On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Josh Ormsby wrote:
>
> I need to get inside my Newt to see how everything fits together, and to
> create engineering drawings of the board mounting dimensions. There is
> one problem so far with this, I just received my spare from a friend,
> Anyone else want to jump on this thread?
Yes. Though I'm surprised this thread came up, I was thinking of a
re-design myself a few weeks back(before it popped up here). While
thinking about it I came up with some ideas...
You could decrease the size of the Newton if you got rid of the space
taken by the current 4xAA battery holder/tray. Don't call me crazy just
yet...
It would certainly be possible to get the Newton to run on LithiumIon
based cells. Many of these LiOn cells are rectangular, but not very thick.
One such cell has enough voltage and current capacity to drive the Newton.
That's not to mention LiOn cells that aren't too bulky come in 3Ah
ratings.
While the Newton will not charge these cells natively (trust me, it won't,
but I'm thinking about a hack that might), if you did re-design the case,
you could provide access to the battery terminals so the battery could be
charged externally. It would require a bit of external "glue logic" to get
it to go, but it's certainly possible.
You might also be able to save space by getting rid of the speaker and
providing a phono-jack instead.
You could also cut the PCMCIA "cage" and if a CompactFlash to PCMCIA
adaptor could be fabricated that used a ribbon cable, you might even be
able to provide CF slots instead of PCMCIA. Someone would have to modify
the existing drivers to support newer CF Ethernet cards, but in some
cases, that just means the driver has to recognize the new card ID.
Though I'm not sure if any of this is worth one's effort. Even if you got
rid of the portions above and below the LCD, the Newton would be still
bulky.
Thanks,
Speedy2.
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