Category Archives: Computers

Newton 2100 on the web!

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I managed to connect my Newton 2100 to the Internet yesterday (using a 3Com 3C589D Ethernet card). Copied the network settings from my laptop into the setup on the Newton, connected the Ethernet and fired up Courier. It all works quite well (actually much better than I expected). The next step is to try Email and perhaps some RSS news feeds…

Tonight I will attempt to setup my 300MHz G3 Server with Mac OS X 10.2, a PCI USB 2.0 card and a 250GB external USB drive. Unsure of how much RAM I will add to it however I will be upgrading the 10Base-T on-board Ethernet with an Apple 10/100Base-T PCI card. The plan is to use this machine as an FTP server for backups of photos/files/music. Once it is set up I will use VNC to manage it (Vine Server for the server and Chicken of the VNC for the client).

RetroChallenge Step #2

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Installed all of the drivers required for adding a PCMCIA Ethernet card to my Newton 2100. Followed these instructions. Transferred the files from my work PC to the PowerBook using a floppy disk (how retro). Haven’t tried connecting to anything yet but it should be OK. One thing of note is that while inserting a modem card causes the Newton to alert you that a communications card is installed, inserting the Ethernet card does not. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

[Edit: According to this site, this behavior is normal as I have 3Com Ethernet card].

Also took some time to set the PowerBook 190cs up a bit better – cleared out incompatible Control Panels and Extensions.

Remote RetroChallenge

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Back in Dampier again for work – carrying a fair amount of retro Mac gear. In my luggage I have my PowerBook G4 (12″ 1GHz /768MB / 40GB/Combo Drive), my rebuilt PowerBook 190cs (16MB / 500MB with a few 5300 parts) and my Newton 2100 with various cards and adapters. This is on top of my work kit and PC laptop (which is not light). Needless to say my bags were flagged with the Qantas “heavy” label…

My first task is to get Ethernet working on the Newton and connect it to the G4 (this looks like a good guide). Then I will have a hack at developing a bit for the Newton using the 190cs (Newton development tools are installed). Later I will try writing some software for the Mac (System 6 and up hopefully). I have done this before with some success.

Stay tuned for more…

PowerBook 100 – Retro Challenge Step #1

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After tinkering for a few hours last night I have finally managed to build one complete PowerBook 100 out of two partially complete ones. The complete unit has a good screen (replaced the screen that was missing a column of pixels down the left hand side), 4MB of RAM, an 80MB 2.5″ SCSI hard drive with Mac OS 7.1, three batteries (none of which work), an external floppy drive (working well) and two functional fold-down feet (each unit had one foot broken, thankfully on opposite sides).

The PowerBook 100 is an impressive design – three screws (Phillips head – yay!) hold the whole unit together, the screen hinge seems bulletproof (neither showed wear or damage), the motherboard is easy to swap out and the RAM and CPU cards are easy to access. In terms of expansion, the PowerBook 100 is limited (I noticed what looks like and internal modem connector – that seems to be the extent of expansion) but it has an ADB port (unlike the PB150), a serial port and a SCSI port (as well as the special external floppy drive port).

It was a lot of fun rebuilding this – now I need to find some old software and starting putting it to use.

Projects

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This is a list of projects that I have planned:

  • Masters coding and development;
  • Get my Quadra 950 going properly with more RAM, MacOS7.6 and some big hard drives;
  • Get a PowerBook 100 going (to have a shot at the Retro Challenge 2007);
  • Get ethernet going on my Newton 2100;
  • Start doing some basic Newton (probably OS 2.0) development;
  • Build and configure my home office server (I picked up two 18.1 GB SCSI drives for this). It will be my G3 Server (beige, 300MHz, as much RAM as I can find). I will be using it for backups and storing photos.

As always, more time is required 🙁

Long time no update

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  • I now have a Flickr web page. People seem to be visiting but not commenting… It contains photos of birds I have taken using my Canon 350D.
  • Still collecting old Apple/Mac computers (collection getting huge). I recently had a lot of fun with an Apple IIc that I picked up from the Quokka. All of the equipment and disks worked perfectly (and they were dated 1984). I also picked up 2x 350 MHz B&W G3 machines, a QuickTake 100, a 24-port 10/100 BayStack Switch, a PowerMac 5500/225 (along with numerous other bits and pieces).
  • Building a HO scale model train set (mainly LIMA gear) with Cameron (although he tends to specialize in stress testing). I will post photos soon.
  • My birding life list has now passed 100!