[NTLK] RFC: Einstein, Newton C++ Toolbox, and including ROMs...?

[Matthias Melcher]

Hi guys,

From a developers point of view, it would be useful to have the Newton C++ Toolbox, the Driver Developers Kit, and even NTK available form within Einstein.

Since the Newton C++ Toolbox contains a complete, somewhat annotated ROM, having developer tools available would also make the ROM available. The Newton C++ Toolbox is archived at Unna along with NTK and all the other data.

My idea was - at least for MacOS X - to add functionality to the XCode version of Einstein that would:
 - provide a second Einstein emulator target
 - that automatically downloads all the developer tools from Unna
 - installs a Classic Mac MPW emulator to run the developer command line tools
 - extracts the developer ROM and makes it integral part of Einstein (no more downloading external ROMs)
 - allows us eventually to compile and reverse NewtonOS packages
 - allows us to compile drivers etc.

Now, this is possible to implement, but has two issues:

The NTK was officially and freely available on ftp.apple.com, so I have no qualms to download it legally from Unna. Does anyone know if the driver developer kit and/or the Newton C++ Toolbox was ever available there, too? I sure hope so, because that would be required to make this happen. If at least three people can confirm that Newton C++ Toolbox was available at the now defunct ftp.apple.com or any other official free Apple source, I would be able to implement this. Can anyone confirm this?

If not, there is always the possibility to ask the person who compiles the Einstein developer version, if he has legally obtained the Newton C++ Toolbox, and if he says he did, XCode could then download the archived Unna version. Would the maintainers of Unna be ok with this?

 - Matthias