[NTLK] eMate manufacturing menu ?

[Aaron H]

> On Jan 2, 2019, at 5:08 PM, Grant Hutchinson <newtontalkmessages at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> You’ve stumbled across the seldom seen (and difficult to access) Diagnostic Mode built into most Newton hardware. I’ve only ever heard of this mode on earlier devices, such as the OMP and MP1x0 series. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t also exist on the eMate.

It definitely does exist on an emate! Though, I'm not sure how I did it.
> 
> Frank Gründel has documented the Diagnostic Mode on the MP120/130 here:
> 
> https://www.pda-soft.de/diagmode.html
> 
> Does the menu shown near the bottom of this article look similar to the one that appeared on your eMate?
> 

Very much so. I've posted the only two pics I took here: https://imgur.com/6wHHYmA <https://imgur.com/6wHHYmA>

I tapped on 'LCD Unit Test' and there were a few different test patterns on the screen.
Then I tapped on Main Board Test and the screen displayed a few messages. (like you can see in that second pic, a 'New' which seemed to be "what's happening now" and an "Old" which seemed to be the last thing that started.

But as you can see on the second image, there was a message about erasing flash...this was on the screen for over 20 minutes and everything was unresponsive.

I got nervous and restarted the eMate and it booted normally.

All in all, not a thrilling tale, but still, interesting to find something new (or at least rare) by sheer accident!

-Aaron.