PowerBook 140 + Newton MessagePad + Huge Box of Floppies

[Mike Richardson]

PowerBook 140

Newton MessagePad (original model)

Huge box of floppies

Traded an AirPort card. Met him in a Fry's parking lot.

Unfortunately, either everything broke after he gave the stuff to me, or maybe he was trying to pull a fast one on me. He didn't question that the AirPort card worked, so I never questioned that the PowerBook 140 worked or that the Newton worked.

I bought batteries and put them in the Newton and it refused to turn on. No matter what I did. So I tried the PowerBook 140 next, which came with 2 AC adapters and a car charger. It chimes fine, but the screen is just these random lines. Sometimes if you touch it the right way you can see a question mark disk but there's lines all over it and it's unusable. The hard drive is shot and makes the click of death noise.

So I drive to a RadioShack and pay like $37 for an AC adapter for the Newton. Bam, now it works - WTF? But only on the AC adapter. I put all new batteries but it won't use them. And the clock is totally f*cked up. For every real second, the Newton's clock goes ahead several minutes.

The box of floppies is real though. There must be over one hundred different software titles on these disks. Everything from Claris, to Microsoft, to games, System 7.5 on floppies, weird personal backups, you name it. At least 200 or 300 floppies.

My theory on the Newton is that it has a power switch problem explained in the Newton FAQ where it gets corroded or some crap, and AC adapters work while batteries don't.

 

[tomlee59]

The PB140 is probably easily fixed. The 1xx series PBs are infamous for somewhat flaky LCD connector behavior. Often, it suffices simply to pull out the flex cable, and then reinsert it. The connector that usually causes this problem is in the lid, not in the base, so you'll need to undo the screws that hold the lid halves together.

The HD is a different matter, of course, but first things first. Get the display working stably, and then you'll be able to see what's going on. Then get yourself a good boot floppy and see if the HD is salvageable with a good reformat.

As for the Newton's clock problem, it may have been dropped at some point, cracking the quartz crystal used by the clock. Cracked crystals oscillate faster than nominal, causing the clocks to run fast, just as in your case. I've never popped open a Newton, so I don't know if this is a good theory. If you do open it up, look for a crystal marked with the digits 32768 (or a subset/rounded version of same). Most (but not all) clocks use a 32.768kHz crystal (because that's the 15th power of 2, making it easy to get a pulse per second by using a chain of 15 dividers), so if you see one, that might be the culprit. The good news is that if you do see one, it's easily replaced by one scavenged from almost every other computer motherboard and wristwatch on the planet.

I agree that the AC vs. battery issue is easily solved, so a little work should get it up and running on both power sources.

 

[funkytoad]

Yay Floppys!