Old Hardware Emulated :Einstein emulating the Apple Newton (Part 2)

 

NewtonOS in action!

Einstein
With the last article focusing on the Apple Newton in context, this one will focus on Einstein, the NewtonOS emulator.  As mentioned from the previous article, Einstein is a free, open-source program that emulates the Apple Newton MessagePad and eMate hardware. Like most emulators,  this one doesn't come with the file dumps of the system ROM files, as they are intellectual property of Apple. However, the retail system ROMS can be dumped from a actual Newton device or found on Google if one searches hard enough. Also, the debugging ROMS used by software developers were openly distributed back in the day through the Lantern DDK that was made publicly made available by Apple. The Lantern DDK can be found at the UNNA (United Network of Newton Archives), which has been linked below. One thing to note is that the Windows port can only use the debug ROMS. However, these files will NOT work with the Android release of the emulator. 

There doesn't seem to be any newer builds of the Windows port of the Einstein emulator, other than what was found at the Macintosh Garden. The program has been constantly updated for other platforms, and is officially supported on MacOS, iOS, and Ubuntu. The Windows and Android hasn't gotten that much love or attention. The Windows port found on the Macintosh Garden uses the publicly available debug ROM's. 

I had not have any luck running Einstein on anything later than XP. I haven't tested the emulator on 32-bit Windows 7 though. It does NOT like 64-bit Windows 7. Einstein launches, but when it starts loading the ROM, it crashes. I did originally set up the emulator on my IBM Thinkpad running Windows XP with SP3. This is where these screenshots came from. I also gotten Einstein running successfully on a VMware Player VM running XP SP3 as well. The following files need to be in one folder/directory: 717006.aif, 717006.rex, and Einstein.rex. The rex file act as essentially as a ROM loader/driver whereas the 717006.aif is the debug ROM image. In the setup program, point the ROM file to the location of the 717006.aif file. I left the emulator at the default 8MB's of RAM. The emulator conforms the device to a screen resolution of 320 by 480 pixels. It takes a little bit of time for Einstein to load. The Newton boot screen comes up with the sketchpad loading up thereafter.



It took awhile to understand the basics of NewtonOS. The first PDA OS I used was PalmOS on the IBM Workpad C500, so any retro handheld platform outside of PalmOS is foreign territory to me. Despite the learning curve, I was able to understand this system really quickly. 

Click the icons at the bottom row brings up the various programs and drawers. For example, the "Extras" icon serves as the application launcher. Various programs programs and utilities that come with the Newton can be launched from there, including the system setup and configuration. The calculator, clock, formulas, and various other utilities can be found there as well. Often, when one loads programs onto the Newton, either real or emulated, the program icons will often be stored in "Extras". 
The Formulas program is like the Swiss Army Knife of conversion programs. It can do most mathematical formulas as well and perform currency conversions as well. Very useful for international users that travel between different countries.

Final Thoughts
I found the NewtonOS interface very interesting and intuitive. The Apple developers really did there research when it came to the design of the user interface. As someone who used Palm constantly back in the day, using NewtonOS for the first time felt weird and awkward at first. After getting use to it though, one realizes that the interface is quite powerful. The applications that came bundled with it were simple, but yet quite useful, especially the Formulas program. The Names/Contact program felt like a HyperCard Stack running on a Macintosh Classic.

Even though Palm got the lions share of software developers once that platform became popular, there were many worthwhile applications that were released for NewtonOS, and the platform did develop a active 3rd party scene. Many of these programs are still hosted on the UNNA servers online. A lot of this software will be explored when I cover the Android port of the emulator, which will be the basis of the next article.
Articles of Interest
Apple Newton - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
MessagePad - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad

Einstein NewtonOS emulator- https://github.com/pguyot/Einstein

United Network of Newton Archives - http://unna.dillernet.com/

United Network of Newton Archives  (Publicly Available Debug ROMS for Windows Release, WON'T work on Android)   - http://unna.dillernet.com/view.php?/apple/development/DDKs

Getting Einstein running on your Mac : Newton Poetry - http://newtonpoetry.com/tag/rom/

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