Hello! I am completely new to NeXT hardware but have been a fan from afar for a few years. I have alot of questions, so if someone could point me to a good begging next tut so I can get used to the terminology I would appreciate it. Anyway, yesterday I walk in to an antique store and there sits a working nextstation for $25 complete with keyboard and monitor (no mouse). The lady was selling it cheap because she didn't know the user or pass, but I quickly solved that with a tutorial found on these forums. So I was wondering, how do I navigate around the sys with no mouse? I use the keyboard shortcuts I use on my mac but obviously those can go only so far. I cant even find the version of this machine (I do not remember the terminal command for that). Coincidentally if anyone wants to get rid of a mouse...... Anyway, I have a lot more questions, but I'm going to search around a bit first. Thanks for any info.
Hi! Welcome to the Forums and the world of NeXT :D
First off - Wow! nice find :) I paid $300 for my first machine...
Second - to get the specs of the machine from the terminal, use the command "hostinfo". It will print out the system software version and the specs of the computer.
and thirdly - If it is an ADB based NeXT, you can use any old Mac mouse without issue. If its a Non-ADB system... I'm not sure. Mice for those are kinda hard to find from what I've seen.
Thanks!
Apparently the machine is NeXT 3.3, 25 MHz with 20 MB of mem. What's ADB and how do I tell if the machine is ADB? I fear my NeXTstation is not ADB judging by the two round ports on the back (A and B?). I have 2 performa's at home (i'm on vacation now) I'll have to test the mouse with. If there is a chart somewhere with the descriptions of the connections on the machine I would love that.
I had some questions about the hardware. Is there a way to connect a cd drive to it? Right now it just has the floppy drive. I wouldn't replace the system, but just in case the hard drive decides to break and I need to reinstall, not to mention it will make getting applications on it easier till I figure out how to get the internet on it.
I downloaded OpenStep 4.2 from these forums, but mac cant open the iso's, is it because it does not recognize the FS or is it because it is genuinely corrupted? As for the .flp images, I do not know how to "burn" those to a floppy, if someone could point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it.
Sorry for so many questions! Any help appreciated!
EDIT: Ah, its ufs isn't it? I installed macfuse and compiled the ufs binary for macfuse
http://www.osxbook.com/blog/2008/12/16/more-user-space-file-system-goodies/ and using the nextstep-cd option it mounts :D. I assume mac can burn the iso like any other iso. Those floppy images are still a mystery to me :P
ADB stands for Apple Desktop Bus. It was used on the old Macintosh systems before Steve Jobs cama back and changed everything to USB and FireWire.
Those round ports are the two serial ports. Really, unless you have a special purpose for them, they're useless.
As for the CD drive, there is a SCSI connector on the back of the NeXTstation.
Internet is going to be a little harder than you might think. If and when you decide to do that, we'll explain how to hook it all up correctly. But until then...
The OPENSTEP ISO image, as you say, is in a format that Mac OS cannot read. Under normal circumstances, you just open the ISO in your cd burning software (I'm not sure what you use, please tell), and just burn it like any other ISO.
As for the floppies, I use RawWrite for Windows. I'm not sure what you would use on the Mac.
Here is an article from the archive that may be very useful to you...
http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/connectivity.pdfHope that helps
Ah, Thanks for that PDF, it'll help a lot.
As for the cd drive, I assume it can be any scsi external cd drive? Unless NeXT is picky about what drives it connects to. I think I can scrounge one up from e-bay or the used computer shop. I have a an internal IDE cd drive laying around. Could I get something like this to connect it?
http://cgi.ebay.com/SCSI-To-IDE-BRIDGE-ADAPTER-CARD-CONTROLLER-80-PIN_W0QQitemZ290332264841QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_Cables_Adapters?hash=item439926c989&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1234%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50#ht_2643wt_754For the iso images, I normally just use mac's disk utility to burn the iso to a cd. I'm not sure if it will be able to do this since it does not understand the FS. If it does not work, I have Toast I can test it with. What's the popular way to do this?
Thanks for the link to the RawWrite. It works perfectly with the version of wine I have installed.
From what I have read the built in applications that come with NeXT to set up the interweb don't work so well with the modern internet. So is it just a matter of editing some conf files manually? I came across a post with internet browsers listed, so I think I'm ok there. But this is a while off yet.
Absolutely! :)
As far as I know, you can use any cd-rom drive that hooks up to scsi, although someone please let me know if i'm wrong. That connector, in theory, would work. But you might want to see if anyone else has used this before. I have always used scsi or ide on next and pcs (respectively), so i'm not sure if it wold work or not.
Considering that Nero on my Windows machine never checks the file system, I don't have to worry about it. If Toast doesn't check the fs, then you're all good to go. Try it out, and see what happens.
Now, I have never been able to get my NS machine up on the internet. There is this package out there that supposedly adds in DHCP suport, but I have only tried this in Mac OS X Server, and it just crashed my system. I have yet to try this in any OS/NS configuration.
Awesome!
Thanks for all the help. I think I've got the basics of the slab down now :D. I grabbed an old scsi drive from the used computer shop and I'm talking to Rob (of blackhole) about getting a Non-ADB mouse. Illl tackle the internet problem later when I learn more about the system and have an actual mouse :P.
One last question though, how does NeXT work with tape drive, if at all? I just though it would be a cool experiment because the used computer shop has a few scsi tape drives for cheap.
Considering I have never used a tape drive with a NeXT system before, I couldn't tell you about it. Although you might want to search around the forums and see what else you can find.