[NTLK] Easy mobile Internet with Netgear Nighthawk M1 hotspot/router

[Morgan Aldridge]

Hey all,

At this most recent Global Newton Users Meetum (GNUM), Pawel showed
off using the Apple Messaging Card with a Raspberry Pi running a mini
pager network and sending messages. This is something that I had
wanted to try, so very cool to see it working!

Jake Bordens' video regarding his latest work on creating an internal
WiFi module for the Newton 2x00 (this time with USB-C & charging) was
also amazing:

<https://youtu.be/PxXpOQCRf-o>

There were so many excellent demos, but these two were inspiring to
try something with some of my existing gear, specifically:

- MessagePad 2100
- 3Com EtherLink III 3C589C PCMCIA card w/RJ45 10 Base-T dongle
- Cat 6 ethernet cable (non-crossover)
- Netgear Nighthawk M1 mobile router

The MessagePad has all the Internet/ethernet/WiFi packages installed
and I've used the 3Com 3C589C with it many times before. I've also had
the Netgear Nighthawk M1 router for a couple years and it gets used
heavily when I'm on the road.

The nice thing about the Nighthawk M1 router is that it has an
ethernet port too, which can be used to either get Internet and share
it over the WiFi (in preference to the 4G cellular modem, for cost
savings) or to connect wired devices (or a LAN) to the Internet via
the same cellular connection that is also used by the WiFi. Since it's
a RJ45 1000 Base-T ethernet port, my biggest gamble was whether it
actually supports down to 10 Base-T and that modern auto-sense for
non-crossover cables would play nicely. It does!

So, it turns out this is -- at least for me, with _way too much_
experience with networking and Newton OS network configuration -- a
plug-n-play solution to get my MessagePad 2100 on the Internet!

The Nighthawk M1 defaults to 192.168.1.x network (ethernet & WiFi), so
I added the following Internet Setup on my MessagePad:

- Configuration: Manual (modern DHCP servers rarely play nicely with Newton OS)
- Card: 3Com 3C589 PC Card
- Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
- Local IP Address: 192.168.1.64 (most anything from .2 & .254 should work)
- Gateway/Router Address: 192.168.1.1
- Primary DNS Server Address: 8.8.8.8 (192.168.1.1 didn't seem to work)
- Domain Name: <None>
- When closing, disconnect: never

I also updated the Nighthawk M1's settings to disable ethernet sleep
entirely (it defaults to 2 minutes), which helped.

With those settings, popping the 3Com card into the Newton, connecting
the ethernet cable to the Nighthawk M1 and powering it up got me
connected to the Internet and I was able to use Courier to browse
<http://www.unna.org/> and download/install a few packages (a bunch of
various packages such as IC/VC and such are required to make that
happen.)

Since I live in Vermont, US, which has quite a lot of rural areas
(especially mountains and valleys), I haven't bothered with getting a
new 5G model because we just don't have much 5G coverage. I believe
the newer models still have ethernet ports, so probably also work
similarly, but I'd love to hear if anyone has tested.

It was a lot of fun sitting in the back yard, browsing the Internet
wirelessly with my MessagePad today. It reminded me just how good the
display is in daylight. Fortunately, while sunny, today is still quite
cool, so the display wasn't getting too hot and running into
contrast/darkening issues.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

-- 
Morgan
---
http://makkintosshu.com/
https://centresteer.com/
https://tobuji.tech/
http://unna.org/