[NTLK] Armstice board (was: Unused Messagepad)

[Steve White]

A couple of follow ups to earlier messages:

I’ll eat most of the crow for my “not a bunwarmer!” argument.  In my defense, the argument was based solely on that Japanese prototype. However, Grant’s second unit has another circuit board in it (for a total of 3). This helps to explain why the housing was much larger than the contents on the Japanese unit.  

https://www.flickr.com/photos/splorp/albums/72157680864389546

That third circuit board appeared to be a ROMulator ( ~ 40 RAM chips: providing 4MB for ROM emulation, 1MB for RAM, 2x NuBus chips, 50 pin connector).  There are no ROM chips soldered on the Junior logic board.  The second logic board does have sockets, presumably for EEPROMs.  And this device does not have the ROM card slots like the Japanese unit does.  So this one would seem useless without a NuBus tether (or some ROMs in the sockets)…

Grant was able to hook it up to a Universal Newton Adapter, and Hammer detects it as “Bunwarmer 4MB”.  

I’ll report back later on how that crow tastes.


For the theory that Egger/Hammer/Newtsbug are the same codebase, just different features compiled in:  in the Get Info dialogs for all of them, they date back to 1991.  Admittedly that doesn’t mean a whole lot..   A little more intriguing is the version for Hammer and Egger.  Despite a three year difference in them, Egger in 1993 is “1.1d45exp” and Hammer from 1996 is “1.1d95exp4”.   If the only changes were adding/removing supported devices, that seems like it could account for such little version changes over the years.

http://imgur.com/a/pKLOQ


And as others are sharing the registered owner names from their NuBus boards, my ARMageddon is registered to Yu-Ying Chow.  Seems to have worked on developer tools for Lisa, and in the late 80s doing Smalltalk hacking in ATG. 

The other two boards are registered to “Lab test IIci”.  Certainly the unsung hero of Newton development. 

-Steve

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 09:20, Grant Hutchinson <grant at splorp.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2017-03-02, at 5:06 AM, Simon Bell wrote:
> 
>> I always thought Bunn Warmer was the correct spelling, named for the coffee equipment manufacturer.
>> 
>> I tie-in to Newton seems to be confirmed by a current eBay listing ...
> 
> That's hilarious.
> 
> Who knew that coffee decanters ran Newton OS? Must be part of the whole "Internet of Things" ...
> 
> g.
> 
> 
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