Hi all! I'm new here, but have been a NeXT fan since around 1992 when I ran one at Central Michigan University as a student employee. The Cube was the DNS server for the Computer Services department and, as far as I know, also ran the first web server at CMU -- which was a Bolo server locator used to help us keep track of ongoing internet Mac Bolo games that we could join from the Mac lab.
In any case, years ago, I started collecting NeXT equipment -- including some from a CMU auction (although it wasn't my Cube, unfortunately, but instead a couple from their Computer Science department). I also bought some from other sources over the years. It's been sitting for decades, unfortunately, but I finally decided to put some work into them and see what I could get running. (Then maybe sell off any extras while I get one good working one for myself.)
As it is now, I have a couple of Cube cases, a few Cube motherboards, a few Mono 17" monitors for the Cubes, a Slab motherboard, and what appears to be a Color Turbo Slab that I don't remember ever buying (and don't have a color monitor to connect it to even). I'm sure I picked it up in some deal/trade many years ago and then just put it into storage.
In any case, my goal right now is getting two Cubes up and running. One of the Cubes had two Maxtor 350MB drives in it. The other had just an OD drive. I also have a spare OD drive that I found in a box. (Spoiler alert: Neither of the OD drives appear to work -- they take the disk in and just make a fairly loud clanging sound and then I can't get them out until I shut down, restart, and use "ej" to kick it out.)
I have two 68030 Cube motherboards and one 68040. I was able to get one of the 030 boards to boot in the Cube with the two Maxtors. It boots into NS3.3 and appears to run. The second Maxtor was used just for storage, so I did a Build Disk to it and moved it to the other Cube. That other Cube will now also boot -- but only from the 030 board that boots in the first Cube. In other words, I can boot either Cube now -- using their own Maxtors -- but only from one 030 motherboard.
If I try the other 030 motherboard or the 040 motherboard, I sometimes get an "Exception #2" error fairly quickly. Other times, it'll give another error that I somehow forgot from last night -- and will get posted here soon.
I might assume bad motherboard, but it seems weird that I have two that are bad in the same way.
I'm not finding much on "Exception #2" other than someone mentioning that they disabled the parity check and it went away. I've tried it both ways.
It could be RAM -- I need to find a better way to pull these DIMMs to shuffle around. The 030 board that works is fully populated with 16 1MB DIMMs. The 030 that doesn't work just has 4MB total. And the 040 board has 12MB.
I have ordered a pair of ZuluSCSI cards that I hope to use in these. (I actually ordered them when I thought both Maxtors were dead, but it was just a SCSI termination issue -- so it's just a bonus that they work.) I assume that I can boot up a Cube and then use it to Build Disk to the ZuluSCSI when it arrives and then boot from that, correct?
In any case, mainly just wanted to introduce myself and mention the Exception #2 errors with two motherboards to see if anyone had any direction on where to go from here.
Thanks!
Oh, and to mention them, some other bits that I found in my collection...
3 Non-ADB keyboards
3 Non-ADB mice
1 Sound Box
1 "Digital Ears" DE-1
1 Extra N1000 backplane
1 Floppy Drive
1 NeXT Laser Printer (B&W)
Quote from: JohnGypsy on October 03, 2023, 04:03:07 PMI'm not finding much on "Exception #2" other than someone mentioning that they disabled the parity check and it went away. I've tried it bother ways.
Exception #2 on the 68k indicates a bus error. This can have a large number of reasons, see this web page (
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~cs573/fall2002/notes/lec273/lecture21/21_3.htm#:~:text=The%2068000%20then%20can%20start%20executing%20the%20start%20up%20routine.&text=The%20bus%20error%20exception%20results,memory%20at%20a%20nonexisting%20address.) for details. Not very useful to debug the problem - swapping RAM between the boards is definitely a good idea. 4 MB RAM on the other 68030 board might be too little to boot a more recent NeXTstep version.
Btw., the 68040 is only supported in NeXTstep 2.0 and later releases, but I guess that it's rare to find a 1.x installation on a hard disk (instead of an MO).
Hey! I reseated all the memory and now all three motherboards are booting fine! Sweet!
Hello John: Cool sounds like you have everything working, drop me a DM when you have your spare stuff for sale as I'm interested in it all :) Exception 2 is usually a bad ram stick or failing capacitors. Best Regards Rob Blessin