Patch day

Patch day

The Newton’s [Y2010 problem ](/Pages/Newton Year 2010 Problem) would best be solved with a low level patch which kicks in very early in the boot process. I have played around now for a while with the patching mechanisms, and got a nice pile of information gathered. I got a great start with the work done by Kip (Jonathan Knight), who reverse engineered the original 717260 patch by Apple and uploaded it to UNNA.

I created some test patches, and while it is a bit complicated, I was able to add new code to an existing patch, patch previously unpatched functions, remove patches completely, and change existing NewtonScript functions. In the process, I managed to disable one of my Newtons (I patched a function in the startup phase), but that should be reversible by changing the ROM temporarily, that will erase all patches.

2009-02-23