[NTLK] Newton USB Dongle

[NewtonTalk]

> Great job, Frank!

Mille Grazie. But it's not yet finished. It's still in early prototype
state.

> I?m first to buy this device.

Knowing you're a collector, I'd consider it a honor to sell you the first
"professionally built" device. Your choice of serial number ;-)

But it will take some time until we reach that state. My current list looks
somewhat like this:

1) Make sure we can talk to eMate and 2x00 Newton models using the
Interconnect port.

2) Make sure we can talk to older Newton models using a Mini-DIN cable.

3) Try to get rid of slowdown.exe under Windows. Since I cannot talk to a
Newton yet, I can't prove it'll be needed, but I'm 99% sure it will. The
challenge will be figuring out why it works hunky dory on a Mac and needs
slowdown on a PC. The next challenge will be fixing this in hardware.

4) Add sound input and output (will only work with 2x00 and eMate).

5) Make a PCB layout

6) Have it manufactured

7) Populate it and ensure it works.

8) Rig up a 3D-printed case.

5 and 8 will take longest, since I haven't done either of them before.

> Will it work with Mac?

I see no reason why it shouldn't. At least if we are talking of Macs that
FTDI provides a driver for. I know that for the chip I'm using, they support
almost every Mac running Mac OSX. 

These people, by the way, are downright amazing. I have contacted their
support multiple times in the past, and the longest it ever took them to
answer was two days. Considering that I will never have any noticeable
impact on their yearly revenue, this is really exemplary.

And they have such an incredible wealth of information on their web site
that it took me but an hour or so to patch their Windows driver. And then I
spent the rest of the night in their documentation section, hopping here and
there...

Cheers,

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de