[NTLK] News from the weird ROM board

[Matthias Melcher]

"sseldorf" is probably not a typo. The string extractor simply does not know about Umlauts and cuts the text short.

Some nice finding though :-)





Matej Horvat <matej.horvat at guest.arnes.si> schrieb:
>> Remember the weird ROM board that I
>> came across a long time ago?
>>
>>      <http://www.pda-soft.de/weirdromboard.html>
>>
>> Well, recently I sent it to the amazing Super-Matthias who
>> had rigged up a
>> device for reading Newton and eMate ROMs.
>
>That's really cool. I was afraid you were going to never touch it
>again.
>
>> This Newton must have had modem support, since the following
>> values are defined in the ROM:
>
>No surprise there, all models support the Hayes command set. The Newton
> 
>Fax Modem uses it.
>
>> If the one and only Larry Yaeger is still reading this list,
>> he might be pleased to know that he appears (at least in the form of
>a
>> binary easter egg) in the ROM:
>
>The strings are the same as in the eMate ROM, and possibly other ROMs.
>
>> The debugging section even makes suggestions for
>> NewtonScript code that
>> compiles, but might not have been meant the way it was
>> written:
>
>The NewtonScript compiler in the ROM is based on the same code as the
>one  
>in NTK, and these strings are the same as in NTK. It's strange that
>this  
>ROM contains them, because normally you would debug with NTK and have
>it  
>compile code before sending it to the Newton.
>
>>     URI|+nBadWickedNaughtyNoot
>
>This is the symbol 'BadWickedNaughtyNoot, which is a name of an  
>undocumented global function (I think) in 2.x ROMs.
>
>> Apart from Serial, AppleTalk, Modem and Infrared Apple
>> seemed to have had another form of communication in mind: Blackbird.
>I'm  
>> unsure
>> as for what that was supposed to be:
>>
>>     useSerial
>>     BsuseAppleTalk
>>     SuseBlackbird
>>     useModem
>>     cHuseIR
>
>Those are NewtonScript symbols, but you accidentally included some
>bytes  
>that belong to the 32-bit symbol hash which precedes their name. The  
>actual symbols are 'useSerial, 'useAppleTalk, 'useBlackbird, 'useModem,
> 
>and 'useIR.
>
>Blackbird was probably the codename for the Windows NCK. In NOS 1.x,
>when  
>you choose to connect with the "DOS/Windows PC" option,  
>userConfiguration.docker.type gets set to 'useBlackbird. The other two 
>
>options are 'useSerial ("Macintosh serial") and 'useLocalTalk (not  
>'useAppleTalk). For some reason, the Windows NCK's protocol is slightly
> 
>different than the Macintosh version's. Don't ask me how - I don't know
> 
>much about the docking protocols, but I know that the Windows and  
>Macintosh NCK protocols are not compatible. (Maybe Simon Bell knows?)
>
>Apparently this ROM, despite being a 2.0 development version (it's not
>1.4  
>or something else, right?), still supported NCK.
>
>> I also found the string "TVRemoteService". Seems that
>> Apple's Newton department had a lot in the queue at one time.
>
>Or it could be what they called the kCMSSlowIR endpoint, nicknamed "TV 
>
>remote", since that's what it's most useful for.
>
>> Matthias and Yours Truly will try to feed this ROM file to
>> Einstein. Since we would probably be able to hand-tweak the screen
>> resolution, we might even manage to make it run.
>
>I can't wait!
>
>Matej Horvat
>
>==================================================================== 
>The NewtonTalk Mailing List - http://newtontalk.net/
>The Official Newton FAQ     - http://splorp.com/newton/faq/
>The Newton Glossary         - http://splorp.com/newton/glossary/
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>====================================================================

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