[NTLK] Fun with Flash

[Chris Rupnik]

Thank you so much for your effort! That is indeed one step closer to
restoring a physical Newton backup onto Einstein.

What happens if you insert an omp110 newton card into a 2.x Newton? Is the
data structure recognized?

Chris

On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 11:23 AM Matthias Melcher <m.melcher at robowerk.de>
wrote:

>
> At the last Wonk, we talked about emulating Flash cards. Of course, I was
> intrigued, and what was supposed to be an hour or two of tinkering with
> Einstein became a whole day of in-depth fun with - hold your breath - my
> *physical* Newton. Yes, I dug deep into my storage boxes and unearthed my
> MP2100 and a surprisingly large stack of PCMCIA cards that accumulated over
> the years.
>
> I installed NewtsBug and Hammer, the lowest low level debugger on the MP
> and Basilisk, hooked up a USB-C to USB-A adapter to a USB-A to 9-pin serial
> adapter to a 9-pin to DIN adapter, and a DIN to Newton dongle - easy as π -
> and already I could dump Newton memory.
>
> My plan was to find the PCMCIA raw data and the CIS, the card information
> structure, dump the to Basilisk, copy them to the Mac, convert them to a C
> data structure, and import them into Einstein. More π. I did not manage the
> last step yet, but I did discover two things, and I wanted to write about
> them.
>
> Discovery 1: PCMCIA cards can have a 32-bit bus. Sounds boring? But no, it
> is not. That means that we can write an app that stores a regular Newton
> ROM on a 8MB PC-Card, and map that new ROM where the original ROM is
> located. That trick would make the clone of the original ROM writable! We
> can fool around in the ROM, fix bugs, change stuff, add files, without ever
> opening the case. Sweet!
>
> Discovery 2: I picked up 8 or so flash cards over the years, stuffing them
> away in a box, but never really looked at them. Well, dumping the content
> of the first card I found, I suddenly saw familiar names inside the raw
> machine code. Well, Andrea, could be anyone. But wait, Björn? What are thos
> German names doing here? Well, you guessed it. This was *my* original card
> from my very first PDA, and it contained tons of names I had long
> forgotten, addresses that are hopelessly outdated, some great memories, but
> also some names of friends who have long passed. Wow! And sigh!
>
> I have stacks of media, floppy disks, dat tapes, SyQuests, even Sinclair
> Microdrive cartridges, but this was somehow a very unexpected blast from
> the past. First of all, PDAs keep record of much more personal data than
> some floppy disks, but secondly, the data is still there and readable! All
> of my VHS demagnetized years ago, the dat tapes stretched or shrank, the
> SyQuests insist on a PC with a parallel printer port (LOL), but the PCMCIAa
> are still fine. Amazing.
>
>  - Matthias
>
> PS: the only other completely undamaged ancient media are my Lollos, the
> rolls of punch hole paper strips from our Telex.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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