Man am I glad I found this place!!
Background.... Traded some misc. non working, surplus NeXT stuff that I had picked up from a school district sale, to Black Hole Inc for a Color Turbo Station with OS 4.2 installed along with an OS 4.2 CD and Boot floppies around 2000. Together with the parts I kept from the surplus sale I had a complete working system! Turbo Slab with OS 4.2 ,17" color monitor, sound box, ADB keyboard & mouse and it all worked just great.
I have moved several times in the last couple of years so the NeXT has been sitting in storage. I pulled it out a couple of weeks back and set it up, hit the power button and could hear the HD spinning up, seeking etc.. but no image on the Screen??? I did a force shutdown a number of times (5/8/11? not sure) before I decided that the problem was probably the monitor and put everything back away while I looked for a new one. I got lucky and found someone locally with aworking NeXT 21" color monitor that I picked up for free!!! Brought it home and set everything up again. monitor lights up nice and bright but now the HD won't spin up at all! I have tried a couple of tricks on the old HD but no love it's dead...
I have a couple of SCSI drives so I figure no problem I'll put one of them in and start from scratch but I have never done a system install on the NeXT and here is where I am now. I have the TCS setup with 32MB of RAM and a 2GB Seagate ST32550N installed. An Apple 600i SCSI External CD-ROM drive is connected with the appropriate cable and the OpenStep 4.2 CD loaded inside. When I start up the TCS I get a nice bright screen and the Testing Hardware message and then no matter what I do, no matter what key combo I try, it goes to a "Loading from Network" screen and there it sit's. I have tried starting up both with and without the boot floppy installed and get the same results. No manner of keyboard voodoo sill get it into the ROM.
So, what am I doing wrong?
How do I get the computer to see the installer CD?
Will I need to reformat the hard drive? (IIRC currently HFS+)
I also have another Seagate drive from the original batch of NeXT stuff, an ST1480N that I could use as well. It spins up and all but I get the same boot sequence so I'm assuming it was wiped before being sold...
HELP!!!!
Aloha, Ken
Id start with command ~
that should bring you to a prompt....
From there you can play various boot games...
Funny thing, I just turned on my cube, and the monitor now works!
Quote from: "neozeed"Id start with command ~
that should bring you to a prompt....
I tried this and it seems to just ignore my keyboard input and continues on to the "loading from network" prompt.
Perhaps a bad ADB cable or Keyboard??
Everything seemed to be working before with the dead monitor...
Glad your Cube is alive and kicking!!
Hmm now that does sound like a bad keyboard... During the post does the shiftlock key light up?
I think my cube wasn't working video wise for it being cold..
Also the first 2 power ups didn't boot because of the disks acting odd...
Try leaving it 'on' for an hour, then cycling it.
I don't think so, I'll watch it when I get home tonight and see.
If it is bad can I use a Mac ADB keyboard instead??
Sorry about the multiple replies! I kept getting a server error notice when I tried to reply.
Quote from: "Harbourmaster"
Sorry about the multiple replies! I kept getting a server error notice when I tried to reply.
This is the error message:
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Hello.
Yes, You can try a Mac keyboard and indeed You should. In case this one doesn't accept any keyboard input, too I don't think that it is a problem of broken hardware.
I had the same problem as You described with my Turbo Color Station along with ADB hardware and a 21" Display and this wasn't caused by the keyboard but the wrong ROM version of the Station. So You should open Your box and have a look on that ROM chip. If it doesn't read
"Rev 3.3 v74"
I don't think the keyboard inputs will be accepted. Thanks to Nitro (have a look here:
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=785&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15) I could solve that problem.
J
Jenne
Thanks for the info.
Yes my ROM is the 3.3 v74 version
I did not get a chance to do anything with the slab last night but should have some time this evening.
Yahoo It's alive!
Thanks to Jeanne
I hooked up a Mac ADB keyboard and was quickly able to get into the ROM monitor! Once I setup the jumpers on a 2 GB Seagate ST32550n drive and attached a Zip drive to the exteranl SCSI chain to provide termination power I was able to boot from my OS 4.2 CD! It initialiazed the hard drive without trouble and went straight through the full install process without a hitch!! YES!
Now the next thing to so is start downloading application files, Omniweb etc and start installing them too. Can I use the Zip drive to do this easily bringing files over from my Mac or is there a "better" way???
Looks like I will need to be lurking on eBay for a new ADB NeXT keyboard...
Where are you located? I have a NeXT ADB keyboard I'd be happy to send it out for cost of shipping. I'll take a picture of it tonight and post it so you can see if it is what you are looking for.
-Mike
Quote from: "Harbourmaster"Yahoo It's alive!
.....
Now the next thing to so is start downloading application files, Omniweb etc and start installing them too. Can I use the Zip drive to do this easily bringing files over from my Mac or is there a "better" way???
I'd use the network.. It's plenty easy.