Let's start with the easy stuff:
1) What's the single white RAM slot for, on my non-Turbo 040 Cube motherboard? (PN 1698.AE)
2) Does anyone have or seen a Dimension board with (blue) wires all over it, which I assume are last minute 'changes' to the board, and with a chip (above, while looking from the back, the 2 pin 26800Mhz crystal) labeled in red "Sample / V7191 V1 / 164410) (PN 1508.AB)
3) I was looking at images of a Turbo Cube motherboard, and it seems to be missing the Optical Drive cable connector. Am I missing something or can't Turbo Cubes use ODs ?
4) Does anyone have or seen a Cube box which says in the back "Personal Mainframe" ... FCC ID: 1234567890 :) has no serial #, and says "NeXT, Inc. / Palo Alto, California" ?
5) Are Pyros extremely hard to find? Where can one look?
6) Finally, and I know it's a bit off topic here, but I figure you guys might know better than most: what's a good place to trade old Mac and Sun hardware? I have a Mac with a Daystar PowerPC 601 accelerator and I'd like to exchange it for a 040 accelerator. Also have a Sparcstation ELC and IPX
Thanks in advance!
Hi, da9000... I can only 'possibly' answer question #1.
That white slot, if I remember correctly, is where you add cache memory for the DSP.
Quote from: "da9000"Let's start with the easy stuff:
1) What's the single white RAM slot for, on my non-Turbo 040 Cube motherboard? (PN 1698.AE)
2) Does anyone have or seen a Dimension board with (blue) wires all over it, which I assume are last minute 'changes' to the board, and with a chip (above, while looking from the back, the 2 pin 26800Mhz crystal) labeled in red "Sample / V7191 V1 / 164410) (PN 1508.AB)
3) I was looking at images of a Turbo Cube motherboard, and it seems to be missing the Optical Drive cable connector. Am I missing something or can't Turbo Cubes use ODs ?
4) Does anyone have or seen a Cube box which says in the back "Personal Mainframe" ... FCC ID: 1234567890 :) has no serial #, and says "NeXT, Inc. / Palo Alto, California" ?
5) Are Pyros extremely hard to find? Where can one look?
6) Finally, and I know it's a bit off topic here, but I figure you guys might know better than most: what's a good place to trade old Mac and Sun hardware? I have a Mac with a Daystar PowerPC 601 accelerator and I'd like to exchange it for a 040 accelerator. Also have a Sparcstation ELC and IPX
Thanks in advance!
da9000
1) As helf says, thats the DSP memory expansion slot.
2) Never seen or heard of a dimension board with blue wires, the fact that the chip says sample on the board suggests that it's a development board/prototype. Does it work, which rom version does it have?
3) Turbos don't/can't use OD drives. Not internal ones anyway.
4) I saw a pictures of a cube with the personal mainframe name on the back, iirc thay may have used this name because certain IC's where described by somebody at NeXT as being a "mainframe on a chip". It may also have had more or less or maybe different vents & slots than a regular cube case, they where probably very early 030 NeXTcomputers (cubes). I've never seen one in the flesh.
5) I've seen a cube with pyro sell in the UK last year for 670 pounds. I seen a BNIB Pyro which was new-old stock which sold for quite a lot eBay US withing the last 8 months or so. iirc it fetched a high price.
6) You might want to try an Apple forum for the Daystar. I can't recommend it as I have no experience of it, but maybe this one would be OK:
http://www.applefritter.com/forum There are a few others but they seem to be err, shall we say a little odd sometimes...
It would be very cool if you could share some pics of the cube case & dimension.
Cheers
Mick Bramley
Bram's is correct on all counts.
I have a N4005 21" monitor with a red and white engineering sample sticker on it. It seems a lot of prototype, engineering sample and other early hardware leaked out of NeXT at one time or another.
Too bad we can't find a leaked prototype of the RISC box sitting abandoned in someone's garage or storage unit. :D
I bet that there is one sitting somewhere here in the valley as well as other gems that people have yet to get rid of or are in need of cash.
Thanks for the great replies guys!
Lets continue on the subject:
1) So what kinda cache chips does the DSP require? Regular 72pin SIMMs (FPM or although I doubt it, EDO?) or some other sort?
2) Yes, Brams, it's definitely a prototype/dev board. It should work, although I've not had the chance to test it out (very busy these days, but I'm itching, as you can tell :) I will find out the ROM revision and post it. Just in case there's no sticker, where should I look?
3) I thought so :( And OD's are so cool, to show off of course, not so much to work on considering the rather slow performance.
4) Yeah, it seems very much like an esoteric joke of the production facility guys: here's a mainframe like computer, in a foot-sized cube :) I'll try to compare it with others and see if I can see any major differences. Although it's interesting to note that it has some of the later 'upgrades', like the OD dust filter, etc. But it makes sense, considering the guy who had it worked at NeXT. I'm surprised he didn't grab a Nitro while working there :(
5) Wow, pretty much impossible it seems :/ If I'm not mistaken, this one fellow on here managed to hook up a Sonnet Quaddoubler 040 to his NeXT Cube. I'd be willing to try that mod at some point, but even those are rare. Although I believe that maybe all of us guys with 68k machine still alive (NeXT, Sun's, Amiga's, Atari's, early Mac's, etc) should get together and have some kind of 'open source' design for a universal 040 (or 040->060?) accelerator plugin-replacement for our current 040s. Especially in the Amiga world there's been quite a bit of hacking on these kinds of things, where you can plug an 'extender' socket right on top of the CPU you want to boost.
6) Thanks for the tips Brams, I will try those places.
7) New question: are there schematics for ALL NeXT hardware out there on the web? I think I've seen some for the Cube motherboards, but not sure for monitors and printers, etc
Brams:
Yes, I will definitely get some pics of these items to share, as soon as I get some time to unpack stuff and so on.
Blackcube:
As for the 'red stickers' that you mentioned, Blackcube, this one has NO stickers. The actual chip has this lettering on it. Most certainly engineering sample, because I got it from a NeXT engineer :) I will follow up with him, see if his buddies from NeXT might have anything else of interest stored in some garage in the valley. Perhaps the RISC box you're talking about? :) can you say something more about it? This is not with the PPC chips, it's before even the 68k, right?
Matrix01:
Unfortunately I feel that many of these gems are not well coveted and maybe lost forever by non-NeXTers that happen to find them in their garage and consider them old garbage :(
Thanks again
I think the DSP memory slot is special memory, I don't think there was anything off the shelf which fitted it.
This info is from the NeXT faq here:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/NeXT-FAQ/The Speech Recognition Lab at San Francisco State University has developed a DSP memory expansion board for the NeXT computer that provides the maximum memory supported by the DSP56001 processor. We are now offering this board to those whose are interested in high-performance custom DSP development.
* The board is a 576KB DSP expansion memory board organized as three non-overlapping 192KB banks: X-data, Y-data and Program.
The dimension should display it's rom revision and kernel version on the screen as it boots. iirc it begins with something like "NeXTdimension detected in slot X"
I wonder if yours is a sample of a later or earlier dimension. Is there anything that looks different?, any sockets?. Does it have a C-Cube chip anywhere on it?
The personal mainframe name had to come from Steve only he could have come up with such a grandiose name. However I'm not sure where the mainframe on a chip description came from maybe from Motorola for the 030 or maybe from whoever made the custom ASICS. I know Intel also described the i860 with the same thing.
I'm still a bit unlclear on if it was a Newer or Sonnet he used. If you read the forums here he told everybody how to do it. I didn't understand it fully so I'm not gonna try it. Pyros where made by Newer Technology, some people have described them as very flaky and unreliabe, others say they work perfect.
The 060 thing has been discussed in comp.sys.next.* with the general consensus that it won't work without a lot of SW changes to the operating system and maybe boot rom. I know where there is a Nitro, however I offered 4'000 US for it and didn't get an answer back from the owner. He did say he'd sell for the right price.
You've seen the schemematics here:
http://www.channelu.com/NeXT/Black/index.htmlAFAIK the NeXT Risc Workstation used either M88K or Power PC CPU's, both of them where supposed to be dual and as the PPC 601 was pin out compatible with the Mot 88000 then I guess the logic boards where very similar or maybe the same. An NRW was/is at Apple's HQ along with a lot of other NeXT stuff.
Some of the things that have been done to Amiga's to extend to life of the platform are nothing short of amazing, and I reckon the design team never dreamed up half the things they done.
For anybod reading this thread: look at the below link for photos of the Personal Mainframe!
Enjoy :)
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=664
A least one of my dimension boards has some patch wires on it. I think mine were yellow from memory though. I think this was either done during manufacturing, or during repair.
@gtnicol:
whenever you get a chance, take some photos and let us know, so we can compare the two boards, see if there are identical or different. As far as I know mine is a pre-production Dimension, so these patch wires might differ. Who knows?