Author Archives: admin

Newton 2100 on the web!

I managed to connect my Newton 2100 to the Internet yesterday (using a 3Com 3C589D Ethernet card). Copied the network settings from my laptop into the setup on the Newton, connected the Ethernet and fired up Courier. It all works quite well (actually much better than I expected). The next step is to try Email and perhaps some RSS news feeds…

Tonight I will attempt to setup my 300MHz G3 Server with Mac OS X 10.2, a PCI USB 2.0 card and a 250GB external USB drive. Unsure of how much RAM I will add to it however I will be upgrading the 10Base-T on-board Ethernet with an Apple 10/100Base-T PCI card. The plan is to use this machine as an FTP server for backups of photos/files/music. Once it is set up I will use VNC to manage it (Vine Server for the server and Chicken of the VNC for the client).

RetroChallenge Step #4 (final)

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The RetroChallenge has finished. Check out retrochallenge.net for the results. Due to work commitments (and spending a fair amount of time away from my retro-collection) my involvement was negligible. Thanks to dale and the crew for putting this on. I may have to arrange annual leave for the next one…

RetroChallenge Step #3

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Due to work commitments my involvement in the RetroChallenge has been somewhat limited. I had great plans but little spare time. I now have 2 days at home to see what I can come up with. I will probably focus on developing something for the Newton. Stay tuned…

Short-beaked Echidna

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I saw a Short-beaked Echidna on the road to East Intercourse Island in Dampier yesterday. I slowed down and made sure the oncoming truck saw it as well. It was larger than I expected and walked across the road quite quickly. For those that don’t know this is the animal that is on the Australian 5c coin. No photos unfortunately.

RetroChallenge Step #2

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Installed all of the drivers required for adding a PCMCIA Ethernet card to my Newton 2100. Followed these instructions. Transferred the files from my work PC to the PowerBook using a floppy disk (how retro). Haven’t tried connecting to anything yet but it should be OK. One thing of note is that while inserting a modem card causes the Newton to alert you that a communications card is installed, inserting the Ethernet card does not. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

[Edit: According to this site, this behavior is normal as I have 3Com Ethernet card].

Also took some time to set the PowerBook 190cs up a bit better – cleared out incompatible Control Panels and Extensions.

Remote RetroChallenge

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Back in Dampier again for work – carrying a fair amount of retro Mac gear. In my luggage I have my PowerBook G4 (12″ 1GHz /768MB / 40GB/Combo Drive), my rebuilt PowerBook 190cs (16MB / 500MB with a few 5300 parts) and my Newton 2100 with various cards and adapters. This is on top of my work kit and PC laptop (which is not light). Needless to say my bags were flagged with the Qantas “heavy” label…

My first task is to get Ethernet working on the Newton and connect it to the G4 (this looks like a good guide). Then I will have a hack at developing a bit for the Newton using the 190cs (Newton development tools are installed). Later I will try writing some software for the Mac (System 6 and up hopefully). I have done this before with some success.

Stay tuned for more…

Mega-update

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I was spending a lot of time working up north (away from home) so I decided to take two weeks off. Spent last week travelling the south-west of WA (staying at Wagin with family and at Cheynes Beach Caravan Park). This week will be spent sorting out things at home and doing some coding (for both my masters and the RetroChallenge).

Olivia has started crawling (well sort of) and is much more vocal and animated. Cameron had a great time down south and can now climb ladders (with ease) and loves slides. He also likes puddles (we bought him some gumboots while we were away). Kylie and I enjoyed the time away (although it was very cold). I will post more updates later (photos and bird lists – Cheynes Beach was great again – I heard the Noisy Scrub-bird finally!).

Two books from eBay arrived while we were away – Volumes I and II of the Macintosh C Programming Primer. Both are great books that outline how to program ToolBox based software for the Mac using Think C. Should be fun.

Bought a handheld GPS while we were away – a Magellan eXplorist 300 – haven’t used it a lot yet but planning to. It has a temperature sensor, a digital compass (seperate from the GPS), a barometer and an altimeter. It will come in handy on birding trips.

Zebra Finch Behaviour

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I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon chasing a reasonably large flock of Zebra Finches (about 100 birds in total) around the dunes and rocks near the Dampier beach. Every time I disturbed the flock (they appeared to be feeding) they moved a few hundred metres away and stopped again to feed. There seemed to always be one or two birds that performed “sentry” duties, perching on a nearby branch watching for danger (me in this case). If I could avoid being seen by the “sentry” finch I could generally get close enough to have a chance of taking photographs.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour?