This is a problem that cannot be fixed so I share this story as a lesson for others, as well as for myself in the future.
First, I am pretty vigilant about backups. This wasn't always the case. But, in recent years, I've gotten reasonably good at backing up. I could do better but I've been fairly good about it.
On my main computer, I have an external hard drive set up for Time Machine. This reminds me I should connect it because I haven't done so in a very long time. But, I have another external hard drive set up and I run a backup pretty much daily. It backs up the main computer plus two other external drives that are used for file storage. (One is personal and the other is work, that's where there are two.)
I also have additional hard drives. One is a duplicate (when I remember) of my personal external hard drive. Another has copies of the most important files from that drive. I also have a USB flash drive with copies of said important files.
So, backups are pretty well in place.
Also in recent years, I have been making disk images of all my old floppy disks, Zip disks, CDs and DVDs. I've lost some data due to problems with Zip disks but most of the CDs and floppy disks have been okay. I've actually had more problems with commercial CDs than my own. Of course, I have the advantage in that, towards the end of my CD archiving days, I was burning data to two CDs instead of one. So, if one fails, I've got the other.
Anyway, these disk images go on my personal hard drive which gets backed up to the aforementioned external backup drive. Plus they are duplicated on the duplicate hard drive I mentioned.
Which brings us to my Newton.
The last time I did a back up was in 1995. Of course, I know why I stopped backing up the Newton . . . hard drive space. Hard drive space was at a premium back then. My main computer was a PowerBook 180c with an external SCSI drive. Both were eventually filled, despite archiving to floppies and Zip disks. Why I didn't back up to a Zip disk, I don't know. Perhaps I had a backup stored on one of the "click of death" Zip disks, but I doubt it.
So my Newton, the 100 model, has been living on borrowed time. I knew I should back up, but I know why I didn't . . .
1) Way back when, the PowerBook 180c was my only option for backup, and its hard drive was full.
2) Later, the Zip drive became unreliable.
So, that's why I didn't backup way back when. I should have in more recent years. My more modern excuse is that the PowerBook 180c died five years ago.
I have carried my Newton with me almost every day for the past 25 years, probably since I got it. There were long periods where it didn't get used, but I still had it. Still kept replacing the batteries.
It developed the problem where it shuts down immediately after powering up. There's a fix, and I have the instructions but have been lax on doing it. I wanted to practice taking a non-functional Newton apart first before messing with the one that works.
I finally obtained one last year.
There's no shortage of projects, however. The last major project was replacing the display on my MacBook Pro. That was scary since that's my main machine.
In the last year or so, I got my Quadra 800 running with a SCSI2SD drive in it. Why I never thought to use it to back up my Newton, I don't know.
Earlier this year, maybe last year, I made the fatal error. The inside of the battery case had gotten damaged by the AAA batteries leaking. I kept meaning to get rechargeables, but there was always something else taking priority. So, the second time in recent years that the batteries leaked, I removed them, kept them out. I did not want to risk ruining my Newton.
I would get rechargeables and then I shouldn't have to worry about leakage anymore. I could get two sets and swap them out as needed, always keeping a set charged.
If I knew the Newton required live batteries to retain its memory, I had long since forgotten. If I had remembered that, I would have kept batteries in it. I would have checked more frequently to make sure they hadn't gone dead.
Instead, I removed them.
A couple weeks ago, I spotted a Newton keyboard on eBay for a reasonable price. It was a keyboard that was supposed to work on the 100. So I snapped it up. It arrived last Monday. I was excited to try it out.
I got my Newton out and plugged it in.
That's when I learned of the disaster.
The 2032 battery had gone dead.
All the data from the past 24 years was gone.
There's no way to recover it.
I desperately searched my archive disks, hoping I had made a backup I'd forgotten about. No such luck.
There was a note on there of sentimental value that I wanted to keep. Gone. On the plus side, I have a copy of its contents that I typed out on my iPad four years ago, along with another note from the Newton. I try to convince myself those were the only worthwhile things on the Newton, that if there was anything else worth saving, I would have typed them out too.
I hope that's true, but not knowing for sure is a real kicker.
The last back up? Two days before that first note. Yep, had I done the backup two days later, it would have been saved. Why didn't I do a backup?
Yes, I still have the content, but I really wanted to have a copy as it originally was on the Newton.
Even if I couldn't backup to the PowerBook, I could have taken pictures. I have photos of blank pages on the Newton. Yes, I took pictures of freakin' blank pages but not the meaningful stuff. Why was I so stupid?
There are things that I think might have been on there, but I don't know for sure. One is particularly important--it may not even have been on there--it might be just a sense of panic making me think maybe it was on there. I keep trying to convince myself if it had been on there, I would have typed that out on my iPad too. I don't know. Now I can't check.
It gets worse. There's a 2MB memory card in there. I thought it was full--it's where most of the apps were kept--but there was free space on there. Each time I turned the Newton on, there was an option to backup to card. If I had tapped backup button, everything would have been saved. Why did I never tap the button? Because I thought the card was full? Why didn't I let curiosity get the better of me and just tap the button? There was room. Everything would have been saved.
Most of the time, especially in recent years, I used the Newton more for playing games like Tic Tac Toe than anything else, so there wasn't a lot on there. It's just not knowing what was there that's the kicker.
It gets worse.
In looking for backups and the original install packages for apps, I discovered I had a 4MB flash card too. Why the heck hadn't I used that? I had the slim hope that maybe, just maybe, I had backed up to it. I found it this morning. Fingers crossed . . . but no. It had two books on it. Plenty of space. The 2MB card had space available--I could have stored everything on it and the Newton on the 4MB card. Plenty of room for backup or for storing new material on the card. Why the heck did I never do that?
I should note here that the date of the one note I wanted to save and the date of the last backup are the same, so there is the possibility I thought that note was backed up. But the note was written two days after the blank note page had been created, so no. But maybe I thought it had been saved and maybe the reason I hadn't felt an urgency to do the backup is because there wasn't anything critical on there. Maybe the two notes I re-typed on my iPad where the only ones worthwhile, the only ones I thought I would miss if something happened to the Newton. Maybe the other things I think *might* have been on there weren't.
I can vaguely remember looking through stuff and maybe I didn't think it critical to save, except for what I re-typed on my iPad.
That's a possibility. A lot of the stuff was old. Maybe the stuff I copied was all I really needed, all I thought would be missed. Maybe the stuff I worry might have been on there wasn't.
But now I'll never know.
The bottom line is that hard drive space is relatively cheap these days. Find a way to back stuff up, even if it's not important because if you lose it, you might not remember if it was important or not and have no way to check.
Also, if anyone has a time machine, I'd like to borrow it. I have a good idea of times when and where the Newton was left unattended, so I could easily slip in and backup to that 4MB card I have.
First, I am pretty vigilant about backups. This wasn't always the case. But, in recent years, I've gotten reasonably good at backing up. I could do better but I've been fairly good about it.
On my main computer, I have an external hard drive set up for Time Machine. This reminds me I should connect it because I haven't done so in a very long time. But, I have another external hard drive set up and I run a backup pretty much daily. It backs up the main computer plus two other external drives that are used for file storage. (One is personal and the other is work, that's where there are two.)
I also have additional hard drives. One is a duplicate (when I remember) of my personal external hard drive. Another has copies of the most important files from that drive. I also have a USB flash drive with copies of said important files.
So, backups are pretty well in place.
Also in recent years, I have been making disk images of all my old floppy disks, Zip disks, CDs and DVDs. I've lost some data due to problems with Zip disks but most of the CDs and floppy disks have been okay. I've actually had more problems with commercial CDs than my own. Of course, I have the advantage in that, towards the end of my CD archiving days, I was burning data to two CDs instead of one. So, if one fails, I've got the other.
Anyway, these disk images go on my personal hard drive which gets backed up to the aforementioned external backup drive. Plus they are duplicated on the duplicate hard drive I mentioned.
Which brings us to my Newton.
The last time I did a back up was in 1995. Of course, I know why I stopped backing up the Newton . . . hard drive space. Hard drive space was at a premium back then. My main computer was a PowerBook 180c with an external SCSI drive. Both were eventually filled, despite archiving to floppies and Zip disks. Why I didn't back up to a Zip disk, I don't know. Perhaps I had a backup stored on one of the "click of death" Zip disks, but I doubt it.
So my Newton, the 100 model, has been living on borrowed time. I knew I should back up, but I know why I didn't . . .
1) Way back when, the PowerBook 180c was my only option for backup, and its hard drive was full.
2) Later, the Zip drive became unreliable.
So, that's why I didn't backup way back when. I should have in more recent years. My more modern excuse is that the PowerBook 180c died five years ago.
I have carried my Newton with me almost every day for the past 25 years, probably since I got it. There were long periods where it didn't get used, but I still had it. Still kept replacing the batteries.
It developed the problem where it shuts down immediately after powering up. There's a fix, and I have the instructions but have been lax on doing it. I wanted to practice taking a non-functional Newton apart first before messing with the one that works.
I finally obtained one last year.
There's no shortage of projects, however. The last major project was replacing the display on my MacBook Pro. That was scary since that's my main machine.
In the last year or so, I got my Quadra 800 running with a SCSI2SD drive in it. Why I never thought to use it to back up my Newton, I don't know.
Earlier this year, maybe last year, I made the fatal error. The inside of the battery case had gotten damaged by the AAA batteries leaking. I kept meaning to get rechargeables, but there was always something else taking priority. So, the second time in recent years that the batteries leaked, I removed them, kept them out. I did not want to risk ruining my Newton.
I would get rechargeables and then I shouldn't have to worry about leakage anymore. I could get two sets and swap them out as needed, always keeping a set charged.
If I knew the Newton required live batteries to retain its memory, I had long since forgotten. If I had remembered that, I would have kept batteries in it. I would have checked more frequently to make sure they hadn't gone dead.
Instead, I removed them.
A couple weeks ago, I spotted a Newton keyboard on eBay for a reasonable price. It was a keyboard that was supposed to work on the 100. So I snapped it up. It arrived last Monday. I was excited to try it out.
I got my Newton out and plugged it in.
That's when I learned of the disaster.
The 2032 battery had gone dead.
All the data from the past 24 years was gone.
There's no way to recover it.
I desperately searched my archive disks, hoping I had made a backup I'd forgotten about. No such luck.
There was a note on there of sentimental value that I wanted to keep. Gone. On the plus side, I have a copy of its contents that I typed out on my iPad four years ago, along with another note from the Newton. I try to convince myself those were the only worthwhile things on the Newton, that if there was anything else worth saving, I would have typed them out too.
I hope that's true, but not knowing for sure is a real kicker.
The last back up? Two days before that first note. Yep, had I done the backup two days later, it would have been saved. Why didn't I do a backup?
Yes, I still have the content, but I really wanted to have a copy as it originally was on the Newton.
Even if I couldn't backup to the PowerBook, I could have taken pictures. I have photos of blank pages on the Newton. Yes, I took pictures of freakin' blank pages but not the meaningful stuff. Why was I so stupid?
There are things that I think might have been on there, but I don't know for sure. One is particularly important--it may not even have been on there--it might be just a sense of panic making me think maybe it was on there. I keep trying to convince myself if it had been on there, I would have typed that out on my iPad too. I don't know. Now I can't check.
It gets worse. There's a 2MB memory card in there. I thought it was full--it's where most of the apps were kept--but there was free space on there. Each time I turned the Newton on, there was an option to backup to card. If I had tapped backup button, everything would have been saved. Why did I never tap the button? Because I thought the card was full? Why didn't I let curiosity get the better of me and just tap the button? There was room. Everything would have been saved.
Most of the time, especially in recent years, I used the Newton more for playing games like Tic Tac Toe than anything else, so there wasn't a lot on there. It's just not knowing what was there that's the kicker.
It gets worse.
In looking for backups and the original install packages for apps, I discovered I had a 4MB flash card too. Why the heck hadn't I used that? I had the slim hope that maybe, just maybe, I had backed up to it. I found it this morning. Fingers crossed . . . but no. It had two books on it. Plenty of space. The 2MB card had space available--I could have stored everything on it and the Newton on the 4MB card. Plenty of room for backup or for storing new material on the card. Why the heck did I never do that?
I should note here that the date of the one note I wanted to save and the date of the last backup are the same, so there is the possibility I thought that note was backed up. But the note was written two days after the blank note page had been created, so no. But maybe I thought it had been saved and maybe the reason I hadn't felt an urgency to do the backup is because there wasn't anything critical on there. Maybe the two notes I re-typed on my iPad where the only ones worthwhile, the only ones I thought I would miss if something happened to the Newton. Maybe the other things I think *might* have been on there weren't.
I can vaguely remember looking through stuff and maybe I didn't think it critical to save, except for what I re-typed on my iPad.
That's a possibility. A lot of the stuff was old. Maybe the stuff I copied was all I really needed, all I thought would be missed. Maybe the stuff I worry might have been on there wasn't.
But now I'll never know.
The bottom line is that hard drive space is relatively cheap these days. Find a way to back stuff up, even if it's not important because if you lose it, you might not remember if it was important or not and have no way to check.
Also, if anyone has a time machine, I'd like to borrow it. I have a good idea of times when and where the Newton was left unattended, so I could easily slip in and backup to that 4MB card I have.
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