Hi!
I'm currently developing a port of the Linux Kernel for NeXT hardware.
Anyone care to donate NeXT hardware? A motherboard would help.
I'm based in Portugal.
Thanks!
Hello Ramalhais: Heck yes I will help :) we have a bunch of NeXT users on your side of the pond including a few in Portugal :) I know there were a bunch of stations awhile back looking to rehome in Europe but years have gone by . In the interim I would donate a NeXTSTATION mono or color to you ,include ram , factory hard drive and can set it up to use the serial port to hook up as an alternative console monitor. You would be able to boot it headless . If you can cover shipping from the US for about $120 , I would also put in a working floppy drive , new old stock power supply and bios battery . If you want to buy a monitor from me or custom sound card and cable as I had fixed costs on these , we will figure it out as I think your project is cool , In return my be I can be one of the beta testers for you :) I can also send you one of each color and mono motherboard which should help.
Thinking someone over their may have a spare keyboard,mouse, monitor etc
What else do you need as we have lot of docs including schematics in our archives .
I can also get you copies of NeXTSTEP if you need it and I think you may be using previous.
Their are some talented hardware engineers in here as well , the NeXT Driver kit software for
NeXTSTEP intel may be of use and I think their is some old NeXTSTEP eary early source floating
about to in the archives. It is cool to have a bridge forming with the Linux, GNUstep and
NeXTSTEP communities for 68K hardware.
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 06, 2023, 08:10:50 PMHello Ramalhais: Heck yes I will help :) we have a bunch of NeXT users on your side of the pond including a few in Portugal :) I know there were a bunch of stations awhile back looking to rehome in Europe but years have gone by . In the interim I would donate a NeXTSTATION mono or color to you ,include ram , factory hard drive and can set it up to use the serial port to hook up as an alternative console monitor. You would be able to boot it headless . If you can cover shipping from the US for about $120 , I would also put in a working floppy drive , new old stock power supply and bios battery .
Hi Rob! That's very kind of you!
I appreciate your help. I'll cover shipping of course.
Serial console will be nice if i can't hook it up to a monitor, but i'll have to try to implement a serial driver in Linux. We currently only have a framebuffer console.
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 06, 2023, 08:10:50 PMIf you want to buy a monitor from me or custom sound card and cable as I had fixed costs on these , we will figure it out as I think your project is cool , In return my be I can be one of the beta testers for you :) I can also send you one of each color and mono motherboard which should help.
I'll pass on the monitor, since shipping would cost a fortune, unless you know someone in Portugal. Thanks for the offer.
Everyone is welcome to be a beta tester :D
I'll take any different motherboards you can provide. It would be nice to have a turbo one because of the different DMA and real time clock chips, but they're probably hard to find since they must be the most sought after for upgrades.
Anyway, a non-turbo will push me to fix the NetBSD bootloader i'm hacking to boot linux from the hard disk.
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 06, 2023, 08:10:50 PMThinking someone over their may have a spare keyboard,mouse, monitor etc
If you know someone in Europe that has a keyboard/mouse, let me know. I can also try to hack something up with an arduino or get an adapter:
https://www.drak.org/proj/next-keyboard-protocol/Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 06, 2023, 08:10:50 PMWhat else do you need as we have lot of docs including schematics in our archives .
I can also get you copies of NeXTSTEP if you need it and I think you may be using previous.
Their are some talented hardware engineers in here as well , the NeXT Driver kit software for
NeXTSTEP intel may be of use and I think their is some old NeXTSTEP eary early source floating
about to in the archives. It is cool to have a bridge forming with the Linux, GNUstep and
NeXTSTEP communities for 68K hardware.
At the moment i still haven't had the need to read hardware datasheets. The old linux port, the leaked NeXTROM and NeXTMach source code, the NetBSD netx68k port and the Previous emulator sources have been a big help.
Send me a PM to work out the details. Thank you!
Sounds good :) PM Sent.
@ramalhais your project sounds amazing. Have you been able to get hold of the required hardware and to make some progress?
FWIW. You could probably use Previous for development... at least good enough to get pretty fair along.
Quote from: K-Town Computeum on February 16, 2024, 09:20:28 AM@ramalhais your project sounds amazing. Have you been able to get hold of the required hardware and to make some progress?
I have received the hardware but hit a roadblock in linux kernel on real hardware and got side-tracked into making a keyboard/mouse/sound replacement for the soundbox and improving dietSCSI (blueSCSI fork) code.
I was writing my progress here:
https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4814 (
https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4814)
Sorry for the missing images, google broke it and now i can't edit the posts. You can view source and get the image links to copy the "id" and substitute:
https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1odyoPs8mH1L-ZQUl2-cbbh9FxjPHa8o5
Quote from: gtnicol on February 19, 2024, 02:29:40 PMFWIW. You could probably use Previous for development... at least good enough to get pretty fair along.
I actually had linux and X.org running in Previous.
I was writing my progress here:
https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4814
👍👍👍