[NTLK] "System Q" prototype

[Matthias Melcher]

> On 23. Sep 2026, at 06:37, Justin Ried <justin at ried.us> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Wanted to share another prototype with folks: System Q. This is from the first run of EVT units and uses an ARM 710a CPU, which was replaced by the StrongARM SA-110 CPU in the second run of EVT units. Gallery available here:
> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QhqrWW2VYL3A76kKM7mRi8gEvgtoxqU7?usp=share_link

Nice to see the ROM board. 

I reverse engineered the production ROM board, trying to figure out what those four unpopulated places on the back do. I know that the ROM board connector supports up to 16MB additional Flash RAM for application storage, so I was hoping I could simply solder 28F016 onto the back and end up with 12MB of Flash. But the pinout was different. So in the production PCBs, it seems that Apple kept those in case they couldn't get the 2x4MB ROMs on the front and have to fall back to 4x2MB ROMs.

Your second to last photo has the front side populated with 4x 28F016 (=8MB), the standard Flash chip used in MessagePad 2x00. This is likely for quick turn-around testing by flashing new firmware.

I am surprised by the last photo where the ROM board seems to have a voltage regulator. Everything about these chips is 3V which is also available on the edge connector of the production model.


Quite a while ago, I developed ROM Cards that can be flashed to any firmware. To program this, I published a hardware that can read, dump, and write the contents of MP2x00 ROM/Flash cards (I should really add photos):

https://github.com/MatthiasWM/NewtonROMReader
https://share.google/2rPSSiWWR2IXAx9iY

If you want to back up your card, I am sure we can arrange a reader.

 - Matthias