[NTLK] MP2x00 out of order, which electronic components to check?

[Sylvain Pilet]

Kenroy,

Interchanging the ROM is what I do as a last resort with the Newtons, because the content is lost forever. But as it happened to me before, I always have a 2x00 ROM in stock!
I have never swapped an eMate ROM with one from an MP2x00. But I often do it with the 2x00s. There is indeed a HARD RESET which is done on the ROM when you put the ROM of a Newton in another one. Everything is erased and we start again from Zero. What I can say is that it doesn't change much if the failure comes from one (or more) electronic component. But sometimes indeed it can bring back to life a Newton that hadn't woken up for a long time. In this case you have to leave the mains plugged at least 15 minutes, before the Newton does its hard reset and restarts. But it doesn't always work. 


Be careful, too, 
Let's imagine that you have two Newton MP2x00 A and B, if you put the ROM from A into B to test the Newton B, if this one is still a bit alive, it will erase the ROM A, its content will not reappear if you put the ROM A back into the Newton A, since it will have been erased!
Let's now imagine that you put ROM A aside and test ROM B in Newton A, even if ROM A has not been introduced in another Newton, if your Newton A has deleted another ROM then it will forget its ROM A and when you put back its original ROM it will believe it is another ROM and will make a Hard Reset.

I know this because I often swap Newton's ROM and Watson's ROM, because we have to disassemble the Watson's to be able to connect the Interconnect dongle to connect it to NCX. So for testing purposes, like Paul is doing right now, it's easier to put a ROM in an MP2000, than to damage a Watson where the components are like new most of the time. 


Sylvain Pilet

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> Le 4 juil. 2020 à 22:53, Kenroy Harrison via NewtonTalk <newtontalk at newtontalk.net> a écrit :
> 
> Hi Sylvain,
> 
> I have an MP2100 with the same problem. I had a chat with Sonny Hung a few weeks ago about it and he suggested that I may want to try swapping out the MP2100 ROM card with an eMate ROM card to force a hard reset. I haven’t been able to track down an eMate to try that as yet. I’m interested to hear what steps you’ve tried so far and how it goes in the future so please do keep us informed.
> 
> Thanks,
> Kenroy