So I just picked up two complete (minus laser printers) NeXT machines from a gentelman for a total of $50. One is a NeXTstation and the other is an original NeXT Computer with no optical or floppy and a bad SCSI hard drive. I have a 1 GB 50 pin SCSI hard drive I have installed but have no way of installing an OS as it has no floppy to boot from. I have an internal SCSI CD ROM ( AppleCD 300+) but i need a way to boot an image of NeXT or OPENSTEP and get the hard drive formatted and partitioned. This is my forst experience with NeXT machines, and any help on getting started with this would help a lot! Just remember I am VERY new with these and have no idea where to begin with a new hard drive and no built in drives to use save for the AppleCD!
BTW, the NeXT computer that is in question has a NeXTdimension card! Gotta find a color display! LOL
Assuming you can boot from one of your machines, probably the simplest method would be to put your new drive in an external SCSI enclosure (give it a SCSI ID other than 1 - which should be the ID # of the drive you are booting from). You can daisy chain up to 7 SCSI devices, but the first and last have to be terminated.
Again assuming that the new drive you are attaching is the only other SCSI device, it will be the last device in your chain & will have to be terminated. Then you simply attach the new drive to the working NeXT with a suitable SCSI cable and log in as root. You can then use the "Build Disk" application to set up the new drive and copy the operating system to the new drive. Again, assuming your new drive is compatible - be aware that not all SCSI drives will work with NeXT.
Once you've built the new drive, pull it out of the external case, change it's ID to 1 and install it in your cube & you should be good to go. Good luck.
James
I don't have admin manuals but you should be able to boot from network and then export the remote file system and then run builddisk. At least in theory :-) anyway. You will need to setup the netinfo to allow net boot on the netinfo master machine.
Got it! I actually had an old Power Mac 7100 that I took The cables and a 500 MB hard drive out of and used them in the Cube. I got the jumpers the way I want them and connected both to the SCSI bus. I just couldn't find a hard drive caddy so I went internal. Ran the Build Disk and PRESTO! I now have a perfect NeXTstation and a running original Cube with an 040 main board and a NeXTdimension board! Now, back to looking for a color monitor and some 5.25 adapters for a 3.5 inch drive...
Congrats. Nice save!
James