Pink Cube...

Welp, here I am... Comp.sys.next.faq moderator from yesteryear...

I still have plethora the pink NeXT Cube featured in NeXTWorld way back in my basement - not quite sure it will boot, but someday I will check!

In the meantime, been tooling with Raspberry Pi and have a case that is worthy to be Plethora II, or NeXT-pi, or....

Let me know what you think!



Best!

-pascal - aka lacsap

Hello Lacsap: I thought I had seen it all but this is the first and probably the only Pink cube. I think the one below is a 3D model you are working on.  How did you use your Plethora Cube and do you remember which NeXT World as we have them in our archive http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Articles/NeXTWORLD/  Do you have a photo of the original plethora ? Did you do the Paint as it reminds me of the multi colored Apple Imacs , why did you choose Pink? Do you still have the comp.sys.next.faq archive? Did you work at NeXT or a NeXT 3rd party product developer? Happy New Year :)  If you need help getting Plethora back up and running ,we can help .   

What is this pink cube!? I never heard of it!

Well part of history of pink pranks at MIT. The NeXT cube was painted while I was at a ski marathon in Canada.  When I got back there was a note with a camera telling me to take a picture of my reaction.  My MIT advisor was not pleased that the cube got painted pink.  Plethora was part of a pair of NeXT machines (the other is dearth which I also have) shipped to us when Steve Jobs learnt that SUN was unable to ship us a workstation for over 9 months.  NeXTs were in our building from the beginning - Mike Hawley had NeXT running on a SUN workstation hidden away in E15 basement.  Bruce Blumberg taught us all how to use IB...

I am pretty sure Simson Garfinkel wrote about the pink cube in one of his columns, or maybe it was the NeXT road sign in California that mysteriously appeared.

Here is a snapshot of Plethora and NeXT-pi


Model N1000 SN: AAK0004306

Quote from: lacsap on January 02, 2023, 12:32:23 PMMike Hawley had NeXT running on a SUN workstation hidden away in E15 basement

This was probably running on a Sun 3x 68030-based machine, a 3/80 or similar? It would be amazing if the OS version for the Sun is still available somewhere...

Quote from: cuby on January 02, 2023, 01:44:44 PMThis was probably running on a Sun 3x 68030-based machine, a 3/80 or similar? It would be amazing if the OS version for the Sun is still available somewhere...

Yes it is available NeXTSTEP 3.3 for HPPA Risc and Sun Sparc Stations supports Sun Models 4,5,10 and 20  . I sell it for $19.95 :) on original CD or I can drop box you a download link.

Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 02, 2023, 06:58:55 PMYes it is available NeXTSTEP 3.3 for HPPA Risc and Sun Sparc Stations supports Sun Models 4,5,10 and 20

Thanks Rob! I know, of course, that there's a Sparc version of NeXTSTEP - it's running on a Sparc Voyager and a Sparcstation 20 here.

I assumed that the version "running on a SUN workstation hidden away in E15 basement" by Mike Hawley mentioned by lacsap was an early development version of NeXTstep before actual NeXT hardware was available. Early Sun workstations, like NeXT systems, used Motorola 68k-based CPUs and were used in the development of NeXTstep, see my earlier post here (http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4797.msg28200#msg28200).

In fact, NeXTstep 0.8 is able to execute SunOS 3-style 68k Sun 3 "a.out" format binaries in addition to NeXT MachO ones.

The interesting question is exactly which Sun machines were used by NeXT to develop NeXTstep. One problem is that Sun used a custom MMU (https://gist.github.com/tsutsui/2bd10b5b91d67dedb1b251b55cc34fca) instead of Motorola's 68851 MMU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68851) in most of their systems (the 68020-based Sun 3 series, the 68020 didn't have an on-chip MMU but required an off-chip implementation). Only the latest machines of the Sun 3 series (Sun 3x) used a 68030 CPU like the original Cube. However, the first Sun 3x machines came to market in 1989 only (in parallel to the SPARCstation 1! - both machines were presented in the same issue of BYTE (https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1989-05/mode/2up)), after the Cube was available.

So I would assume that NeXT developed early NeXTstep versions using Sun 3 (without "x") systems using the Sun MMU (which requires significant changes to the VM code in Mach). An alternative would be an upgraded Sun 3/60 board. The 3/60 was already available in 1986 (IIRC) and - this is the interesting part - provided an upgrade socket for a 68030 CPU as seen in this image (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Sun3_CPU.jpg) (the empty PGA socket above the 68020).

If a copy of this early (<= 0.8, I would expect) version of NeXTstep would still exist, we could try to figure it out. Of course, I would also be interested to run NeXTstep on either my 3/60 or 3/80 machines here...

I remember skipping one of my first maths lectures at uni to attend a presentation of the NeXTstation in late 1990 (IIRC by d'ART, one of the early distributors in Germany). Unfortunately, the machine was unaffordable for a freshman CS student back then (the base price of US$4995 translated to around 12,500 German marks back then - more than the yearly student loans!). About a year later, some of my friends and I were able to obtain second-hand Sun 3/60 machines directly from Sun Germany for only 500 German marks (but without a hard disk as we found out after we picked up the machines...) - and the rest is history :). I still have my 3/60...

If this picture was really taken in a NeXT office (https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/engineer-is-photographed-trying-to-grab-a-few-moments-nachrichtenfoto/147730873), it can give some clues. It shows some Sun machines (the typical Sun 3 monochrome screens are easy to identify) - the systems here seem to be the large deskside Sun 3 VME-bus based machines (e.g. 3/160 or 3/260).

[update] This picture allegedly showing NeXT software engineer Chris Franklin's bare foot (https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/next-software-engineer-chris-franklin-often-worked-nachrichtenfoto/103586815?adppopup=true)  :) definitely shows a Sun workstation, probably a 3/50. And another picture of a 3/50 (https://media.gettyimages.com/id/103586736/de/foto/next-software-engineers-trey-matteson-and-chris-franklin-in-the-new-section-of-the-palo-alto.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=acOM3qIsv9PKxIJNoaKQCVB5NoT1DXj3PixXqhGEnwE=). According to the picture descriptions, the first one was taken in May 1987 and the second in January 1988 (the metadata details are obviously incorrect, this is from the text description).

The complete photo series "129 Steve Jobs The Next Years 1986-1990" can be found at getty images (https://www.gettyimages.de/fotos/steve-jobs-the-next-years-1986-1990?assettype=image&sort=mostpopular&phrase=steve%20jobs%20the%20next%20years%201986%201990&license=rf%2Crm).

[update2] This Stanford University archive seems to be the original source for the photos (http://insight.stanford.edu/luna/servlet/view/search?q=Corporate_Name%3D%22NeXT+Computer%2C+Inc.%22).

This picture shows a 3/60, a 3/50 and a Cube (http://stanford.lunaimaging.com:8081/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size4/Stanford-11-NA/1008/090178_36_SM.jpg&userid=2&username=admin&resolution=4&servertype=JVA&cid=11&iid=Stanford&vcid=NA&usergroup=Douglas_Menuez_Photography_Collection-1-Admin&profileid=1).

Hawley was running pre-0.8 NeXTstep.

Mike passed away, so no way to ask about the configuration of the Sun he had.

Thanks for the update. Sorry to hear that Mike Hawley passed away. Way too young...

Hello Cuby and Lacsap:  That is very cool I had no idea about the early early Sun boxes as it was NeXT's marketingsmortal enemy for awhile, more NeXT history is always cool! I've heard there were Dec Alpha and RS6000 ports ....  I still have some DEC Pentium 60's Configured with NeXTstep , I think these were the first Pentium's and some 486 boxes. Did Sun probably did not have an NeXT/ Canon optical disk lol with.8 or.7 and it probably was jusr an early hard drive.