[rescue] Newtons [was: $35 50gig drives]

[Dan Duncan]

On Wed, 11 May 2005, velociraptor wrote:
> I tried a new set of AAs, but did not put in a new backup battery
> as well.  I will get one and see what happens.

Leave both sets out for a while before you try it.  Sometimes
the residual charge in the backup battery keeps it from

> The only thing missing, aside from the AC adaptor is the top to the
> original stylus, and the Newt itself is in excellent shape.  Nary a
> scratch on the screen, and hardly any wear on the case.  I've never
> had the opportunity to fiddle with one, so the $5 price seemed like
> a reasonable risk.

They're great little devices.  The OS is slick.  It's really a
shame Steve Jobs killed the project just before PDAs became
really popular.  They were WAY ahead of their time.  I'd kill for
a newt-based smartphone that fit in my pocket.

One of my favorite newt features is that it doesn't use battery-backed
ram for storage like a lot of the newer pdas.  Even with the batteries
completely dead, your Newt will probably have apps and such installed
on it.  It drives me nuts when I have to use a "modern" pda that partitions
up the internal RAM as storage so that the first time the batteries go
flat I have to restore the damned thing from backup.  Considering the
run times are measured in hours, this seems pretty stupid to me.  My newts
(I collected almost the whole set) ran for weeks and still have all
of my data if I dust them off and charge them up.

When you get it working, don't forget to install Newthack!

-DanD

-- 
#  Dan Duncan (kd4igw)  dand at pcisys.net  http://pcisys.net/~dand
# Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it even if I have
# said it unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
# Buddha