erco
Senior Member
I've always wanted this geeky iButton ring, a freemium from a Sun Microsystems conference in 1998. Somewhat rare, but still available for $20-30:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/JAVA-RING-VERY-RARE-Sun-Microsystems-JAVA-ONE-Promo-NEW/300495374337 Note these are 22+ years old with no guarantee of functionality. I just got a used one in good shape on Ebay and I'm pleased to report that a Picaxe can still read the serial number out of it just fine. Not sure if it's still writeable. Pretty sweet, since Picaxes can read them with a single READOWSN command: https://picaxe.com/docs/axe109.pdf
Sun Microsystems' JavaRing, manufactured by Dallas Semiconductor, was introduced in 1998 at Sun's huge annual JavaOne Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Instead of a gemstone, the JavaRing contains an inexpensive microprocessor in a stainless-steel iButton running a Java Virtual Machine and preloaded with applets (little application programs) with a built-in Java Card 2.0 specification. Workstations at the conference had "ring readers" installed on them that downloaded information about the user from the conference registration system. This information was then used to enable a number of personalized services. For example, a robotic machine made coffee according to user preferences, which it downloaded when the attendee simply touched the ring to another "ring reader." Data was read from or written to the memory serially through a simple and inexpensive RS232C serial port adapter, which also supplied the power required to perform the I/O. The iButton memory was then read or written with a momentary contact to the "Blue Dot" receptor provided by the adapter.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/JAVA-RING-VERY-RARE-Sun-Microsystems-JAVA-ONE-Promo-NEW/300495374337 Note these are 22+ years old with no guarantee of functionality. I just got a used one in good shape on Ebay and I'm pleased to report that a Picaxe can still read the serial number out of it just fine. Not sure if it's still writeable. Pretty sweet, since Picaxes can read them with a single READOWSN command: https://picaxe.com/docs/axe109.pdf
Sun Microsystems' JavaRing, manufactured by Dallas Semiconductor, was introduced in 1998 at Sun's huge annual JavaOne Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Instead of a gemstone, the JavaRing contains an inexpensive microprocessor in a stainless-steel iButton running a Java Virtual Machine and preloaded with applets (little application programs) with a built-in Java Card 2.0 specification. Workstations at the conference had "ring readers" installed on them that downloaded information about the user from the conference registration system. This information was then used to enable a number of personalized services. For example, a robotic machine made coffee according to user preferences, which it downloaded when the attendee simply touched the ring to another "ring reader." Data was read from or written to the memory serially through a simple and inexpensive RS232C serial port adapter, which also supplied the power required to perform the I/O. The iButton memory was then read or written with a momentary contact to the "Blue Dot" receptor provided by the adapter.
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