What is this about?
Before the real fun starts, maybe some introductory words are in order… this web log is intended to document my successful and unsuccessful attempts at hacking the Apple Newton MessagePad. The Newton is indeed a strange beast, its latest incarnation (the MP2100) so far ahead of the time when it was axed that it is still fascinating to develop for it.
But as you will see from this log, fascination often turns into frustration, mostly caused by the lack of proper development documentation. And then it is time to fire up a hex editor, a hex calculator, the Hammer debugger, dig into ancient issues of the Newton Tech Journal, scan UNNA for example code, look at Usenet posts that will soon be over a decade old and hope that at the end of the day, there is a cold beer in the fridge to stop the madness…
PS: In case you wonder, the word mottek comes from a certain German dialect which was spoken by who you could most closely describe as vagabounds. It means hammer.