Newton eMate 300 As A Serial Terminal

September 11, 2007

Ok, my three regular readers may be asking themselves, "didn't we just read this story?" They would be mistaken in thinking so, however. Back in late July I described the manner in which I configured my Apple //c to serve as a dumb terminal, tied via serial link to my Mac mini. In researching the project, I ran across a story of a user who had put an Apple Newton eMate 300 to similar duty on his Sun box. Being an eMate owner myself and having a vacant Mac-style serial port on my dual-port Keyspan USB-to-serial adapter, I felt I must get this going as well.

And today, I have. Have a look at the photos.

It's hard to get as excited about this project as the Apple //c terminal since, well, I just did it with the Apple //c and I didn't have to splice cables together and since - hey, let's not fool ourselves - the eMate is a 25MHz ARM 710a (RISC)-based machine while the //c is powered by a mere 1.02MHz 65C02. But it' still worth a post, I feel.

No, this won't be a permanent office fixture. Just a little experiment. Sadly, the eMate will soon resume its typical roll as a paperweight to hold down my Apple Lisa 2 in the home "Byte Cellar." Still - it made for a pretty interesting little exercise.

Posted by blakespot at September 11, 2007 11:04 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Find it cool. By the way, I've thought about you when I saw this:
http://www.commodoregaming.com
Look at the PC case :)

Posted by: scanx at September 12, 2007 4:25 AM

Nice to see an eMate in action! I just took mine out of the box it's currently living in, just for olf time's sake! I really love that thing, just don't know what to do with it.

Posted by: Bill G at September 12, 2007 5:19 PM

My eMate (actually, I have three of them) is my word processor of choice. The built-in word program is pretty close to perfect, the battery life is forever (once I rebuilt the ten-year-old battery back), and I get the most envious looks—and comments—in the coffee shop. My eMate and I are looking forward to a successful NaNoWriMo this year!

I spent a while trying to hook it up to my Intel iMac, until I finally just gave up and spent $50 on an old PowerBook 1400c to dock the eMate with. My vintage Apple collection is thus (1) powerful and (2) has a small footprint.

Posted by: Larskydoodle at September 12, 2007 9:07 PM

It's good to see a Newton getting some use, even if only temporarily.

I actually love the MessagePad 300 as a portable serial terminal and have been tempted to pick one up to keep around the office. Recently I had to resort to using my MacBook Pro as a keyboard for my MessagePad 2100 during serial terminal duty, but that was probably a once-in-a-decade requirement:

http://makkintosshu.dyndns.org/journal/newton-serial-terminal-using-a-macbook-pro-as-a-keyboard

Posted by: Morgan Aldridge at September 13, 2007 9:25 AM

Looks nice. Good job.

Posted by: ryan42 at September 13, 2007 10:41 PM
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