If you're talking about dongles and Newtons, you could be talking about one of two things: the serial dongle for the [[MP2x00]], or a dongle for a PCMCIA Ethernet card.
The serial dongle looks like this: <http://www2.sunrem.com/partgifs/922-2971.gif]. It is usually required for connecting a [[MP2x00]] via serial or [[LocalTalk]] to a desktop PC or printer. It is required because the 2x00 has a custom connector (known as the [[InterConnectPort]]) instead of the usual old-school Mac serial connector. The vast majority of Newton serial cables are designed to plug into the Mac serial connection (a [[MiniDIN]]-8), not the [[InterConnectPort]>. So Apple shipped a dongle with every 2x00 in order to bridge the gap.
![http://www2.sunrem.com/partgifs/922-2971.gif]](http://www2.sunrem.com/partgifs/922-2971.gif%5D){kind=link}
There are some cables that have the [[InterConnectPort]] built right in. If you buy one of these, you don't need a dongle (give it to someone who needs it!)
An Ethernet dongle is a short (3" / 7.5cm) cable that is needed for many PCMCIA network cards. It allows the card to mate with common network cable with RJ45 (twisted-pair) or BNC (thinnet) connectors. RJ45 is much more common - it looks like a phone jack, but with eight wires instead of four.
Certain Ethernet cards use XJacks instead - these allow for RJ45 connectors to plug right into the card via a pop-out connector.
[[HardWare]]