For me to post a "for sale" listing for hard drives with OpenStep pre-installed on them?
Thanks to the HD with NS 3.3 pre-loaded that I bought from russianmountain, and the assistance of others here on the forum, I have succesfully gotten my TCS up and running and would like to be able to offer something to help others.
I have some really nice 2.2GB 7200 rpm Quantum Atlas II drives that I have now succesfully installed OpenStep 4.2 onto. They are considerably quicker, quieter and cooler than the old Seagate Baracudas! These are 68pin drives so they need a SCSI adapter but are otherwise plug & play.
What say ye?
Thats a tough one, but technically probably no, even if you were providing it as a "service" for those with black hardware needing a new drive. The problem is that OPENSTEP apparently never came pre-installed on black hardware from NeXT, so would have required purchase of upgrade media.
Personally I do not have a real problem with it, as long as we are talking black hardware, but as with everything in life others will have different feelings about it.
When Apple was doing the y2k thing they were giving away OS 4.2 install disc sets to users of black hardware. IIRC, you called them up and they asked if you wanted 3.3 or 4.2 and they sent it to you. I actually managed to get both (yes I had both 3.2 and 4.? at the time). The only thing they required of me was the serial # off of my slab. I ended up with:
on cd;
NS 3.3 for Intel & NeXT
NS 3.3 for SPARC and PA-RISC
NS Developer for N,I,S,P
EOF 1.1 for N,I,S,P
3.3 Y2K updater
OS 4.2 for MACH
OS Developer for MACH
OS Enterprise
OS 4.2 Y2K updater
on floppy;
NS 3.3 NeXT install
NS 3.3 Intel install
NS 3.3 driver disk
OS 4.2 NeXT install
OS 4.2 Intel install
OS 4.2 driver disk
I really got the feeling that Apple found it cheaper to just give it away to whoever asked than go through a huge verification process. I'm pretty sure the request for the serial # request was to avoid one person repeatedly getting sets of discs from them and then selling them off. I would venture to guess that Apple probably has better things to do with it's time than worry about someone on ebay selling OS 4.2 pre-installed on a hard drive. I would bet that they are much more concerned about people selling Leopard pre-installed.
If I ran the world, NS/OS would be legally declared abandonware and put into public domain, as well as any other software that has not been sold for more than seven years. Of course I don't run the world, but if I did...
-steve