Stephanie's Other eMate Hardware Hacks

This page will contain some other hacks that I have come up with. I'll add to it as I find other ways to risk the life of my eMate.

Disclaimer and Warning: The information provided below is provided for entertainment purposes. By attempting any modifications to your Newton or eMate you will definately void any remaining warranty you might have, and could destroy your Newton or eMate completely. I am in no way liable or responsible for your actions or how you use the information below, nor am I liable or responsible for any unexpected or undesired results arising from the modifications described on this page. Soldering experience with Surface Mount components is required for some hacks. This is definately not for beginners. You have been warned.

eMate Battery Pack: Try a Tray!

The eMate was designed with a special battery package inside. The package holds 4 NiMH AA size batteries. If your battery no longer holds a charge, you can spend a long time looking for a replacement: the packs seem to have been made out of unobtanium. However, there are some websites out there that illustrate how to dissassemble and refurbish this pack, such as this one at PDA Soft, to keep your eMate running after the original batteries have failed. .

Instead of refurbishing my battery pack when it no longer charged, I thought it would be better with a standard AA battery tray. Then I could put in NiMH AA's, have the eMate recharge them, or even in a pinch slap in some Alkelines if my NiMHs were flat and I didn't have AC power handy.

Click on any of the following pictures for a larger view.

Cut away the plastic at the end here.	Mount battery tray this way.

Make sure the wiring is correct! Positive/Red on the left side of the connector and Negative/Black on the right side of the connector.	The tray is held in place by two small bolts, visible on top here.

After finding a battery tray to hold 4 AA batteries, in the right arrangement, I had to cut away some of the eMate's internal plastic to make it fit. I kept the original wires, thermistor and connector from the eMate battery pack. The positive (red) and negative (black) leads I soldered to the terminals of the AA tray. The thermister I kept intact and positioned it in the tray between the batteries.

The battery tray is held in place by two small bolts and nuts. The bolt heads are visible on the top side of the eMate but they are small and IMHO don't detract from the looks. The tray, by the way, is made of aluminum and was bought from Digi-Key, part number is 192K-ND. The tray is very strong and holds the batteries quite tightly.

This is actually a pretty simple hack I think. You don't have to solder delicate stuff. The risks are more along the lines of physical damage to the eMate when cutting the plastics inside. This is a hack that I think would be good for intermediates, perhaps even some adventurous beginners. Unlike the overclocking mods.

eMate Lid Switch: Useful, or Not?

The eMate has a small switch on the motherboard which senses if the lid is open or closed. So if you are using the eMate, then close the lid, it should instantly go to sleep. And conversely, when you open the eMate it should automatically wake up. There is also a power button to sleep / wake the eMate. And in the Prefs you can set the eMate to go to sleep after a determined amount of inactivity.

I found that my eMate seemed to have some trouble figuring out when to sleep and when to wake, with these three different sets of priorities. Sometimes when it went to sleep from shutting the lid, the batteries seemed to drain way too fast. I also considered that my MP2100 has always worked fine, and it has the power-switch and the sleep-setting, but no lid to contend with. So maybe the eMate would work fine if it didn't have to worry about the lid either...

I found and removed the microswitch from the motherboard, and soldered a pair of jumpers where the switch was, so the eMate will think it's lid is always open. Always. Now it has one less thing to worry about.

The switch is located on the motherboard just to the right of the mini-din serial connector, it is identified as S2. It has six pins. In the above image you can see I have already removed it, and jumpered the top-left pair and the lower-left pair, to trick the eMate into thinking the lid is open all the time. (The wire jumpers did not show up too well on the image, so I've added red highlights so you can see where the jumpers need to go.)

If I now close the lid without turning it off, my eMate will sleep after the pre-determined amount of inactivity. I can also turn it off with the power button. If I open the eMate it won't suddenly come on, until I hit the power button. In other words, the eMate now behaves exactly like my MP2100, as far as power is concerned.

So far, things seem to be working fine. If performance starts to degrade, or if I notice any more improvements, I'll post them here. I have informally 'tested' the battery performance, and it seems to be functioning a great deal better than before.

Update: After well over a year, I have never noticed any degradation in performance on this one, the batteries last consistantly much longer than they did when the switch was intact. Go figure.

This hack requires some delicate work right in the heart of the eMate motherboard. As such, it should be considered difficult, and only for those with intermediate to advanced skills.

Lightin' Up my eMate

My name is Stephanie....and I have a problem. I like flashing lights. Back in the days when I had a Visor, one of the first things I did was install a blinky-light into it. Click here to see my Visor mods. Now I've been using my MP2100 and my eMate for about a year, and at long last, I am putting the blinky-lights in. Here's the process for my eMate.

So there it is. My eMate is illuminated! How did I do it? So glad you asked... It is pretty simple. I just stick a LED in parallel with the serial TX-data line in the Mini-Din port, and a convenient ground. Whenever the serial port is active, the LED is turned on. This does not seem to negatively effect the serial port, I have been able to connect to NCU and NTK Inspector, done backups and installed software through the serial port with this modification in place. As always though, your mileage may vary.

Of course, having a LED is one thing. Making it work, is another. As-is, you can enjoy blinky-light action whenever you use the serial port. That is, docking, or if you use an external modem or use the serial port for other things. See below for a very small, very simple test program that lets you control the blinking.

You can see in the above image, all I have done is added one part. The positive lead of the LED is soldered to the TX-data pin of the Mini-Din connector, and the negative lead of the LED is soldered to Ground, on the empty square copper pad of C107, right next to where it says C100.
The LED I used is a blue super-bright 5mm LED. It draws 20 ma at 3.6 volts. You should be able to use any 3.6 or 5 volt LED here I think. This will put a small extra drain on the battery, but shouldn't be much.

This is a pretty simple modification to do. It does not require soldering teeny things. On the other hand, it requires soldering very close to teeny things, and it does require the complete dissassembly of your eMate and removal of the motherboard, in order to gain access to the area to be worked on. So I'd rate this as 'moderately' difficult.

Here is a small 'test' program that you can use, to make the light go on and off. Whoopeee! Just click the image to download.
Don't worry, I have some much neater stuff in mind. Now that the blinky light is possible, and I know how to control it, it's just a matter of time...

System Patches: Blowing 'em Away.

I purchased my eMate used; when I got it, it had the latest system patch installed already. The eMate had OS 2.1 patch 737246. In most cases this would be considered a good thing. System patches provide useful features and fixes that were missing or lacking in the original product.

Being a tinkerer though, I got curious to see what my Newton devices were like, without their patches. How they would function, and so forth. But how? If there was ever some software from Apple to allow patches to be removed, it never got out to the public, as far as I could tell. You can't erase a patch by a brain-wipe reset. It's in a protected part of Flash memory that is not erased during a brain wipe. Finaly, I came across a note somewhere that you could force a Newton with OS 2.1 to dump a system patch, by replacing the ROM board with another one.

Warning: When I tried this I did not know how dangerous it was and therefore didn't think twice about trying it. Now that you have read this warning and realize the dangers, Murphy dictates that you are in a lot more dangerous position than I was. Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have warned you. On the other hand, I have since learned of at least 2 MP2x00's that have died by the following process, and was told there are more which have succumbed to this.

Patching the eMate should have been easy. I opened my MP2100 up and got the ROM card out of it, popped it in the eMate, applied power. Then removed power, removed the ROM card and replaced the original eMate ROM card into it, and applied power. There was a brief message again, that the internal store had been erased because a different ROM card was used. Then the message went away. Then the screen went dead. Then the eMate went dead.

I waited. I hit the reset button. I hit the power button. I hit the power and reset buttons. I held the reset button for 20 seconds. I removed the battery and unplugged the eMate and left it for 60 minutes. I repeated all of the above. I got nervous.

I finaly left the eMate unplugged and without batteries for 2 long, nervous days. Then I applied power.

Gods be praised, it started up!

The eMate, without a system patch, now identifies itself as OS version 2.2.00 which seems a little strange at first. Then I notice that on the ROM card, the two ROM chips are silkscreened 'V2.2'. Hmmm.

Other than this 'cosmetic' change, the eMate's Frames Heap is in the same boat as the MP2100: Unpatched, the Frames Heap is down to 250K, where it used to be 500K. (This is for eMates with the Upgrade card. Emates without, would be unaffected.) As with my MP2100, I have not found much difference with the smaller Frames Heap. So I'm going to leave my eMate without its patch. And hey, now I have a 'rare' and 'unusual' eMate with the mysterious NOS 2.2.00! Lucky me.

About that 'Mystery' version 2.2.00...

The eMate's ROM differs from that of the MP2x00 in that the eMate has Newton Works in ROM, and it also has a few packages that are unique to the education market (Teacher Setup, etc.). The eMate also has a built-in keyboard, which is unique among Newtons.

My theory, and this is only a theory, is that when the eMate ROM was burned, someone decided to number it OS 2.2. After all, it is a different ROM than the 2.1 ROMs, it has some new features and things. But, before eMates started shipping, someone else realized that as soon as a Newton OS 2.2 'hits the street' all those people with MP2x00's are going to start demanding an upgrade to NOS 2.2 as well. However, you can't go and add stuff into their ROMs and to 'patch' Works in would take about 200K of storage; the 'patch' would be unwieldy. So, before the eMates left the factory, Apple quickly added a system patch 737041, which changes the ROM string back to OS 2.1. According to the FAQ, that system patch was created in February 1997 - Over a month and a half before the eMates were released in April 1997!