[NTLK] Introductions and MessagePad 120 questions

Hi all,

I'm new. Been lurking for a week or so.. Let me first introduce myself. I'm
a geek. I love computers. I've owned a computer of one type or another since
the age of 8 (1982 or so.) Being British that was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum
16K. Over the last 20 odd years I've owned (or still own) a multitude of
8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit computers. I did all the popular 8-bits (Atari,
Commodore, Sinclair, Amstrad), went through the Amiga and Archimedes. I then
went through to the world of PC and finally grew up and got in to Mac's.

My first PDA was a Palmpilot Professional in 1998. I loved it to bits. I
then went on to own a Handspring Visor - I hated it to bits. More recently I
acquired a Zaurus SL5500. If the battery on that was better it'd be nigh on
perfect.

However, I always wanted a Newton. For, probably, 10 years or so. Finally I
got my wish. I saw a bargain on eBay (well.. something I could afford and
thought was reasonable) and went for it. I won the auction and 5 days later
a used Messagepad 120 arrived.

It's taken me a few days to get my head around things ;-) I got my old Mac
9500 to sync with no problems. My PC was a little more tricky - had to run
the slowdown executable 3 times, but it worked (finally.)

Okay, some questions:

I have tonnes of Mac printer cables, so syncing is not a real issue, but I'd
like to sync with my PC. I got it to work with an old USB serial adapter
that happened to have a Mac style serial port. I'd like to get a real PC
cable. Is the PC cable a straight serial cable (ala Modem) or a cross over
cable (aka NULL Modem)? I have a Palm Mac Pack PC serial adapter, so the
connection from Mac to the PC cable is under control. I have a null modem
cable too, as well as some PC Modem cables. Just looking for the right
configuration!

Secondly - I have a PCMCIA CF card adapter. It is definitely Type II. It's
an NEC branded and seems to have been designed for something called "Air
H" - which I assume is a CF Wifi card. Will the 120 read and write to a CF
card? The driver page doesn't seem to give a lot of info. I have an old 32MB
sandisk card that I'm willing to reformat and try, but I don't want to blow
up my PCMCIA adapter in the process, nor do I want to kill my MP120.

Thirdly, has anyone had any luck with the ZCOM 825 Wifi card with the
Newton? It's similar electronically to the Dlink 650W and at least one
Netgear model. Prism2 chipset. Not sure on voltage. Does Wifi work on the
120 anyway?

The only other annoying thing is, how do you write a period? I can tap the
little pick box up, but when I write a dot it is ignored or becomes some
fairly random letter (depending on how I move the stylus seemingly.)

Definitely sold on the Newton. I'll move up to a "better" model at some
point. eMates seem to be fairly reasonable on eBay at the moment.

TIA,

Matt

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