Re: [NTLK] New Newton possability (not a whine or hoax)

From: Jim Witte (jswitte_at_bloomington.in.us)
Date: Tue Oct 12 2004 - 12:24:52 PDT


> How many readers of this mailing list would be seriously interested in
> exchanging their current newton 2x00 for an upgraded machine?

   I would, if it worked..

> This machine would most likely feature a faster CPU (in the area of
> 233 MHz) without overclocking the sound, serial or IR ports.

   This I think would be possible, by putting an independent clock
signal into those parts, or by changing the OS.

> The storage and system memory would both be expanded, though to what
> degree I do not yet know. Most likely doubled.

   How? According to Paul, the address bus of the Voyager is already
maxed out with 4MB. You could interface more system ram into MMU as
virtual page space (up to 4GB if I remember right), but to get the
system to access that as system RAM, would again require modification
of the OS.

> This would have the added bonus of setting minds at ease in the memory
> failure department.

   I assume you're refeferring to the -61100 bug. Paul is already
working on that, as stated on NTLK.

> Along with this would go an LCD with both a modern touch screen and
> backlight.

   Certainly possible. Rewrite TScreenDriver and TTabletDriver.
getting the electrical interface to work without the Voyager specs,
however..

> Plus the Interconnect port on the back would be replaced by standard
> serial and audio in/out.

   Certainly possible if you know how to do hand surface mount work, or
plan to make your own 4-6 layer PCB without the electrical schematics.

> Finally, there is the possability that a compact flash slot would be
> added WITHOUT disrupting the 2 PCMCIA slots.

   Unlikely I'd think, but not impossible. The original concept Newton
was supposed to support 4 PCMCIA slots. I don't know if there is
support in the OS for that though. Better, would be to bring the
system up to a CardBus spec, but that would require basically replacing
the Voyager, as it's 32-bit not 16-bit, and can (with some hosts)
support direct-card-DMA.

> Being basicly a newton 2100, it would still keep software
> compatability while giving the machine some more life through nearly
> all new components and the expanded hardware.

   This wouldn't by any chance be connected with the Einstein project :)

> I have tried to round up all the common (and uncommon) modifications
> and upgrades to implement them as best as possable in one package.
> Would this be worth the money and downtime to you, the users of
> Newtons?

   Certainly. 'Downtime' implies modifications to the system itself,
which I'd think would be quite difficult, considering that the Voyager
chips might have to be replaced, the NIC would have to be removed via
hand surface-mounting, etc.

   My advice would be to forget about hardware modifications - learn
minimal MacOSX Cocoa programming, learn to hack the system-level NOS
(writing p-classes, etc), and approach Paul to help coding the Einstein
project for a POSIX OS. That *is* the future, whether we like it or
not (and why *shouldn't* we like it. It was a pipe-dream, but we've
all scene it work.

   220 Mhz-there-abouts CPU? Please - I want a 400MHz
ARM/intel/whatever (ARM would be easier, from a recoding/emulation
perspective since it has conditional instruction opcodes that don't
have to be expanded into three or four opcodes for intel and maybe PPC
[don't think PPC supports conditional ops, but could be wrong]).
Preferably with either an SIMD processor like Altivec, accessible from
the host-OS or from the emulation layer (harder, but possible), or a
DSP, so that voice-recognition could become a real possibility. Bigger
screen. External USB connections, Firewire, CardBus, the list goes on.
  This is all possible with Einstein, at minimal hardware cost once the
software is done and the host-OS is chosen (or written - perhaps a very
spare Mach kernel.)

  Except for the possibility of an army of lawyers, which might not even
come to pass..

Jim

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