From: Jim Witte (jswitte_at_bloomington.in.us)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 08:11:58 PDT
>> On another topic altogether, has anyone considered the possibility
>> of chopping the top and botton parts of the Newton off, replacing the
>> battery with something about the size of the cover and having a touch
The bottom could be chipped off, as it's just a battery holder. But
the main board extends beyond the top of the screen. But it is an
interesting idea to put a keyboard and battery into a cover - kind of
an eMate clam-shell idea. I've had an idea of a flip-top keyboard for
a while - which would be a technical and financial challenge - it would
definitely need custom plastics manufacture, probably a custom sized
membrane-keyboard assembly, and the electronics for decoding the
membrane keyboard signals and converting it to something the Newton
could use would need for space reasons to be surface-mounted either
directly onto the bottom board of the membrane-keyboard, or on a
separate thin PCB.
Putting a battery in the cover as well might give you a little more
flexibility in the sizes of the various electronic components - maybe.
The most modern battery you could use would be a lithium ion, which I
think can be made to basically any shape you want - but you'd have to
find a place that could make it for you (LiIon batteries are NOT
something ordinary people want to deal with, due to the extremely
volatile nature of the lithium metal [bursts into flame on contact with
water, for instance..]) There might be some manufactures that make
thin LiIon batteries that you might be able to get wholesale - whoever
makes the battery for the iPod for one. And you'd need the power
conversion and charging circuitry in there, and it might not even work
with the existing 9W adapter.
And of course, if you're thinking of chopping off the battery case,
it would mean either a real hack-saw job (literally), or redesigning
the whole case - while you're add it you might as well add a place for
audio in/out/serial/USB ports as well as maybe a redesigned IR
apparatus (I'm sure that they have better diodes these days)
Heck, designing a damn Newton ROM emulator would probably be easier -
I might just do that for a Masters project in CS, except that Apple
would probably sue me to #$@% and back (or just hire me to work on the
iPod team)
Jim
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