[NTLK] Enhancements to the reverse engineered newton system

[Matthias Melcher]

> On 7/10/2026 9:57:34 AM, Daniel Parnell <me at danielparnell.com> wrote:
> Is there a version of SDL3 that targets embedded hosts so for example running it with a custom OS on bare hardware?

I don't know if that counts, but you can run SDL on a minimal Linux install using the framebuffer device. No desktop like X11 or Wayland needed, and great for Raspberry Pi. I don;t think it goes even lower into true embedded territory.

> The really interesting thing to do would be to re-target it back at the original hardware ;)

The overhead of external libraries would make the ROM much larger than 8MB. I have a different, proven approach here. I wrote a wrapper for the original tools that were used to develop the ROM. We have the original C/C++/Assembler and linker tools running on a modern Mac or PC. I have proven that AI can "untranslated" the ROM assembler code back into C/C++, and the original tools translate the reult back into the byte identical ROM.

I paused the effort, mainly to see where your sudden addition to the world of Newton is going. 

> I've also thought about running it on smaller systems like an ESP32 with an e-ink or lcd display

The ESP has only around 512k of true RAM IIRC. External SPI RAM is a lot slower. I don't think the ESP has enough resources to run NewtonOS, although theCPU sure is fast enough. Happy to learn differently.

 - Matthias