The Newton MessagePad 2000Anticipation, Lust, Self-denial, Reward. Summer of 1999. Gary tells me that he never did find anyone to sell his Newton to. "Since I got my iMac, I just throw it into the back of the car for when I need e-mail and stuff. Would you like to have my Newton?" [thud] Picking myself up off the floor, Gary re-iterates his offer, and barely holding on to consciousness, I deliriously accept his generous donation of his MessagePad 2000, 10mb Flash RAM card, a USRobotics Megahertz CruiseCard 28.8 Modem (XJA3288), leather Calisé carrying case, Newton Keyboard, cords and adapters. I pick up a fresh set of batteries on the way home and begin gathering all the boxes, manuals and such into a pile on the coffee table. over the next few days I begin to make all the connections, update all the preferences and learn about my new acquisition. I ran into some problems at first. But most of those involved getting my Centris 610 to work with the Newton. Now my big project is to get it working with my Blue G3, and to start actually using the Names and address book functionality, which I refrained from using because the puny Hard Drive on my old machine was maxed out. For the G3, I need to have a Serial->USB adapter, such as Keyspan's USB Twin Serial Adapter that specifically lists Newton compatibility. Now that the hardware side is taken care of, I need to focus on the software side of things. From the looks of it, the cheapest system will be to use the Palm Desktop, (I've got version 2.5 stored locally) and the Newton Connection Utility which is only available on the disks that came with the Newton (Local copy available), and requires an updater. (I've got that locally as well.) I haven't actually gotten this altogether, as of March 2000. But I hope to get the pieces together soon. I can get it set up at work where I have an older beige G3, that won't require the Keyspan Adapter.
Good Links
|
2002: I had a PC laptop at work (PGE), and used that to justify buying a $50 WaveLan Wireless Networking card (Wi-Fi, aka 802.11b wireless ethernet). Soon my Newton will be running full time once I have NewtSync running on my iBook. It requires Mac OS X 10.2, so I need to wait until I buy that and install it.
[ Read and write comments ]