Hi all.
I'm reading a lot of available materials about NeXT computer in Internet and want to clear some details:
Are there any differences between similar Cube and Station models? For example, do Cube 040 25 and Station 040 25 have any performance differences?
Or both of them almost the same from the techincal point of view.
Am I right that main differences between both lines of computer are:
- formfactor
- 16M vs 4096 color in max configurations (NextDimension and NS Color)
- may be different max amount of RAM
- Cube expandability by NextBus, for which were made only NextDimension board and nothing else
Thanks.
Quote from: coriolis1986 on January 22, 2021, 03:39:50 PM- Cube expandability by NextBus, for which were made only NextDimension board and nothing else
NextBus can also be used to have up to four NextCube boards connected in the same chassis.
You are correct on all main points. The core of a next computer is a set of custom ASICs which control all System I/O. The stations and cubes use identical chips for this. The main differences are then physical access to these chips:
1) MO drive: the station lacks this connection. I once hacked one into a station just to prove I could with a connector and passives
2) Max Ram: the stations have less sockets and so support less max Ram 32 vs 64 for the mono. Turbos do not have this limitation.
3) nextbus: as you noted this was more a promise than delivery. With some rare notable exceptions this was really only used for the dimension. The 68030 cubes also lacked the necessary chip (nbic) anyway by default.
At the time of release the internal hard drive size may have also been a concern with the cube allowing for full size drives which would have been available in larger capacities.
The summary is that the slabs are just as capable as a cube (in the case of the color models, more so), but with a more boring presentation.
Quote from: nuss on January 23, 2021, 01:46:54 PMNextBus can also be used to have up to four NextCube boards connected in the same chassis.
Any reason to do this? It will be 4 independent computers which share common SCSI bus in one case?
Back in the day you would, I believe, have to cut a trace on the NuBus backplane to actually do this. I remember I put my 030 in as a 2nd card and what you had to do was ethernet the 2 boards together. Then you basically had a remote old version of something like VNC where you could login to the 030 board and it ran in the background independently. So it was a 2nd system you could run all manner of things on.
Also, back in the day, I think there was an app called Zilla? It would let you distribute tasks across several machines.
1) What is better from performance point of view - NeXTdimension or slab color? I read somewhere that ND is very slow.
2) And as I understand, all of NeXT computers has integrated video chipset (like Amiga, Atari etc). So all standart video output, which includes PROM console, will be shown via motherboard monitor connection.
Is it possible to use NeXTdimension as main and only video output for PROM, OS etc?
Back in the day, I had two motherboards in my Cube case. It's just two completely separate Unix systems in a single box. All boards that are not the main board can only be accessed via network (telnet, and maybe ssh today), and back in the day I used to use NXHost to remote display apps. It was really cool, as it doubled my compute capacity.
Quote from: coriolis1986 on January 24, 2021, 04:38:31 AMAny reason to do this? It will be 4 independent computers which share common SCSI bus in one case?
I principle yes, but like zombie wrote, you can compare it to todays blade systems. One chasis, multiple boards and software to distribute between those machines. You could e.g. use it as "render farm" across the four boards (at least in theory).