Kupitero's Keep Gadgets Page

On to Kupitero's obsolete computers/gadgets...(please note that these are all actual pictures)!

Apple Newton MessagePad 120:

The 3rd in a series - after the MessagePad 100 and 110 - of PDAs released by Apple in the 1990s, the Apple Newton MessagePad 120 (released in 1995) was probably the first really-usable PDA with a "natural handwriting" recognition software - hugely different from Palm's Graffiti - until they totally abandoned the PDA market in 1998 (with the Newton MessagePad 2100 being the last release).

It's interesting to note that the initial code for the word-based handwriting recognition software for the Newton MessagePad were written by Soviet programmers at Paragraph International, Inc.

Some notable features of the MessagePad 120 are: B&W, 320 x 240 screen resolution, support for fax/modems, memory cards and other devices via a single PC Card (Type II) slot, can also print using a variety of serial, parallel, and network printers via its LocalTalk and RS-232-compatible serial port, a low-power, half-duplex IRDA transceiver and an amazingly crisp and transparent display/ tablet that you can write on using the unique, telescopic stylus/pen!

The gizmo above includes a 2MB SDRAM PC Card (to supplement its core 2MB RAM - 687K used by the OS & the 1.36 MB is non-volatile user RAM), that I alternately use with the original Apple Newton PC Card fax/modem. Power is supplied by either four (4) AA batteries or an AC power cube (as seen here).

And lastly, since this 8"x 4" x1.25" model is powered by Newton OS 2.0, the unit can display the screen output in BOTH portrait and landscape modes -- a feature we see only in the latest and greatest PDAs of today, like the Palm Tungsten T3 !!!!

The Netpliance iOpener:

The tremendous popularity of the Internet can be attested by the fact that a gaggle of companies in the mid 1990s came up with an assortment of easy-to-use-specially-designed-for-Internet-surfing-and-email-only devices. Most of these companies thought that the market was ripe for such devices they specially made for non-tech-savvy users who were willing to fork out from $500 and upwards for them. Or, so they thought. Hence, we had the 3Com Audrey, the CIDCO MailStation, NewCom WebPal as well and Microsoft's and AOL's WebTV, to name a few. Almost all of them had long been gone, or, if ever they are still made, they are surely bleeding their companies' coffers dry.

Interestingly, the company that made the iOpener was the very first to have the concept of practically giving the hardware away - it was very cheap at $99 - with the goal of becoming a dominant ISP -like AOL, MSN or even Earthlink-, by requiring buyers to pay a monthly subscription fee of $21.95 for its Internet services.

Along the way, however, hardware hacks saw the $99 hardware as a very, very cheap opportunity to have a full-blown PC (which then were selling for almost $500 and up for the very basic models). Inside the guts of a stock Netpliance iOpener is basically a ready-to-hack Windows or Linux-ready machine complete with an Intel-compatible IDC WinChip 200 Mhz CPU, a Trident CyberBlade video chip, a 56K modem, a 32MB (but upgradeable) SODIMM/SDRAM and a standard Award BIOS to boot!. So, just tweak the BIOS and add an IDE hard drive to the hacks-gleefully-discovered IDE port and, voila, you have a full scale PC by simply installing your OS of choice to the hard drive! (View the "hacked" version)

The iOpener also came with a USB port for other devices (shown here being used by a USB mouse), a PS/2 port for the bundled keyboard which has a built-in, scrolling button (mouse) and a unique "pizza ordering" key, a parallel port (for a supported Canon printer) and a 10 inch, passive matrix 800 x 600 LCD. Over the course of time, however, most people bought the iOpener, not to pay the monthly fee of $21.95 to Netpliance as their ISP, but to have a sleek and compact PC that can access the Internet -wired or wireless- via its USB port.

Netpliance, the company, became part of the dotcom bust by the early 2000.

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Netpliance Makeover

step by step

continuation...

The Hack

6. Boot the PC again and now, note on the POST if both HDs were detected and if the laptop HD (slave) was recognized as a 16MB HD. At the A:> prompt, change to the directory where you downloaded the software-- Dolly and the V2 image file (v2image.bin). Since I saved them on my My Documents folder, I issued the ff. DOS commands:

cd mydocu~1

There, I found these two files mentioned above. After which I finally issued the command:

dolly v2image.bin hd129:

Executing the above command will copy the v2image.bin file to the laptop HD whose parameters we changed to mimic the SanDisk flash ROM in the iOpener - which is also 16MB. You should be able to see the number of sectors copied upon execution of the command and the message. "Drive Copy Successful!", if all went well.

That's the end of the DOS commands for this portion. Do not forget the : at the end of the last command above. Remove the DOS boot disk from your floppy drive and turn off your PC. Remove the laptop HD from the PC's IDE cable. You can now set your PC aside for the meantime.

7. Reconfigure back the laptop HD as 'master' via the jumper and connect it to the other end of the inverted 44-pin, IDE cable on the iOpener. Recall that we had connected the other end of this inverted 44-pin to the iOpener's IDE connector on the first part of this procedure.

8. Using the PS/2 splitter, attach a standard PC keyboard and PS/2 mouse.
(the mouse plugs in to KB jack and keyboard into mouse jack of the splitter). Then, boot the IO and get into BIOS (Hold TAB key down then CTRL -ALT- ESC).
Inside the BIOS (Standard CMOS Setup) manually set the geometry of the Primary Master to: NONE
and the Primary Slave to: 490/2/65535/489/32 Normal (C/H/S) and (in BIOS Features Setup) set the boot sequence to: D, A, SCSI . Save the settings and reboot the iOpener.

...continued here