Re: [NTLK] Motorola Marco Wireless PDA (Apple Newton OS)

From: Ed Kummel (tech_ed_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Sep 26 2005 - 22:41:53 PDT


Motorola had two ARDIS radio handhelds at the time.
The Envoy and the Marco. They were almost identical
from the outside...they used the same pen silo, the
same battery and the same memory cards. The only
difference is that the Marco ran the Newton 110 OS and
the Envoy ran the Magic Cap OS (you can download a
copy that will run on a windows desktop from my
server: http://newton.tek-ed.com/magic_cap.zip)I also
believe that the Marco had 2(two) memory card slots
where the Envoy only had one.
I owned a Marco (it was my first Newton) and had an
extended oportunity to play with an Envoy. The Envoy,
along with the Sony PIC1000 were eventually upgraded
to include a transreflective screen, but with little
else to pay attention to. The ARDIS radio Network was
eventually sold to American Mobile Satellite and what
they did with it after that is anybody's guess...I
used this network along with the Wynd and DTS system
for several years...and in fact, if you find old
postings from me, you will find that my address is a
DTS.net address...this was my first email address that
I actually used on a regular basis (I've been a Yahoo
user since the early 90s, but never used it much
becuase the dialup was such a pain)The ARDIS and DTS
system allowed you to get snapshots of web pages by
sending a URL to a specific email address. you would
then receive the web page as text in a return email.
I eventually upgraded to a Newton 120 with the 1.0 OS.
Apple offered an upgrade to the 2.0 so I upgraded to
that later on. Unfortunatly, ARDIS no longer was
supporting the Newton, so I used Wynd. Wynd later gave
up and DTS took over. DTS unofficially supported the
Newton with their ZAPmail service by letting me in on
a little secret that involves the only known
triple-tap sequence on the Newton.
Seems that you could change a key setting in the
software by triple tapping on a certain location which
would allow you to make changes to that
setting...bizzare, but it worked great!
Using the Gold antenna (I forgot the name of that
bulky device) packet radio PC card device, which ran
on a 9V battery, I plugged it into my 120 and
continued to use the service. The big problem, that I
never had with my Marco, was the 120 heap space...I
had to freeze everything...and keep non-essential
software on a RAM card which I would swap out with the
PC card wireless modem. When I upgraded to the Newton
2000, I continued to use this service until they were
bought up by (American radio? Again, I'm a little
fuzzy here)
I gave up at this time and switched to a Motorola CDPD
using the AT&T system. Copying a small police
department in California that used Newtons and the
CDPD system on bicycles, I met their IT guy at the
Atlanta mobile conference in 97 or 98? or 99? (it was
the one where they had Chicago or Rod Stewart as guest
bands...I went to the Rod Stewart...the food was
better!) And he gave me some alpha software that they
developed with AT&T to run the CDPD service on the
MP2000. Needless to say, the software never made it
past the beta stage...Apple destroyed that dream with
the premature assumption that the patient was dead...

Anyway...all that was in the heyday of PDAs...I kinda
equate it to the hobbiest beginnings of the home
computer...dozens of designs, multiple operating
systems, and everybody thinking their idea was the
best...and yet, not a single one was interoperable
with the other...The only difference is that in the
home computer arena, there was a clear winner...in the
PDA, it still is up in the air, and none of the
options are worth catching when the fall back down to
earth!
Ed
web/gadget guru
http://newton.tek-ed.com (download Newton packages)

--- John Hay <OceanCity_at_mac.com> wrote:

> A "spinoff" of the Newton seems to have been sold in
> 1995 or so by
> Motorola called the Motorola Marco Wireless PDA and
> runs on the Apple
> Newton OS (similar to whatever the Newton 120
> operating system uses I believe)
>
> Anybody have one? Any comments?
>
> John

"I'm not an expert, but I *did* stay at a Holiday Inn Express once..."
     --Holiday Inn Commercial

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