[NTLK] Dash Board re-registration; 2010-fix related?

[Mason Mark]

Hi James,

It could conceivably be related to the 2010 fix. I tried to fire up my MP2000 tonight to check, since my MP2100 died a couple years back, and wouldn't you know it: it chose that precise moment to reboot itself, get halfway through the Newton boot chime, and die an apparently hardware-related death.

Therefore, I can't boot the only Newton I have with me at the moment, so I am not sure that this will help, but it's worth a shot: when I wrote Dash Board, the way I hid the demo period timestamp (embarrassing, but I was still a young guy!) was by creating my own imaginary cities inside the emirate of Qatar, and adding those to the system's geographical database. I really cannot recall with certainty, but the names may be Doha and Enha, or something along those lines. The date you start using the demo is somehow encoded in the latitude and longitude, or altitude, or something like that.

Anyway, as a temporary fix, you might try deleting any custom cities within Qatar (using the built-in world map program). That should reset your demo period. You might need to quit Dash Board before doing this, I can't remember.

I'll try to get my hands on a Newton and look into this, but it may take some time.

Hope that helps, though! And, I'm curious to hear if anybody else has the same issue, and whether the 2010 fix cures it, and so forth. It's been in the works for like a year to finally make all that software free; I'll try to prod the relevant people to grease those wheels, too.

Thanks,
--
Mason Mark
former Newton developer @ Five Speed Software
but still mason at fivespeed.com


On Dec 15, 2010, at 11:14 AM, James Buxton wrote:

> I've been using Dash Board on my Newton MessagePad 2100 since I purchased Dash Board more than 12 years ago.
> 
> Recently, I noticed that Dash Board's Newton menu display no longer functions and says that my copy of Dash Board is a demo copy and has expired. Trying to re-register with my registration code is ineffective. Trying to register returns the message: "That registration code is not valid. Please check the number and try again."
> 
> By setting the MessagePad's clock, I have determined that the expiration occurs at 8:37 PM September 28, 2010.
> 
> What has happened and what can be done to re-activate Dash Board? Is this 2010-fix related?
> 
> Thanks
> 
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