>I bought a Newton OMP off of eBay for $10, and the guy did not send the
>4-AAA battery pack. He said he never had it.
>Anyway, I figured it would be easy to just stick in a 4-AAA battery pack
>from Radio Shack. There are two spring terminals there. Easy, eh? Not so
>easy, because there are 3 funky lever buttons to push in to tell the Newton
>the cells are in, rechargeable or not. Dang it! I tried every conceivable
>combination of buttons pushed in, with no dice.
You wouldn't succeed by just sticking the cells in. The two spring terminals
are at the ends of the chain, so to say. You'd have to connect the four cells
to each other (which is what the battery holder does).
>If I only knew what to do to fool the Newton that it had the "real" Newton
>battery back, I would be done. I already shaved the plastic battery pack
>slightly to fit in the tight Newton spaces with a razor blade, (and shaved
>the tip o' my thumb off).
I'm a bit puzzled. If you do have a battery pack in which you can put
four AAA size cells, you wouldn't need anything else. Just pop in four
new alkalines and off you go. There's a mechanical safety lock that ensures
that the backup battery (Lithium Ion CR2032) and the main battery can't
be removed at the same time, maybe your problem is that there isn't a
backup battery installed (yes, you can remove both if you know how).
If you do not have the battery holder, why not look here and save time
and money.
http://store.yahoo.com/repc/newbathol.html
They sell these holders for next to nothing.
I recently sent them a mail expressing that I'd like to buy 100 of them,
but they seem to be not interested. If you'd be willing to buy
100 for me and ship them to Germany at my expense, I'd give you
5 of them for free and pay for the 100 plus shipping through PayPal.
>If I have to, I can take the whole thing completely apart, and wire around
>all the switches that tell Newton what is going on - (I think there are 3
>lever switches), or just solder the switch terminals together. Or something
>like that. I don't want to do that.
You wouldn't need to wire anything. There is only one real switch on the MP,
and this one is located at the left of the battery compartment (if the compartment
points towards you). You won't see it because because it is behind a hole in
the battery compartment. This switch is pressed if you have a rechargeable pack
in the Newton, it is not pressed if you have the standard battery holder in. This
tells Newtie whether he may bring charge current on its way towards the cells or
not.
The orange "switch" is, if I remember correctly, just a mechanical lock.
If you still have problems, don't hesitate to ask!
Good luck
Frank
-- Newton hardware and software at http://www.pda-soft.de
PS I wonder why they placed the "i" right next to the "u". My favourite mistake
when touch-typing is typing "Good lick"...
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
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