From: Dale A. Raby (daleraby_at_tds.net)
Date: Sat Aug 28 2004 - 15:45:12 PDT
Some time ago I sent this out to Woody Hughes and Mae Ling Mak, both
well known figures in the Linux world... and, I am proud to say, my
friends. I dug it out again for the amusement of the list... I hope.
Enjoy.
So there it was... sitting on the shelf of the second hand store.
Looked like a video cassette in a leatherette folder or something. I
picked it up and found a price tag of fifty cents.
OK, so I opened it up... an Apple logo... hmmm. A green LCD screen and a
couple of styluses. I started to put it back on the shelf. Obviously,
the store was using it for inventory, or maybe somebody else had put it
there while handling other merchandise.
Wait a minute... DALE YOU IDIOT! IT HAD A PRICE TAG ON IT!
I snatched it back just before another set of fingers reached it... and
growled protectively at the rival scavenger. She retreated timidly
before my awful alpha male presence.
Having frightened off the competition, I retreated to a corner where I
could watch the crowd in case they ganged up on me and opened the case
again. I read the name "Newton" above the screen area and "MessagePad"
on the bottom. "Newton" meant nothing to me, but "MessagePad" gave me a
clue that what I had was some sort of primitive Palm PDA or something.
A group was forming... I snarled viciously and they dispersed. Better
give 'em a moving target... I started to roll my cart, piling in a few
books and such in case I needed something to throw.
Having escaped the store with my booty, I peeled out of the parking
lot... using all the awesome power of the Olds Rocket V-8 to make my
getaway and wishing that I had the 455 of my '72 Ninety-Eight instead of
the 305 my '83 sported in the interest of better mileage. Checking the
rear view mirror, I realized that I probably wasn't being followed...
wait a minute... a black Toyota sedan. No match for my powerful steed.
I lost it in two blocks... pity about that poodle crossing the street.
I hurried inside my house and bolted the door, immediately grabbing my
SKS and loading it. You can never be sure.
Safe at last, I looked over my prize, tossing the Dickens first edition
and the signed copy of Salem's Lot on the floor... King must have signed
a lot of them "To my friend Dale"... probably not worth much.
Doing a bit of research I realized that I had the classic Ferrari of
PDA's, the granddaddy of them all... introduced long before Palm came
out with their little piece of junk. OK, infrared beaming, email
capability, memory storage cards... the ability to recognize standard
handwriting... no having to learn that "Graffiti" nonsense.
Now... how did it work? Where was the owner's manual? It took me a
while, but I found that although Apple had orphaned my Newton years ago,
there was quite a fanatical community still supporting them, and I found
an online manual in HTML.
After playing with it a bit, I realized that Marilyn White, whoever she
was, who lived in Chicago, had set a password that effectively locked
everyone out of her data. This was back in '94, when it was a year
old. Evidently the backup battery was still holding a charge, though
the four AAA dry cells that form the main power source had croaked.
OK, apparently some idiot had damaged the reset button by poking it with
a needle or something. Hmmm... standard magnetic bubble memory. Cut
the power and everything's gone. After "persuading" the unit to allow
me to remove both power sources at the same time, I was able to boot the
machine up and set my own password.
I've been playing with it for a couple of days now. Two things amazed
me. First, I cannot imagine how Palm ever got a start
with this thing and later developments of it in competition. The second
thing was that Apple's leadership was stupid enough to orphan it. Apple
has never been noted for good business decisions, though, they just make
the innovations for the competition to steal.
Now... I need a memory expansion card, another Newton to beam things to,
maybe a 1993 vintage Apple computer to swap stuff with. Hmmm.... this
is going to cost me more than fifty cents after all!
Welll.... at least its cheaper than a Ferrari!
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
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