I've got a dead eMate 300 which is the only Newton I have ever come into contact with. I got it cheap (£4) on Ebay with no battery and 'Stephen was here!!' scratched into the screen (what a prat). It also had a wobbly space bar.
When plugged into a power supply, the light by the handle comes on green (and stays green) and it flashes the backlight twice a second for a while. That's it. I've found a battery for it and that made no difference. Pressing the reset button just makes it pause before starting the flashing again.
From what I've read so far this is an indication of bad memory, usually caused by a faulty upgrade card, but this eMate has no upgrade card installed. I've reseated the ROM card and cleaned the contacts. It still does it.
Is there anything else I can try or is it dead? I've not opened it up any further than the battery compartment.
I had an eMate with the flashing screen problem once. From what I could gather, there was a bad capacitor somewhere on the mobo. I ultimately let this unit go with another eMate as parts. You may not be able to do much with this thing, especially if you are new to Newtons.
My best suggestion to you is to stow it away for a rainy day and buy one in better/working condition. Use the one you have now for parts and scavenge. This may also be important if the new unit has a damaged video cable - these can run up to $45 for new old stock and new remanufactured cables. You may also need to scavenge the hinges if there is a problem there. As far as the elctronics goes, you might also try the archive at NewtonTalk.net.
Thanks for the advice - I'd pretty much reached the same conclusion but I thought it was worth a shot asking on here in case there was something else I'd missed. I'll definitely try to track a working one down though, this one has me intrigued. It was worth paying the £4 just to see one.
At least the eMate looks pretty enough to be used as a nice ornament...