A few weeks ago, my clumsy self spilled a cup of coffee on my Apple Pro Keyboard.

I loved the keyboard, a late 1990s model that shipped with Power Mac G4s and later iMac G3s, and used it everyday with my new iMac. It was too important to me to simply let go.

So I washed it in the dishwasher.

More… »

Want.

[Via Pomme C.]

Take the iPhone form factor, marry it to the Newton’s stellar handwriting recognition, and you have the latest in PDA technology.

Well, kinda.

Above is a Notepod – a simple notepad shaped like an iPhone. For $18, you get three pocket-perfect notepads shipped from Australia. On the outside, you get a blank iPod Touch-like page, while the inside pages have grid-style paper for notes, doodles, or iPhone app ideas.

Maybe best of all, it recognizes your handwriting no matter how drunk you get – even if you don’t.

Or you can simply make your own with the Hipster PDA templates over at Active Voice. Whichever.

Via DIY Planner.

PowerbookMedic takes apart a Newton MessagePad:

If the iPhone 3GS had parents, its father would be the iPhone 3G, and its mother would be the 1st Gen iPhone. If it had a Grandma, that would unequivocally have to be the Apple Newton. We’ve done teardown videos on all of the iPhone models, and so it seemed only logical (and respectful) to give the Newton the same honor.

A few things struck me about this video: the infomercial music, the rate of unscrewing screws (what, no fast forward?), and the brave use of a soldering iron. Maybe it’s early, but taking a red-hot poker to my Newton is a bit too advanced for me.

Anyway, a good how-to if you feel like getting your hands dirty.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

Matt Howe, part-time Newton developer and full-time Santa look-alike, uses a combination of Google Maps, U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps, MS MapPoint, a dash of Google Earth, and Paint Shop Pro to make hiking and driving maps for his Newton.

Howe gives the nitty-gritty on his Santa Matt’s Ramblings blog, including how to use GPSMap Lite and the Newton Toolkit to make his maps digestible to his MessagePad.

Howe even developed his own app that translates latitude and longitude into decimal degrees.

The instructions are great if you’re a hard-core Newton user with a knack for tinkering and creating your own maps. Howe’s instructions lend a bit of DIY cred to the whole process. These days I’ve become spoiled with the iPhone 3G in my pocket.

Read the my profile on Matt Howe on other Newton project he’s worked on.

Here at Newton Poetry, there is One Supreme Operating system, and therefore most posts relate to the Newton interacting with the Mac environment.

I realize, however, that there are other operating systems out there. And, while I’m not a user, I respect that Newton fans can be Windows and Linux users. With Windows, there are tons of tips and how-tos on how to make connections and upload packages and whatnot. Sadly, we don’t hear as much from the Linux side.

Let’s put our operating system differences aside and help Newton users be better Newton users, shall we?

To start, I found the Newton and Linux mini-HOWTO, a site filled with questions and answers (like “How to upload a Newton package to Linux” and “Which Linux software is available”).

Some of the info seems to be dated. For instance, the author talks about Windows-emulating WINE to be a project slated in the future tense. Plus a few of the links are dead. But the basics are all there.

To get connected, there’s Newtonlink.  There are a few more Linux applications for the Newton over at TuxMobil.

Then again, you can always replace Linux on your PDA with the Newton OS. I’m just sayin’.

Any Linux users out there that have successfully paired their Ubuntu with a MessagePad or eMate? Let me know in the comments.

My Mac-enthusiast friend Curtis chimes in with his latest project, a Dell netbook Hackintosh:

It was an easy install and it worked *very* well.

The little machine reminds me of the days of my PowerBook 100!

Congratulations, Curtis!

Now I wonder if you could get NCX running on it and sync a Newton. Anyone tried yet?

The Newton eMate 300 is a great machine. Small, portable, rugged – a sort of proto-netbook that lets you type on the go. And the battery life is great if you have a working, rechargeable battery with plenty of juice.

When my eMate came, I found out right away that the battery pack was probably the original. It held a charge for about three minutes. So while it’s handy to pop a few fresh AA batteries into a MessagePad and be back up and running, the eMate relies on its single battery pack. If it goes, you’re stuck with replacing it, building a new one from scratch, or keeping your eMate plugged in at all times.

I opted for the simplest solution: buy a new battery pack on eBay and installing it myself.

To start, I grabbed a new eMate battery pack from PowerBook Guy, a Torx wrench (I actually took my eMate into the hardware store to get the perfect-sized wrench), my eMate, and some starting instructions from Frank.

The first step is to flip your eMate over. See that half-circle hatch near the handle (above)? That’s what you’re taking off.

There are just two screws to remove on the cover, and they’re both at the top.

I left the screws in their slots as I lifted the cover off so I wouldn’t lose them. Now you see the good stuff: a few memory slots and the battery.

The battery pack isn’t bolted to the eMate; it simply rests in a little trench, with a wire attached to the circuit board.

This is the most delicate of the steps: pulling the battery connection cable away from the circuit board. Be careful, and use something (I used my fingernail) to wedge the connector away from the plug-in.

From here, pull the battery pack out of the eMate. The actually battery pack fits snugly inside the holster, but slides right out.

Here’s what the empty battery tray looks like inside the eMate. The soft pads keep the battery pack case from sliding around inside the Newton.

Slide your new battery back inside the protective casing, with the connection wire sticking out of the right-hand side.

Now carefully slide the connection wire into the circuit board until it snaps tight. A little push on the white part will be plenty.

Place the battery case inside the eMate, replace the cover, and tighten your screws. That’s all.

I plugged my eMate in and let it charge a whole day, and now it’s like I have a whole new eMate. A fully-charged battery pack should last you for days, even with heavy usage.

The battery pack cost me about $20 (plus shipping) on eBay. There are some DIY die-hards who are all about making their own battery pack, but the soldering made me nervous. Maybe someday I’ll give it a try. This solution, however, worked fine for me.

Now my eMate is truly portable because I don’t have to worry about keeping it plugged in at all times. Replacing the battery pack was a cinch, too, and took all of about five minutes.