[NTLK] What is the easiest way to get text files from an eMate to a Mac Mini running Mac OSX 10.6.5?

Frank Gruendel newtontalk at pda-soft.de
Mon Jan 3 16:50:42 EST 2011


Hi folks,

Occasionally my offspring (henceforth referred to as "os") wants to print
texts written on an eMate. Usually these texts are written in Works, but
sometimes they are also written using Notes. Occasionally they contain
drawings.

To make this possible, I normally do the following:

1) Start my PC running Windows XP

2) Connect the eMate using the serial port

3) Fire up Newton Connection Utilities

4) Start Microsoft Word

5) Fire up ten million instances of slowdown.exe

6) Connect to NCU using the Dock

7) Export the text and save it to a file

8) Print the file from the PC

This is quite a reliable way of doing things, but it has two major
drawbacks: It is fairly cumbersome, and it will forever prevent os from
doing this on his own because nobody except yours truly is allowed near my
PC, which provides part of our income and must not be jeopardized.

So...

...what about this...

We have a family Intel Mac Mini that I recently acquired because I prefer
Macs to PCs, it was affordable, the other family members needed a computer,
and it made sure my family would stop queueing at the PC all the time. This
Mac is running Mac OS 10.6.4, and it has an infrared port.

I'm wondering if there's a way to get texts from the eMate to the Mac using
this infrared port. I'm aware that the eMates and Newtons do not support the
IRDA protocol completely, and I do not know which protocol the Mac Mini
expects (although I'd assume it would be IRDA). Has anybody out there ever
been able to do this?

If infrared isn't possible: Has anybody been successful using an USB -
Serial Adapter? In case sombody made this work, could you please shed some
light on how you did this?

Just in case this is important: Os uses the simple Finder, and his Mac
account is supervised by parental control. This means I would have to allow
every required program (which wouldn't be a problem). I haven't a clue it
such an account would be able to use a USB - Serial adapter at all.

Thanks a lot

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de




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