[NTLK] Newton Interconnect Cable

[Matthias Melcher]

As you may have seen in the other thread, Jake, Andrei and I are talking about how exactly this internal port works. I have ordered a few boards for experimenting in the hopes that we can provide a fully functioning plug-and-play USB connection soon, without the need for any software on the Newton (solving the hen and egg problem for good).

Fingers crossed. It's my second attempt, and I hope that I choose the right chip this time around (not FTDI at all, it's basically an ARM system on a chip that fixes timing issues in the Newton hardware).

> On Jan 12, 2015, at 9:13 PM, Jeff Sheldon <jeffsheldon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> What do you have in mind?  Just the ability to sync or to add new hardware?
> 
> I recall the interconnect connector being pretty scarce and that it
> was a proprietary Apple design.  Another option: the 2x00 MPs have a
> TTL serial socket behind the black plastic panel next to the
> interconnect port.  It's fairly trivial to throw a chip between there
> and an Apple serial socket socket, but I believe some minor code is
> required to alert the Newton to consider that port as active for sync.
> 
> There's also a USB product out there which is probably based on an
> FTDI chip which essentially does the same thing, only from TTL serial
> to USB.  There's been a lot of chatter on here about it being a bit
> flaky though.  Not sure what one would get wrong, but there are a lot
> of crappy PCB producers overseas and the room for and add-on board in
> the Newt is extremely tight, particularly dealing with width.
> 
> This is the sort of thing I tried to do years ago, but two users here
> exploited what I told them in private and made a junk product for
> money.  If anything new should be made, I strongly recommend the
> schematics, code, and documentation be made public in a github
> account.
> 
> 
> -Jeff
> 
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 1:16 PM, Zach Saville <boovish at icloud.com> wrote:
>> Would it be possible to have some sort of 3rd party Newton interconnect dongle made? We can get the schematics can't we?
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> The NewtonTalk Mailing List   http://newtontalk.net/
>> The Official Newton FAQ       http://splorp.com/newton/faq/
>> The Newton Glossary           http://splorp.com/newton/glossary/
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -Jeff
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The NewtonTalk Mailing List   http://newtontalk.net/
> The Official Newton FAQ       http://splorp.com/newton/faq/
> The Newton Glossary           http://splorp.com/newton/glossary/