Re: More Zoomer experiences
Anthony J Stieber <starnet!apple!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!anthony>
From: Anthony J Stieber <starnet!apple!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!anthony>
Message-id: <9310240657.AA00920@csd4.csd.uwm.edu>
Subject: Re: More Zoomer experiences
To: zoomer-list-1993@grot.starconn.com
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1993 01:57:35 -0500 (CDT)
In-reply-to: <9310220106.AA10242@apple.com> from "Mike "Ford" Ditto" at Oct 21, 93 07:34:00 pm
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-> From: ford@usl.com (Mike "Ford" Ditto)
[from someone else]
-> > * I stuck a Newton PCMCIA card in my Zoomer, and it politely told me
-> > the card was incompatible! What is different? Aren't they all
-> > the same?
What sort of Newton card was it? A SRAM card would probably work, but
a flash memory card may not. The standards for PCMCIA SRAM are well
established (although there are problems), but flash memory can be
either Intel style (used by Apple), or SunDisk style (used by almost
everyone else). The two are mutually incompatible. This problem
arose in part because Intel ran into flash memory production problems
and so SunDisk ended up shipping in much higher quantity sooner. For
a while Intel wasn't shipping any flash memory.
-> I plugged a TDK PCMCIA modem into my Tandy Z-PDA and got a similar
-> response. I called Tandy support and was told that only Zoomer
-> certified PCMCIA cards will work, and that there are no known Zoomer
-> certified cards at this time. Humph! So much for the new universal
-> hardware standard.
Modems and other I/O devices are problematic as they often need special
device drivers. The machine probably checked to see if the card were
SRAM or the right kind of flash memory and when it appeared to be
neither it produced an error message.
I haven't seen any official confirmation that the machine has a PCMCIA
2.0 slot anyway.
-> The serial port uses the same connector as the Zeos PPC and the Olivetti
-> Quaderno, but not the same pin assignment as either. Just what I need,
-> a third set of indistinguishable but incompatibile cables.
How about one cable and a few little boxes to swap the right lines
around (or one box with a switch)?
--
<-:(= Anthony Stieber anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony