All,
I was browsing ebay a couple weeks back and came across a 68040 cube that had some interesting accessories. Included was a copy of nextstep 0.9 on MO and the case for ROM version 1.0 containing the original pre-upgrade 0.8.31 ROM. I of course paid way too much, but couldn't resist. Tonight I installed the original ROM in my gold 1988 68030 board and booted NextStep 0.9 from MO. There are a few interesting things.
1) The default boot image is of an MO disk
2) The RAM timings default to 120ns, but the 1.0 ROM on the same board will run it at 100ns.
3) The boot options are quite a bit more limited.
I have yet to try it, but ROM v 1.0 is required for NextStep 1.0+. v1 was sent out as a free upgrade for pre-release cubes.
Some out of order photos are here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/ar88bwu8ntdjg7u/AAD4I-adDmg1Gc2zQw7ff-CYaI have also dumped the ROM in case anyone else wants to experiment. You'll need a TMS27C512 EPROM.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l887axex3k46pvu/rev_0.8_v31.bin?dl=0While I'm at it, here is a pre-release version of 1.0 as well (v40)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g04ujnv65gv0z6w/rev_1.0_v40.bin?dl=0--
Brian
This is great, thanks for doing this! I've had a 0.8.31 ROM for a while but never bothered to actually install it.
Thank you for sharing this! I suggest to put these to the files section of the forums, where the other ROMs are located.
Quote from: "andreas_g"Thank you for sharing this! I suggest to put these to the files section of the forums, where the other ROMs are located.
Hello All: I uploaded them so now available here!
http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/ROM_Files/68030/Old_Versions/ Very cool thanks Brian ,
I'm looking forward to going through a stack of 100 Optical Disks to see what kind of goodies may lay in wait like a time capsul hopefully some fun stuff I can share a lot of early NeXT corporate stuff , early software , old source etc ... Best regards Rob Blessin