[NTLK] Einstein, last call

[Daniel Parnell]

newton-re would not exist without Einstein. Your work on it has been amazing!
On 22/10/2026 2:05:17 AM, Matthias Melcher <m.melcher at robowerk.de> wrote:
If you found any bugs in Einstein that must urgently fixed, let me know in the next ten days. I will generate my last maintenance release in two weeks.
I have been fixing a bunch of things with Einstein and did some testing on Windows and Linux.
There is a bug in NewtonOS, basically the Y2k10 bug the second time around, Y10k25. I seem to remember that Eckhart Köppen release new patches, but I don't know the details. Einstein on Windows has been running at less than half the original speed since summer 2025, but since nobody said anything, I assume nobody noticed anyway. The US ROM self-fixes this in the next release of Einstein. There is no fix that I know of for German, French, or eMate.
I fixed a timing issues in the serial communications code, so syncing with NCX and NCU on BasiliskII should work better. NTK on BasiliskII works well.
There were two or three more features planed for Einstein. However with Daniel's newton-re, there is really no longer a need for the existence of Einstein. newton-re can now run NewtonOS at full speed without emulation and without a ROM. With a matching user interface, it will be far superior to Einstein, performance wise at the least.
So, I will have one more last-call release of Einstein in about two weeks. If you still have stuff that needs to make it into that release, let me know. After that, I will archive Einstein and stop development - well, not literally, it will still be available on GitHub, but I will only do bug fixes from then on, and only if they are really urgent.
- Matthias
On a side note, the Y2k10/25 bug will pop up again in 2040, together with a second time bug that has not a fix. It can probablly be fixed, but it need a different approach than the current fix. At that time, the real time clock pointer calculation will wrap and all dates are set to January 1904.
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