In order to fix the recent date related problem with the Apple Newton, the first question is how to actually develop any fix. Since I’m suspecting that the problem is related to the Y2010 problem, the starting point would be the patch 711000, making the tooling setup a bit more complex.
Patch 711000 consists of a bunch of ARM assembly files, an MPW makefile and three Newton Toolkit packages. If it were only for the assembly files, the modern tool chain brought in with mosrun would work, but the NTK packages are slightly more problematic. In that sense, the options for working with the patch are:
- MacOS Classic capable hardware: Either a PowerPC machine with MacOS X, or to go full retro, a 68k or PowerPC Mac (old enough to still run MacOS 8/9). In the latter category, I still have two G4 Cubes. In the former category, I used to have a Quadra 610, but that is long gone, and I doubt sorting out the connectivity issues would be fun.
- An emulated 68k Mac, using BasiliskII: Not very user friendly, but very close to the actual hardware.
- Using modern tools: Compiling the assembly files using mosrun, and packaging using tnkt. This is probably the most future proof setup.
The target will be Einstein, it allows for a very quick development cycle, and it can also bring some deeper insights into running code if needed.
In the end, I think I’ll go with BasiliskII for now since I’ve used that before with Blunt related work. But the other two options are interesting as well, especially reviving the G4 Cubes would be nice!