[NTLK] News from the Weird ROM board

[Frank Gruendel]

The Incredible Matthias has extracted the images from the my ROM board and
sent them my way, along with a set of images from an original 2x00 ROM
board. I took the liberty to package them in a HTML structure for easier
comparison. This, my friends, is teamwork at its best...

As of 30 seconds ago you will find said teamwork's result here:

 
<http://www.pda-soft.de/common/img/hardware/2x00/WeirdRomBoard/2x00RomBoardI
mages/1_2x00.html> (2x00 ROM board)
 
<http://www.pda-soft.de/common/img/hardware/2x00/WeirdRomBoard/WeirdRomBoard
Images/1_WeirdRomBoard.html> (My ROM board)

One thing that attracts attention at first sight is the fact that there
aren't any greyscale images in my ROM board. This supports my theory that
the first 2x00 was intended to be basically a 130 with Newton OS 2.1 and
probably some hardware improvements, like e. g. slots for two PCMCIA cards.
Which brings me to my second interesting finding. Please have a look at

 
<http://www.pda-soft.de/common/img/hardware/2x00/WeirdRomBoard/2x00RomBoardI
mages/IMG_0056CAFC.bmp>

vs.

 
<http://www.pda-soft.de/common/img/hardware/2x00/WeirdRomBoard/WeirdRomBoard
Images/IMG_00556418.bmp>

and

 
<http://www.pda-soft.de/common/img/hardware/2x00/WeirdRomBoard/2x00RomBoardI
mages/IMG_0056D57C.bmp>

vs.

 
<http://www.pda-soft.de/common/img/hardware/2x00/WeirdRomBoard/WeirdRomBoard
Images/IMG_00556734.bmp>

This makes me believe that the first 2x00 was intended to have two card
slots located side by side at the top of the Newton. Back to the roots. This
was the position of the OMP's and MP100's card slot.

Cheers

Frank

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