Tag: Newton

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eMate 300 Memory Upgrade News

I have now started producing the eMate 300 DRAM plus Flash upgrade

This upgrade will take your eMate from about 900k of system ram to about 3900k, and program storage space from about 1600k to about 3600k. A factory reset is automatically performed after installing one of these modules, so be prepared with a data backup (this is part of the eMate ROM routine, nothing I can do).

It’s a recreation of the original Newer Tech upgrade, using similar parts

A second style of upgrade is available without the additional Flash that will expand your System RAM to 3900k.

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Many Project Updates

It’s been too long since posting here, sorry about that. Many updates are posted to the Tinker Different forum.

BlueSCSI: The F4 XCVR and F4Lite XCVR products are now available. These are intended for use with systems such as Sun, SGI, and others which are natively SCSI2 and often do not work with the original BlueSCSI or my F4 BlueSCSI fork.

I will also work on a mounting bracket which enables XCVR model use with systems such as the Macintosh TV and others that use an edge connector with sliding bracket. The measurements have to be very precise and I don’t have one of these machines, so it’ll be a back and forth with someone that does.

Macintosh Portable Hybrid Recreation: This project is about 80% done. A new revision PCB is on the way which should fix a few issues, and it’s basically time to test this in a real Portable to see what happens. The last challenge is a signal called the “A/D line”. This reports battery level information to the Power Manager chip, and is an incredibly sensitive circuit. If it continues to fight and cause problems, I may replace the A/D circuit with a simpler and less fiddly design. This simpler design won’t be as accurate, but it will allow the Portable to function on both battery and while plugged in.

Backlit Macintosh Portable Display Flex Cables: A new round of these cables has arrived, which needs to be quickly tested and then I’ll put up a listing on this site. Note that I don’t have any of the connectors, and those would need to be moved over from your original cable. I will offer a connector transplant service, which involves sending in the original cable and a small charge for actually performing the operation.

Newton eMate Display Cables: Continuing my trend of recreating flex cables, a design for the eMate has been produced and is in testing. I came across a large set of eMates and will be refurbishing them for sale.

Newton eMate DRAM Upgrade: After the unfortunate failure of my eMate DRAM + Flash project, I pivoted and redesigned for DRAM only. These have a much higher success rate, and will be listed on this site at some point.

Original LC Series Replacement Power Supply: These are power supplies for the LC, LC II, and LC III. This project has stalled for a variety of reasons, from cost to opinions on whether there should be an external power brick or not. I have two designs, one which puts everything internally and another which uses an external power brick. The internal design would cost more, and the design using an external power brick would cost a little bit less. Unsure on the direction to go for the future of the project.

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Backlit Macintosh Portable Screen Cable and Product Stock Update

You may recall from awhile back that I have been working on a new screen flex-cable for the backlit macintosh portable. These cable are cracking, delaminating, and reaching the end of their usable lifespan.

Fortunately, my latest cable design works just fine – has been tested in two backlit portables so far. The design needs some basic tweaking to make assembly easier for future orders, and it needs to be wrapped in packing tape to increase durability. But other than that, they work!

The design changes will be made whenever I have time to get back to it.

https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/recreating-backlit-macintosh-portable-display-flex-cables.567/

Now, the product stock update. I’ve had very little time the last few weeks to work on kits and assembled products. But this upcoming week I will be building as many kits and assembled as possible, and will be working on the main F4_BlueSCSI GitHub repo to improve documentation and make hardware designs more available. So bear with me as I work through the process.

I’m becoming more aware of interest in my Newton / eMate products / projects too, so that’s on the roadmap to get moving again. Trying to do all of this as a solo operation means things will regularly get dropped because I lack the time to do it all.

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Several Projects In Progress

The LC MACAA prototype last mentioned a month ago has required a few more rounds of updates to more thoroughly engineer for the possibility of power supply or regulator chip failure. Latest prototype PCBs are here, and need assembly / testing as usual. A 3D-printed mounting bracket has been designed, and will be improved upon prior to release (it’s kind of ugly).

A new project in the list is a replacement for the eMate 300 RAM and Flash expansion card. These cards are rare and expensive, but only use three reasonably affordable chips – and that makes them the perfect target for reverse engineering. Prototypes are in motion for the original 1 megabyte style plus an upgraded 4 megabyte version. Want your eMate to have as much RAM as a 2100? That’s the goal here. 🙂

I’ve also taken on a reverse engineering task, to redesign the flex cable for a backlit screen upgrade for the Macintosh Portable. That has been designed and I’m looking around for the right connectors now.

All of this while still working on BlueSCSI! The new PowerBook version 4 is up for sale, and it’s 100% surface mount in order to bring the edge connector closer to where you’d find it on an original hard drive. An F4 variant of the PowerBook design is also in progress. And through-hole style mainline BlueSCSI and F4 BlueSCSI prototypes are on the way from the PCB manufacturer (with active termination, of course). Lots going on here.

How many projects do I have in motion? All of them, of course. 🙂

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Newton Serial Board Works!

Basically the only thing left to do is find the correct mounting screw, one which is as thin as possible (and might require a countersink on the board itself to fit properly). Mounting screw in the upper right corner is hard to line up because if the internal expansion slot connector isn’t perfectly aligned then the error is multiplied across the distance and that hole just won’t line up.

Additions since the last prototype run:

  • Switch for either forcing the chip on or listening to the chip enable pin
  • Additional footprint type for the chip in case you can’t find the CG variant of LTC1323 chip
How it looks installed
You really have to trim down the port to fit properly
Back of Newton doesn’t appear to flex very much
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Newton Serial Boards on the way

My next (hopefully final) iteration of the newton 2×00 serial board is on the way from the PCB manufacturer now. Moved some things around so two different chip types can be used (in case you find the one or the other) and added a switch to override Newton control of the serial transceiver.

This way you can turn it on, install the control software, and then flip the switch the other way to let the Newton control it. Should hopefully not affect battery life too much.

Need to order the switches and some more serial ports. Unfortunately I haven’t found a source for surface-mount circular serial ports so that means I get to have the fun of snipping the leads down to less than 0.6mm (PCB thickness) to avoid bending the case of the Newton.

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Projects In Progress

Currently I have too many several projects in progress.

  • Newton 2×00 Internal Serial Board
    • Prototype PCBs have been made
    • PCB is being updated to be easier for people which don’t have a way to install the necessary software first
    • Looking for a source for surface-mount MINI-DIN 8 connectors (the circular serial port) because the vertical space available is extremely tight. If you know a source, please email me (see the About page)
  • BlueSCSI™
    • BlueSCSI is trademarked by Eric Helgeson
    • https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSI
    • It’s basically a SCSI drive emulator that uses SD cards for storage. No more need for those old SCSI drives, just use BlueSCSI™
    • I am working on some carrier boards for the BlueSCSI™ ‘blue pill’ module
      • PowerBook
        • Working on getting a Shop listing up for this
      • Desktop
        • Have PCBs, need assembly and testing
      • Macintosh Portable
        • Have prototype PCBs, needs assembly and testing
  • Macintosh Portable Hybrid Module Replacement
    • Have a Mac Portable with a bad hybrid module? Don’t we all.
    • This module will use modern buck regulators in place of the original linear regulator design
    • A microcontroller will handle battery voltage signaling to the power manager chip
      • Any other necessary enable/disable functions will be handled by this chip