It’ been a while since I’ve checked in here, and I’m sure the two of you who still bother to stop by here now and then are beginning to wonder if this blog would ever be updated again. Good news!
Today, I dug the Newton eMate 300 out of storage with a mind to upgrade the battery and apply the 2010 patch. I was able to locate the eMate itself, but the box containing the AC adapter, manuals and accessories seems to have gone into hiding. So, I’m left with a dead eMate and a PCMCIA modem without a dongle. It looks like the AC adapter can be had on eBay for a few dollars, though for the same $35, I can get an entire system and accessories. In fact, there’s quite a glut of eMates on eBay at the moment. In the meantime though, my Newton ambitions are on hold.
In other news, I was given a couple of vintage computers this weekend one more related to this blog than the other. Up first, we have a Macintosh Classic from 1991.
It’s dirty and didn’t come with a keyboard or mouse; the letters “HD” are written on the top in black marker, leading me to believe this is the higher end model with the hard drive and extra memory. The AppleSerialNumberInfo website didn’t recognize this number and Chipmunk.nl identified it as an iPhone 3GS (I wish), so I don’t really know much about it. I’m not much of a Mac collector, so short of powering it up once or twice and poking around a bit, I doubt I’ll do anything with this. Maybe someone at KansasFest 2010 would enjoy it more than me.
The other item, a Franklin Ace 2100, is of much more interest.
For those unfamiliar, Franklin was a computer company in the 1980’s that specialized in cloning Apple II computers. They were so good at it, in fact, that Apple sued them and eventually won, bringing an end to the line of clones and setting an early precedent for copyright infringement in the young computer industry. Interestingly, Franklin Electronic Publishers continues to operate, though these days they’re not in the PC industry any more. The 2100 is part of the 2000 line of Apple IIe clones, and it seems likely that one of the reasons Apple went after Franklin is that these machines were consistently better than Apple’s. This one, for example, came with 384K of RAM, a 65CS02 processor and an RGB interface out of the box, all expensive add on options if you went with Apple’s offering. I didn’t get the monitor with this one, but it looks like I can use a standard composite monitor.
And finally, for my remaining Apple /// fan, I haven’t entirely abandoned my efforts there. The ProFile directory structure is still corrupt and I’ve instead turned my attention to getting the CFFA 2.0 up and running. I’ve gone as far as installing the card and partitioning it (I think), but I’ve stalled at selecting which OS and program launcher to use. BOS? SOS? Catalyst?
