old id software nextstation

Howdy!

First post and a fun one at that. For a long time I collected classic id software memorabilia, some of it my own and some of it picked up along the way.

One particular piece I purchased directly from one of id softwares lead designers/programmer John Romero about 10 years ago was a NextStation, which were used in the development of DOOM and Quake. I had inquired if he still had one, he said he would be listing some stuff up on ebay and I purchased it for around $200 i think it was. It was sold "as is and in working condition" and "no id software data or intellectual property is contained on the system".

Upon receiving it, I immediately requested help from Simon Howard (aka "Fraggle") of DoomWorld.com and I had removed the SCSI drive from it and hooked it up to my desktop with a SCSI connector PCI card. We gave it a run down after mounting it in Linux, ran some file retrieval tools and made a disk image to play around with it in Previous.

The only reference we could find was one data file containing the word "MONSTERS". As stated in the ebay listing, it did not appear to contain any proprietary id software data. Additionally, the disk image captured did boot in Previous at the time, but hung after a few moments once to desktop.


I placed the SCSI back into the box and it's been on my id software display since. That's it, that's all I've got. Just figured the good folks here may appreciate the story and the history. Always have been interested in Next history and it's involvement in id game development. Was kind of a holy grail.  I still have the disk image on my google drive if anyone else wants to take a peek and see if they can dig anything up.

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This collection is really awesome. Congratulations!

Wow! That is such an amazing grab. I'm sure plenty of people here are jealous  :D
Personally, I'd love to take a peek at the hard disk image. I do a lot of research within Previous.

If anyone is curious about the rest of the NeXT hardware at id, the answer can be found in the .plan file archives too (21st March 1998):

QuoteI just shut down the last of the NEXTSTEP systems running at id.

We hadn't really used them for much of anything in the past year, so it was just easier to turn them off than to continue to administer them.

Most of the intel systems had already been converted to NT or 95, and Onethumb gets all of our old black NeXT hardware, but we have four nice HP 712/80 workstations that can't be used for much of anything.

If someone can put these systems to good use (a dallas area unix hacker), you can have them for free. As soon as they are spoken for, I will update my .plan, so check immediately before sending me email.

You have to come by our office (in Mesquite) and do a fresh OS install here before you can take one. There may still be junk on the HD, and I can't spend the time to clean them myself. You can run either NEXTSTEP 3.3 or HP/UX. These are NOT intel machines, so you can't run dos or windows. I have NS CD's here, but I can't find the original HP/UX CDs. Bring your own if that's what you want.

I'm a bit nostalgic about the NeXT systems -- the story in the Id Anthology is absolutely true: I walked through a mile of snow to the bank to pay for our first workstation. For several years, I considered it the best development environment around. It still has advantages today, but you can't do any accelerated 3D work on it.

I had high hopes for rhapsody, but even on a top of the line PPC, it felt painfully sluggish compared to the NT workstations I use normally, and apple doesn't have their 3D act together at all.

Its kind of funny, but even through all the D3D/OpenGL animosity, I think Windows NT is the best place to do 3D graphics development.

All gone!
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Paul Magyar gets the last (slightly broken) one.

Bob Farmer gets the third.

Philip Kizer gets the second one.

Kyle Bousquet gets the first one.


3/21 pt 2
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I haven't given up on rhapsody yet. I will certainly be experimenting with the release version when it ships, but I have had a number of discouraging things happen. Twice I was going to go do meetings at apple with all relevent people, but the people setting it up would get laid off before the meetings happened. Several times I would hear encouraging rumors about various things, but they never panned out. We had some biz discussions with apple about rhapsody, but they were so incredibly cautious about targeting rhapsody for consumer apps at the expense of macos that I doubted their resolve.

I WANT to help. Maybe post-E3 we can put something together.

The SGI/microsoft deal ****ed up a lot of the 3D options. The codebase that everyone was using to develop OpenGL ICDs is now owned by microsoft, so it is unlikely any of them will ever be allowed to port to rhapsody (or linux, or BeOS).

That is one of the things I stress over -- The Right Thing is clear, but its not going to happen because of biz moves. It would be great if ATI, which has video drivers for win, rhapsody, linux, and BeOS, could run the same ICD on all those platforms.

Ah yep, I remember reading that plan. There's some interesting details about specific Nextstations that I am digging up on DoomWorld... I beleive some of the Carmack hardware (and more specifically the NeXTCube) went to a friend of the company. I forget the guys name (I'm still trying to dig it up from DoomWorld posts), but it was dude they were all friends with and was the founder of some popular website. I'll post those details once I find it. It's been long time back that was brought up in discussion when I originally obtained this one and there was some excitement about what it might contain.

None of us were 100% certain of the history behind this Nextstation, though. All we knew it was owned and sold off by John Romero (and signed). He had also sold off other bits and pieces; manuals, dev guides, and a keyboard or mouse i think. It was shortly before he announced he was relocating to Galway, Ireland (which he and his wife Brenda both have established a new studio there, Romero Games). I assume it was old stuff he laying around because he sold off a ton of other things (some of which I also procured, mainly boxed games).

Over the years we kind of came to one of the following conclusions:
- it was a spare NextStation used at id software or some sort of backup station during those years
- it was John Romeros personal non-id workstation during the era
- it was never involved in id software game development and purchased by John years later for select restoration projects


There's some credence to each, based on other nextstations and cubes going out to other folks not on that .plan file, but I think the most widely accepted response is #3. It was a Nextstation John purchased after the fact and not used at id software. The reason why this is the most plausible is shortly after this hardware sell-off, John publically released *a ton* of new data and previously unreleased models and sprites for DOOM (this was somewhere around 2015 - 2017, cant remember the specific date, but it wasn't long after I got bought it from him).

It is our suspect that he purchased this to use to restore some of that unreleased content from old media he may have had laying around, but that is just a educated guess.

Probably will never really know, I dare not ask personally. But still pretty cool, being owned and used by Romero himself for likely DOOM-related purposes even years after the fact even if it wasn't a original id piece of hardware.

As for the Nextstation image, it was a dd byte-by-byte copy of the original SCSI disk. Again, I was able to get it to work in a previous build version circa 2015 (forget which) but it would hang after a few minutes. I tried again recently with previous 2.8 on fedora 38 i compiled, but when trying to run the ROM despite various setting adjustements, the CPU would report halted.

Sharing for historical fair use purposes (please remove link if not allowed)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByGhTatkLH2WTmJ1dWo0YnMwS1E/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-mmthlvrwOvC5dTI84bAHiA

Back in 2010 I emailed John Romero about an online post I saw from Don MacAskill saying that he had the old id Software computers used to develop Wolfenstein and DOOM. I never heard back on whether John was able to get the computers, but it sounds like he did. The original TechCrunch article doesn't seem to have preserved the article comments, but Internet Archive to the rescue:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090417170610/http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/next-computer-unboxing-twenty-years-later/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20090417170610/http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/next-computer-unboxing-twenty-years-later/)

Quote from:  John RomeroHey Steve,

I've been long-time friends with Don, and I just shot him an email about this.

I'd really like to get all the data off those machines.

John Romero
john@rome.ro
http://rome.ro

On Nov 15, 2010, at 11:03 AM, <admin<at>nextcomputers.org> <admin<at>nextcomputers.org> wrote:


Hi John,

I wanted to contact you in the hope that you can help me save some of the vintage computers from id Software that were used to develop DOOM and Quake.  Don MacAskill mentioned online that he has the computers sitting in his garage (see comments section).

http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/next-computer-unboxing-twenty-years-later/

I tried to contact Don but didn't receive a response.  I'd be more than happy to preserve the machines and pay for shipping.  There's a lot of history behind those machines.  :)  Any help that you could offer would be much appreciated.  Thanks John.
 
Best Regards,

Steve

Yep it was Don. Sorry I couldn't remember the name, I just remember that he was a successful dotcom dude they were all friends with during those years and that also has the NextCube.

Again, I am uncertain this Nextstation is from Johns inquiry to Don. The timeline from that mail to when I inquired with Romero asking to buy one if any remained was about 5 years difference, though it is possible.

In my mind, had Romero obtained back the original id Next systems, being vintage history, he would have been reluctant to sell them off even despite moving to Ireland. Still think this one was a secondhand system John used for later release of lost content, but still... It's a interesting mystery and it's a lot of fun to dig up with :)

I'm glad the Turbo Color ended up in a good home. You have a very nice collection. Welcome to the forums. :)

Quote from: Nitro on June 10, 2023, 11:53:44 AMI'm glad the Turbo Color ended up in a good home. You have a very nice collection. Welcome to the forums. :)

Thank ya, glad to see so many Next and id software enthusiasts out here! :)

About the only other noteworthy systems I've owned were a pair of Silicon Graphics Indy systems used in the development and modelling of the original Jurassic Park (bought them in a universal lot auction from ebay) , but sadly they were destroyed in a basement flood (at the time I had to leave some stuff at a relatives house and everything I left was down there, their basement pump failed during a heavy storm... still saddened about it all these years later).

But while it's not quite Next systems, here are some of the historical locations where the id team had developed on them that I visited on a trip to QuakeCon in 2017 (I'll be going back again in August and hope to revisit them).

Softdisk Shreveport, LA facility and the id software lakehouse:

https://youtu.be/eRhlYofedxw


The Black Cube with Suite 666 - Where DOOM's development went down:

https://youtu.be/JjvI5cSG0Rw

https://youtu.be/VJFdTdVwBfY


Just a tour of the id studio as it was in 2017 and about a year after DOOM 2016 reboot was released, with id mom Donna Jackson and id level designer Jason Oconnell:

https://youtu.be/byxmTNhBLzs



Again, not directly Next system per say.... but thats where it all went down at.

Was able to mount it and do a little bit of exploring earlier. I did this long time back and was more hopeful i missed something.
Sadly looks like just a plain stock nextstep image.

I did a scalpel of the .img capture using just default file types and headers in the scalpel.conf, it did recover a substantial amount of stuff possibly from a prior imaging, but much of it was either false positive finds, residual nextstep data and pics, or corrupt files.

However, that fstab entry for "/dev/sd1a /monster" was the only real standout finding. There was no /monster directory on root whatsoever, so it must have been mounted at some point. Possibly a external drive mounted for recovering lost monster texture/model data, but just pure speculation.

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I love the original Doom game as it ran fast on my Dad's i486/DX2-66 w/8Mb RAM. Brought the shareware version on CD when I was 11 (It wasn't the 666 version tho), My Dad wasn't too happy  ;D He brought me Descent which was a bit more difficult to play with all the keys and not good mouse input.

Quake did not run too well on the 486. It must have been really amazing the effect the NeXT had on Carmack as all the rest of the staff went out to buy them and the fact that he managed to produce DOOM on a different chipset before converting back to x86 and DOS.

Quote from: pTeK on June 12, 2023, 02:47:16 PMI love the original Doom game as it ran fast on my Dad's i486/DX2-66 w/8Mb RAM. Brought the shareware version on CD when I was 11 (It wasn't the 666 version tho), My Dad wasn't too happy  ;D He brought me Descent which was a bit more difficult to play with all the keys and not good mouse input.

Quake did not run too well on the 486. It must have been really amazing the effect the NeXT had on Carmack as all the rest of the staff went out to buy them and the fact that he managed to produce DOOM on a different chipset before converting back to x86 and DOS.

This was also the same specs I ran DOOM on, our 486dx2 66mhz Packard Bell Legend, lol.

It also did not run Quake well at all. I even tried upgrading the CPU to a AMD Evergreen 586 133mhz drop in CPU which was ok for everything *but* Quake. These were clones of the Intel Overdrive DX4 drop ins that promised Pentium-level performance without having to buy a new PC and were just 486 chips with higher clock rates, but weren't really all that great (like some other variants).  The reason was the floating point calculations, the 486 and it's knockoff variants just couldn't do it (or not very well). That was one of the advantages of a Pentium CPU had over the 486 and why it ran so much better on it.

Quote from: buckshot on June 12, 2023, 09:25:26 PMThis was also the same specs I ran DOOM on, our 486dx2 66mhz Packard Bell Legend, lol.

It also did not run Quake well at all. I even tried upgrading the CPU to a AMD Evergreen 586 133mhz drop in CPU which was ok for everything *but* Quake. These were clones of the Intel Overdrive DX4 drop ins that promised Pentium-level performance without having to buy a new PC and were just 486 chips with higher clock rates, but weren't really all that great (like some other variants).  The reason was the floating point calculations, the 486 and it's knockoff variants just couldn't do it (or not very well). That was one of the advantages of a Pentium CPU had over the 486 and why it ran so much better on it.

I lived in a smaller city in New Zealand, so compared to places like Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch with a lot of multinational companies and businesses trying to get second hand parts was a lot more expensive. Last thing I remember doing with the 486/66 was installing NetBSD on it in 2002 (we will still on dial up then), If I had known about NeXT back then I would have gotten a copy of NeXT3.3 and maxed out the RAM, I'm pretty confident it would have crawled on a 486/66 even if the machine had 64MB RAM.

Now I just look at this intel chipset numbers i7, i9 and struggle to figure out which is better unless you do a lot of research unlike the old days when the race was to 3.6Ghz.

I just play Doom shareware as it's good for a quick game, I prefer the demo levels, E1M5 and E1M7. E1M9 is also good, normally just load up Ultra Violence and start blasting, Nightmare is too fast for me, Some times I do Ultra Violence with either Fast exclusive-OR Respawn enabled, fun times :)