[NTLK] News from the weird ROM board

[Chris Chapman]

Way cool!

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 16, 2013, at 10:05, Frank Gruendel <newtontalk at pda-soft.de> wrote:
> 
> Remember the weird ROM board that I came across a long time ago?
> 
>     <http://www.pda-soft.de/weirdromboard.html>
> 
> Well, recently I sent it to the amazing Super-Matthias who had rigged up a
> device for reading Newton and eMate ROMs.
> 
>     <http://www.eggfreckles.org/20130908_142529_HDR.jpeg>
>     <http://www.eggfreckles.org/20130908_142524_HDR.jpeg>
> 
> The result is kind of interesting...
> 
> For a start, the board must have been built around 1995. This is what the
> youngest copyright notice says:
> 
>     TSplashScreenInfo
>     Newton 
>     1993, 1995
>     Apple Computer, Inc.
>     All rights reserved.
> 
> Most likely the ROM was intended for a Newton, because I found the following
> text:
> 
>    Newton PDA needs to be calibrated
>    to the way you naturally hold a pen.
>    Hold the Newton pen on the center 
>    of the X in the corner above until it
>    darkens and then lift the pen.
>    Now repeat on the center of the X
>    in the corner below.
>    To confirm the pen is correctly
>    aligned, hold the pen on the center
>    of this last X.
> 
> This Newton must have had modem support, since the following values are
> defined in the ROM:
> 
>    CONNECT
>    RING
>    NO CARRIER
>    ERROR
>    NO DIALTONE
>    BUSY
>    NO ANSWER
>    +FCERROR
>    DATA
>    CONNECT 
> 
> If the one and only Larry Yaeger is still reading this list, he might be
> pleased to know that he appears (at least in the form of a binary easter
> egg) in the ROM:
> 
>    larryy
>    Larry
>    Mondello
>    Brandyn
>    Rosetta!
>    stafford
>    lyon
>    The Doctor is on.
>    larryy at apple.com
> 
> Some more people and addresses. The phone number, by the way, is that of the
> Café Torre in Cupertino. lesv at angeltech.com is the address of Les Vogel, who
> also worked on the Newton handwriting recognizer, just like Brandyn Webb,
> whose address was brandyn at brainstorm.com.
> 
>    Fine food 408/257-2383
>    brandyn at brainstorm.com
>    Hey, that's me!
>    bill
>    lesv at angeltech.com
>    Richard
> 
> The ROM has probably provided a means to debug NewtonScript code using the
> serial interface:
> 
>    TAsyncDebugLink
>    TSerialDebugLink
>    Welcome to NewtonScript!
> 
> The debugging section even makes suggestions for NewtonScript code that
> compiles, but might not have been meant the way it was written:
> 
>    = at top level...did you mean := ?
>    && used in IF statement...did you mean AND?
>    = with no effect...did you mean := ?
>    Statement has no effect
> 
> An interesting tidbit is in the display driver section:
> 
>    what is going on???*&#@ %ld
>    memory allocation problem for internal node!!
> 
> There are some names and messages that I particularly like (YobiKaiGi is
> Japanese for "Preliminary Conference"):
> 
>    MonitorExitSWI failed!!!!  This should never happen...
>    MonitorThrowSWI failed; check your head.
>    URI|+nBadWickedNaughtyNoot
>   _stack_overflow called - panic!
>    bad operation in MungeShape
>    DebugMsg: funky
>    %08X wacko size %X!
>    Non-user-mode abort (deep toast alert)
>    IsSirNotAppearingInThisROM
>    WeirdCardInserted
>    GthrillMeChillMeFulfillMe
>    inYobiKaiGi
> 
> Apart from Serial, AppleTalk, Modem and Infrared Apple seemed to have had
> another form of communication in mind: Blackbird. I'm unsure as for what
> that was supposed to be:
> 
>    useSerial
>    BsuseAppleTalk
>    SuseBlackbird
>    useModem
>    cHuseIR
> 
> Some spelling mistakes can also be found:
> 
>    rinter resetting (should probably have been "printer resetting")
>    sseldorf (should probably have been "Duesseldorf")
>    rnberg (should probably have been "Nuernberg")
>    teborg (should probably have been "Goeteborg")
> 
> I also found the string "ARM610". This processor was used from the OMP up to
> the MP130. So it can be assumed that the first version of the MP2x00 was
> intended to be an advanced 130 with Newton OS 2.1 and a screen resolution of
> 320 x 240 pixels. This also explains quite nicely why the board won't work
> in a MP2x00 (which is using a StrongArm processor), but in an eMate (which
> is using an ARM710 processor). It also explains the fact that the display
> content appears twice on an eMate (which has twice the resolution).
> 
> I also found the string "TVRemoteService". Seems that Apple's Newton
> department had a lot in the queue at one time.
> 
> Matthias and Yours Truly will try to feed this ROM file to Einstein. Since
> we would probably be able to hand-tweak the screen resolution, we might even
> manage to make it run. Boy, aren't we living in interesting times? 90 years
> ago, even radio broadcasts were still waiting to be invented, and hardly
> anybody was able to afford a phone...
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Frank
> 
> -- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de
> 
> 
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