[NTLK] NewtCOM Dongle: Weekend Update

[Matthias Melcher]

Hi everyone,

six dongles have been in the hands of Beta testers for a week or more. So far, there are no fails that I know of. The biggest missing part is probably documentation. I should make a few videos that show the dongle in action.

The current documentation is here: https://github.com/MatthiasWM/newt_dongle/blob/master/README.md

We ere able to get the dongle working with MacOS on M1 and Intel machines, and with  custom version of BasiliskII. We tested NCX, NCU, Hammer, and unixnpi, and they alle seem to generally work well, even at the highest serial speed. 

Two issues were found: the NXC screen shot feature dcrables the image, and backups from huge PCMCI cards have not been successful. But those are software issues. The hardware works well. I have material to build 15 more dongles this week, so the next 15 people will be notified in the next days to send me their addresses.


On the software side, I just released an Alpha version of the MicroSD card support: https://github.com/MatthiasWM/newt_dongle/releases/tag/v0.5 . The firmware update process is really easy, so for those who already have their dongle: please try this out if you have the time.

To use this, fill a MicroSD Card with all your favorite packages. You can use folders and sub folders. Just avoid having more than 50 items per folder. Plug the Dongle into the Newton. No need to connect it to a PC  or Mac. Launch `Dock` and connect using the `Serial` option. The Dongle recognizes that there is nobody at the USB end, so it will pretend to be a Mac running NCU. Dock should connect to the Dongle and allow you to browse the SD Card, just like it would be able to browse the files on a Mac. You can download and install any .pkg file form the SD Card right onto the Newton.

Please try this out and let me know if there are issues. It's easiest for me if you can describe exactly how to reproduce the error, so I can try it here and find the bugs.


So, have a nice remaining weekend and a great time with your Newts.

 - Matthias