Listen to the music on an Apple Newton

Music
Listen to the music on an Apple Newton

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MAKE Flickr photo pool member MH2 writes – “Retrotronics can be such fun! This is my beloved MP 2100 in its new role as a one on one radio station. What you need to make this happen: the right kind of connectivity between your desktop and your Messagepad. Some storage space and the soft to handle it. Adriano Angelillis’ NewtCast. Any bluetooth dongle / bluetooth headphones combination understanding each other properly (the dongle must dingle with the Newtcast’s socket of course). Then you can do your dishes grooving to music narrowcast from the 2100. And it’s up to ten meters away, safe from the water, not impairing your agility by its considerable heft. It’s true. You wouldn’t expect Dolby surround 5.1 by a setup like this, would you? Good. The Newton Messagepad 2100 was last sold by Apple in 1998. It’s amazing enough it can handle mp3s today (at 22050 Hz mono 32 kbps). You have to balance its and the headphones’ volume carefully to suppress a nagging whine which could otherwise lessen the fun. You do get some kind of faux stereo though – through the headphones’ circuitry which has to deal with an incoming mono signal. Like I said before: It’s all a little bit awkward and nostalgic in more than one respect. Yet we’ve got the power of ten thousand horses. In my kitchen alone.”Link.

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