Newton Poetry

Funny how one little driver can set your plans back.

Here I was, all ready to begin the week-long experiment using nothing but classic Macs and Newtons, when I discover that I lost my Entrega serial-to-USB dongle’s driver disc. The CD came in a little white envelope and was next to a bunch of other RAM sticks, adapters, Firewire cords, and software CDs. Now it’s gone.

A search through the Internet yielding absolutely squat, and the Newtontalk list didn’t offer any suggestions. The closest I came was one of those sleazy driver sites that makes you wade through stupid ads to get to what you need. When the driver download came up, it still wasn’t what I needed.

Apparently, Entrega was bought out by Xircom, who was in turn bought out by Intel. Intel posts a bunch of downloads for the old Entrega/Xircom adapters, but only an old manual for the one I needed (model U1-D8). The driver is nowhere to be found.

The Entrega adapter was a marvelous piece of technology, helping me to connect to my iMac G3 and becoming my go-to gadget for all things Newton. Even though it’s a USB adapter, it needs a driver to operate correctly. And the usual Keyspan adapters don’t work on my pre-OS X Macs.

My hope in this system 7 experiment was to have my PowerMac G3 run as the hub of the whole operation, syncing my Newton, doing most of the heavy lifting, and connecting with the outside world. It’s true that I could simply connect my Newtons with my iMac G3, but I’d rather have just two Macs running during the experiment: the PowerMac, and the LC 520.

So everything’s on hold for now, until either that Entrega disc shows up (after a fifth or sixth sweep of my apartment) or I give up and go with the iMac for everyday tasks.