Wow...that's uncanny...You know, I had the almost
exact same conversation with Pretec...They were really
big on the linear memory cards (they even gave me one
for free to "beta") They were trying to get the ATA
card to replace the linear flash because the obvious
cost of the ATA cards makes it attractive...Then I
remember several months of talking with them, they
decided to not persue the issue anylonger because the
market for linear memory devices just wasn't big
enough to warrant the development necessary to make it
work...in otherwords, the bean counters stuck their
fingers in the pie and shelved the project (hmmm, if
we can save $.50 for each chip, for $4 less total cost
per unit, and there is a linear memory market of
500,000...that's a savings of $2,000,000...Not enough
money to warrant R&D expenditures..just tell them it's
not possible and we will raise the cost of the linear
cards to compensate...) <of course the above is PURE
fantasy, but that's what goes through my mind>
Ed
web/gadget guru
--- Bob Frasure <design7@home.com> wrote:
> I remember talking with SanDisc (in summer '99), the
> company that makes
> these various flash ram cards, they had type II PC
> cards at sizes around
> 160megs + with them. At the time I had my Newton
> with me and I asked them
> if I could put one into my Newton and they said no,
> it was the ATA
> standard and the Newton used an old standard. He
> said they have mac
> people working there and they've honestly tried
> getting these cards to
> work with the Newton but with no success. He says
> that a few of the
> Sandisc people went into Apple and were working with
> them... actually I
> wish I knew why since I've seen no progress from it
> - no devices have
> been made that use compactflash or even the
> postage-stamp size flash ram,
> nor have I see any PDAs released etc.
>
> My whole take on this is there must be links out
> there to people who can
> help, maybe sandisc may have info on how their cards
> work and maybe even
> have further documentation on what can be done to
> adapt. Personally
> knowing how complex and non-standard flash ram is, I
> wonder if it can be
> done on the Newton - but I said that with
> emulators.. of course we're
> talking a much larger audience base there.
> The newton group is very small, progress is directly
> related. Has anyone
> seen any real breakthroughs lately? All I've seen is
> the breaking of reg.
> code for old newton software.
> Seriously a cheap color MP3 playing winCE is the
> perfect tool to have fun
> with (even fits in your shirt pocket) and a Newton
> is perfect for what it
> was made for - an enhanced planner, notetaker,
> assistant, mini-game
> player and book. just don't get the 2 mixed up.
> We were all blessed by Apple with extreme amounts of
> power in our Newt2k
> but cursed with the lacking ability to harness it.
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This month's NewtonTalk brought to you by:
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