Hello.
First of all I would like to excuse any "strange writing", I'm no native speaker and therefor not used to write requests like this day by day...
This is going to be a long posting and I would like to excuse myself once more for asking questions, that might be answered elsewhere here in this community. But as long as I am a complete newbie to NeXT I would gather my questions into this one post.
I'm not new to computers and in fact I'm related very close to Apple machines since 1989. Some time ago I thought about a new private project, some sort of server farm consisting of unusual old hardware. My first step in this is my Macintosh Plus webserver (sorry completly in german language). You can take a look at it here:
http://macplusserver.dyndns.orgI'm planning to raise the numer of connected machines from time to time and if everything works out well maybe there are going to be about ten "unusual" machines serving informations about themselves to the net.
Some days ago I was very lucky (at least I think so) to get a NeXTcube at the swiss counterpart to eBay - I'm not going to mention what I've paid for it, it may make others cry. Anyway I'm planning to make this one a server, too. And now the questions are coming up...
As far as I worked it out until now I'm now owning a NeXTcube with a 25 MHz 68040 CPU, set up with (maybe) 8 MB RAM placed into 8 of the 16 available slots. I do not own any documentation, no software, even a harddisk and the magneto optical are missing. Just the floppy drive, the original next keyboard and mouse along with the 15" NeXTpixelDisplay were included in this auction.
1. The display:
It is the black & white one and sad to say it shows some interferences, something was burned into the screen, too (someone had lotsa fun watching the OpenStep-Info box I suppose...). Is it possible to connect older Apple displays to the cube or even never Miro displays (got three of these, switchable input ports)? Or is the power supply by the cube messing up other displays?
2. The RAM:
After reading several articles on the net I'm somewhat confused about the amount of RAM this cube can hold. Most of them say something about 16 MB, others do mention 32 and a few even 40 MB or more. Waht is the absolute maximum this machine can work with and what exact type including speed (in "ns") parameters is this machine taking? Is it possible to use comparable RAM from older Apple machines?
3. The harddisk:
I'm owning a bunch of older Apple SCSI 1 harddisks, ranging from 125 to 500 MB space and two seagates (non-Apple), ranging from 1 to 4 GB. Is it possible to use any of these disks or does the cube have special demands on harddisks, anyway? Wouldn't surprise me very much as Apple has been very picky about hardware anyway... What are the requirements to a harddisk exactly (space, speed, SCSI 1 or 2, W or UW etc.)?
4. The magneto optical
I never used those, so these are new to me, too. I'm thinking about getting one for the cube so any information about model and/or manufacturer will be welcome. Do I have to have a drive like this to place the OS onto a harddisk?
5. NeXTstep / openStep
I do not own these OSses, so I would be very happy about any information where I can obtain these. Although I got this cube from a pendant to eBay I'm no auction fanatic or crack. In other words: the classic way of ordering will be prefered... If there is no other possibilty any other information about dealers, private collectors or whatever will be welcome, too.
6. Something unusual to me...
When I picked up that cube the former owner powerd it up to show me the basic working abilities. Ok, he also had no software at all so it just showed the grey display saying:
"Booting from Network"
Is this normal???? Is this a basic function located into the ROM of this cube? Remember: this box had absolutly NO software stored on disk, floppy or whatever in it!
7. Server
As I mentioned before I'm planning to set this one up as an information server. What software do I need, what software can be used what for and where can I obtain necessary software to set it up as a server?
I'm hoping this community is not overrun by my first and very intense request... If I did something wrong just drop me a note or delete this post. If it should fit into the aims of this community I would be very thankful for any available help.
With kind regards from Switzerland
Jenne
1) no, the display is special, as it does not have a power cable, there is a single cable that runs from the cube to the monitor.
2) 64mb is the max, I run mine with 40mb.
3) you can most likely use the disks, the only need is to be able to run in async mode. I use some rebranded segate disks I pulled from a compaq server with scsi 1-2 shims. NeXTSTEP can only use 2 gigabyte partitions.
4) They are a special drive from cannon in the late 80's. Since they use very fine heads, and are generaly open most do not work. There was a 'flaw' designed that had cubes sucking air thru the drives.. So dust & whatnot would go into the drives. Latter cubes reversed the fans. Of my 3 drives, none can read my NEXTSTEP 2 MO disk.
5)to be honest I um.. 'found' my 1st copy on some p2p network, but have since gotten legit media on ebay. AFAIK all blackhardware was sold with the OS, so you are 'entitled' to a copy of nextstep. Openstep was after the fact. If you do get/load 3.3 remember to patch it with the #3 patch...
6) If it doesnt like its disk, then yes you will see a next logo and a 10base2 network cable blinking away. pressing both
Command ~
at the same time should drop you to a prompt like this:
CPU MC68040 25 Mhz, memory 100ns
Backplane slot #0
Ethernet address: 0:0:f:0:XX:XX
Memory size 40MB
NeXT>
You could try a 'bsd' which is boot scsi disk, bfd is boot floppy disk. Cubes cannot boot directly from CD.
7) Information server? I run apache on mine to make it a web server, you can run NFS out of the box.. I guess I dont understand what kind of server.
Best of luck out there!
Hello again.
At last I managed to get NeXTstep 3.3 up & running on this cube! Along with an old Apple Quantum Fireball HD with 520 MB capacity, an Apple CD 300i, Virtual PC 7 & MS DOS, a PowerBook Pismo with a VST SuperDrive in the bay and a lot of SCSI-understandig reloaded I got it working - and a lot of help I got from posts within this forum - tahnk You VERY much!
Just another question: where do I get the Y2000 patch?
Thanks again a lot!
Jenne