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Apple Newton eMate

D

DoctorPepper

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2003
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I just picked up a refurbished Apple Newton eMate off of eBay, does anyone know anything about them?

Description from the eBay auction:

Description from Apple website:
The Apple eMate 300, designed for the education market, features a 25 MHz ARM 710a processor, 8 MB of ROM, 3 MB of RAM (1MB of DRAM, 2 MB of Flash Memory for user storage), a PCMCIA slot, IrDA-beaming capabilities, and a Newton InterConnect port for multiple connectivity options, in a translucent aquamarine and black "clamshell" portable case with a 480x320 16-shade grayscale backlit LCD display for use with either a provided stylus or the built-in keyboard. The eMate is the only Newton model to resemble a traditional laptop rather than a handheld, but had the Newton line continued, additional models would have likely followed.

Hardware Specifications

* Processor: ARM710a 25mhz
* Operating System: Newton OS 2.1
* Memory: 1MB (DRAM),2MB (Flash) 8MB (ROM)
* Display: 480 X320 16-level Grayscale with backlight
* Interface: Newton Interconnect Port (Serial or Parallel), Infrared
* Dimensions and Weight: 2.1 (H) x 11.4 (W) x 12.0 (D) inches, 4.0 lbs.
* Power: AC Power Adapter
* Battery: 4AA/NiMH rechargeable battery (internal)
 
Sure, I used to own one. They are pretty cool little machines. I used mine to take notes on the road and draw stuff. I didn't do much with mine, but as I recall one could connect it to an ImageWriter II via ADB as well as other devices.

I am PRETTY sure you could connect it to a Macintosh carrying System 7 or higher as well. I never tried that as I traded my Macintosh Classic for it. The eMate 300 also has infrared technology for wireless printing and data transfer.

The O/S it carried was much like Macintosh System 7 and earlier O/Ses for the Macintosh. The battery life was good(dont remember just HOW long), it had exellent handwriting to text capabilities, and looked pretty decent, too.

--Ryan
 
Thanks for the info all, especially to applefreak for the links and other info.

I am really looking forward to the arrival of my eMate :)
 
Yzzerdd said:
Sure, I used to own one. They are pretty cool little machines. I used mine to take notes on the road and draw stuff. I didn't do much with mine, but as I recall one could connect it to an ImageWriter II via ADB as well as other devices.
Click to expand...

You can connect it to quite a variety of serial devices, including printers, modems, and even a serial keyboard. It is a serial connection, not ADB.

Yzzerdd said:
I am PRETTY sure you could connect it to a Macintosh carrying System 7 or higher as well. I never tried that as I traded my Macintosh Classic for it. The eMate 300 also has infrared technology for wireless printing and data transfer.
Click to expand...

Yes, they had software to sync it with a desktop computer running Claris Organizer on the Mac, which was later purchased by Palm to become the basis for the Palm Desktop software. There is even software to sync with Address Book and iCal in Mac OS X! (I use it to sync my Newton 120 with my beige G3 running OS X 10.2.)

Yzzerdd said:
The O/S it carried was much like Macintosh System 7 and earlier O/Ses for the Macintosh. The battery life was good(dont remember just HOW long), it had exellent handwriting to text capabilities, and looked pretty decent, too.
Click to expand...

Its OS was completely custom, and had *NOTHING* in common with the Mac OS, other than being released by Apple. It did not deal with "files" at all, its entire "file system" was one big database, and everything were just tables ("soups" in Newton parlance) in the database.

The first release of the Newton OS had pretty bad handwriting recognition that was teased much in the media (both Doonesbury and The Simpsons lampooned it,) but Newton OS 2.0 had significantly improved recognition that lives to this day as the "Inkwell" handwriting recognition built into OS X.

Ironically, the code-name for the second-gen handwriting recognition was "Rosetta", a code-name that was later reused by Apple for something completely different. (The PPC-to-x86 emulation layer on Intel Macs.)
 
I remember using these in the 2nd grade. My school was part of this school technology program, and they were giving each classroom like 30 of these.They were pretty cool, I think there was a chat feature in it, because some friends and I would chat with each other during the times when we got to use these. We had to use them to type up text documents. Most of us however, just played with the paint application.
 
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