EMate 300

The eMate 300 is a designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer to the education market as a low-cost  running the Newton operating system. It was the only Newton device with a built-in keyboard.

Release
The eMate was announced on October 28, 1996 and went on sale on March 7, 1997 for 799. It was discontinued along with the rest of the Newton product line and its operating system on February 27, 1998.

Features
The eMate 300 featured a 6.8" 480x320 resolution 16-shade grayscale display with ing,, , and standard Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports. The keyboard was roughly 85% the size of a standard "full size" keyboard.

Power came from built-in rechargeable, which lasted up to 28 hours on full charge. In order to achieve its low price, the eMate 300 did not have all the features of the contemporary Newton equivalent, the MessagePad 2000. The eMate used a 25 MHz ARM 710a RISC processor and had less RAM than the MessagePad 2000 which used a StrongARM 110 RISC processor and was more expandable.

Expansion
Unlike the MessagePad line, the eMate 300 featured an internal memory expansion slot. It was located in the hatch under the battery door, next to the ROM card. Both cards fit into both slots, but the ROM card was larger. The expansion card is on the left. Companies like Newertech produced cards for the eMate. Most cards expanded the data bus from 16 bits to 32 bits, as well as providing additional DRAM (program memory), and flash (storage). When one of these cards was installed, the internal DRAM was disabled, but the internal flash RAM is combined with the flash on the card. For example: If a memory card were to have 4 MB of DRAM and 2 MB of flash, the Newton would report having 4 MB of flash, and 4 MB of DRAM, not 5 MB of DRAM.

In addition to the expansion slot, the eMate also featured a single non-CardBus PCMCIA slot. It could be used for a number of different cards, including modems, ethernet cards, wireless cards, bluetooth cards, and flash memory (linear and ATA/Compact Flash).

Design
The eMate 300 featured a green-colored translucent durable designed for intense use in s. The eMate 300 featured a dark green-colored  similar to that of PowerBooks of the era. Purple, clear, red, and orange colored eMate s were produced for show only and were never put into.

Articles

 * Apple Gets An 'A' by Stephen H. Wildstrom at BusinessWeek (1997-04-24, archived 1997-06-17)
 * eMate 300 (review) by Tom Maddox at STREETtech (1997-10-24, archived 1998-02-15)
 * eMate 300 (review) by Michael Flaminio at Insanely Great Mac (1998-02-24, archived 1998-06-14)
 * eMate: Technology that never had a chance by Dylan Tweney at Salon 21st (1998-03-17, archived 2002-11-17)
 * Apple eMate 300 (Blast From The Past) Review by Mike Riegel at the Gadgeteer (2002-03-22)
 * Newton eMate 300 As A Serial Terminal by Blake Patterson at BYTECellar (2007-09-11)

Tutorials

 * How to disassemble an Apple eMate by Frank Gruendel at PDA Soft (2007-02-22)
 * How to rebuild an Apple eMate battery pack (2007-02-22)
 * Getting a replacement eMate display cable (2007-02-22)
 * Repairing eMate Hinges and Display Cable by Joel M. Sciamma at Inventors Emporium (2002)
 * eMate Overclock and Other eMate Hardware Hacks by Stephanie Maksylewich (archived 2008-05-15)