[NTLK] NewtonTalk Digest, Vol 99, Issue 13

[Perley Mears]

Matthias,

    I'm on board for buying a couple of these new ROM boards. :-) As Fry on
Futurama would say "Shut up and take my money?" :-)

Perley

Perley Mears
perley at mears.us


On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 8:26 AM <newtontalk-request at newtontalk.net> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: A new ROM board (Matthias Melcher)
>    2. Re: A new ROM board (DXH)
>    3. Metamorphosis (NewtonTalk)
>    4. Re: Metamorphosis (Matthias Melcher)
>    5. Re: Metamorphosis (Pawel Piotrowski)
>    6. Re: Metamorphosis (Doug)
>    7. Re: Metamorphosis (Alan Grassia)
>    8. Re: A new ROM board (Bertrand LAMBERT)
>    9. Re: A new ROM board (Sylvain Pilet)
>   10. Re: Metamorphosis (NewtonTalk)
>   11. Re: Metamorphosis (Sylvain Pilet)
>   12. Re: A new ROM board (Matthias Melcher)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 21:17:00 +0100
> From: Matthias Melcher <m.melcher at robowerk.de>
> To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
> Subject: Re: [NTLK] A new ROM board
> Message-ID: <C5CBAF03-20AC-4007-8373-CDB1E86931D5 at robowerk.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=us-ascii
>
>
> Hi Newts,
>
>
> tl;dr : the ROM replacement board works and offers an additional 24MB of
> ROM-like storage for apps. Currently, the ROMs must be programmed
> externally, but I am working on a solution to make the boards
> reprogrammable by anyone.
>
> It would be helpful to know if anyone is interested in buying any of these
> boards. Target cost is roughly 20 Euros plus shipping.
>
>  - Matthias
>
>
>
> Time for some geek stuff. I'll try to make it understandable for everyone.
> Sorry for any repeats.
>
>
> The replacement ROM Cards that I built for the MP2x00 work better than
> expected. I am super thrilled that I will be able to offer backup boards,
> ROM fixes, and Extensions on boards that can be reprogrammed over and over.
>
> The original MP has 8MB of ROM on a removable card. I replaced old-school
> ROM chips with modern Flash memory. The Newton Operating System can
> officially manage an additional 8MB block and another 16MB block.
>
> By now, I fully tested adding 8MB of additional packages in that first
> block. With a dedicated programmer, that can be done now. I am writing
> software that will enable this feature for everyone.
>
> 8MB on a Newton are a lot of apps. But we have an additional 16MB that can
> hold even more packages. This is mostly tested, works with the programmer,
> and will eventually also be programmable by the user.
>
> Both blocks extend your machine's ROM. They can be written with an app,
> but they do not extend the Flash RAM of your machine.
>
>
> So we know how to address 8+8+16MB=32MB of the card. The hardware
> interface of the card has an additional address pin, which appears very
> much like an afterthought. It's not used by the OS, but it is very much
> addressable by the CPU, so we actually have an additional 32MB of memory
> available. I am not sure if that can be used easily for anything, but it's
> there nevertheless.
>
>
>  - Matthias
>
>
>
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> End of NewtonTalk Digest, Vol 99, Issue 13
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