Hi all. Although I have little experience with NeXTs in general, I've been building a small collection of black NeXT hardware (currently have working: a 030 Cube, Turbo mono slab, Turbo color slab). In addition to these, I also acquired a small lot of black hardware, including 3 dead slabs (although one of which was completely devoid of electronics).
The remaining two, NeXTStation Colors, were stripped by the previous owner having had the RAM, HD, HD cabling, HD platform, and battery removed (strangely, the floppy drive was still present). The RAM had been forcefully removed, breaking many of the slot clips in the process, and one of the poor slabs even had it's ROM bouncing around the casing (later determined to have died from such ill treatment).
I've since sourced replacement RAM, ROM, HD cabling, HD and HD platform and got them eventually to fire up and enter the ROM monitor. I've also fashioned a SIMM holder that sits over the SIMMs to keep them upright where the slot clips have broken. However, having no OS disk to install on them, the project was shelved until a decently priced copy of NeXTStep or OpenStep could be sourced.
Forward a couple of years to the current day, I read that a working NeXT machine can build a fresh installation of NeXTStep/ Openstep onto a blank hard disk (can anyone advise me on the legality of doing this without the original installation media, given that these machines must, at one point, have had a working licenced OS on them?) using BuildDisk. I give this a go from my Turbo Color (running OpenStep 4.2) by placing one of the two Color's hard disks in an external box and connecting it to the Turbo Color, and it builds the disk.
And, sure enough, the Color boots the disk, asks me the language to use and the keyboard... and that's where it goes a little strange. It looks like its booted fine, but File Viewer is unusable; the main body of icons do not respond to clicks, and the upper two rows have multiple icons all overlaying the left most position. Applications can only be loaded if they're already in the right-hand dock, or using the search facility on the Escape key. In all applications, no menu is present in the menu bar (only the application name appears).
I do not believe the disk itself to be bad, as it works fine in the Turbo Color which behaves exactly as it should (just like it's original disk).
Any ideas what could be causing this strangeness? Is the OS or it's configuration any different for non-turbo models than it is for turbo slabs, or do you think I'm looking at a bizarre hardware fault?
I always believed that the machines had an intrinsic license, similar to apple - that if you have the hardware, you owned a license to use the prevailing OS version at that time. Openstep ....may be a little later than your machine. But never mind.
Swap the memory with a known good machine. If you still get issues, then pare down the memory stick by stick until you are working with one known good stick and see if that is working ok. Its possible that there was more damage than just the memory clip missing - bizarre hardware fault indeed...
It the replacement ROM the same version as the one in your working colour turbo?
//R
Thank you for your advice on OpenStep licencing, and diagnostic suggestions. I have gone some way to trying it out and now feel a little silly for not previously trying out an obvious omission in my diagnostic procedure: trying the disk in the other Color (referred to hereafter as Color #2), as I had been focussing all my attention at rebuilding one Color at a time, starting with the one I now call Color #1.
Prompted by your request to determine ROM versions (the two Colors have the same ROM "Rev 2.4 v65", and the Turbo Color has "Rev 3.3 v74") the thought struck me that I really should have tried the disk in the other machine. Unfortunately, it didn't boot at first (power up, no display) so I stripped all but two sticks of RAM out of it, and it booted into OpenStep and - no problems whatsoever; the File Viewer displays okay, as do application menus and preferences.app.
Further inspired by the suggestion to try memory from a working machine, I swapped the two sticks from the now working Color #2 into Color #1 (along with the HD), booted it up and... the problem still prevails. I guess that Color #1 has suffered damage to the motherboard (possibly the connections to the RAM slots, given the damage they suffered).
I don't know if it matters much, but the two Colors differ in a couple of ways:
- Color#2 has a metal strip that runs the full width of the motherboard, just behind the hard disk connector, which Color #1 doesn't have (but does have the two solder points on either side of the board, and one near the middle, where a strip could have been mounted).
- The Colors have different processor markings; #1 has 68040 SAMPLE-BF, #2 has XC68040RC25
- The Colors have different RAMDACs; #1 has a black topped chip with chip number Bt643KG110, #2 has a purely ceramic topped chip with chip number Bt643KG135
Is there a memory checking utility available for NeXTs?
I don't know of any memtest utility for the NeXT. The only thing I can think of is to put the memory in a PC that accepts that type of memory (such as an old 486 or Pentium motherboard) and run memtest86. Remember pairing rules -- 72-pin SIMMS must be paired on a Pentium, but can be installed singly on a 486.
The part number on the RAMDACs specifies the maximum speed -- 110MHz vs. 135. Both are well above the rate needed -- 1120x832@68Hz is around 88MHz; @72Hz it's around 94MHz.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have any PCs that utilise 72-pin memory, but I may have an Alpha, RiscPC or something that might (I have a fairly large collection of older machines). However, I was hoping that a NeXT-based memory tester would help me located potential motherboard faults (as I have tried the same memory in the other Color and it works fine). I'll continue experimenting and see what I can find out.
I never tried these - but at
http://www.channelu.com/NeXT/Black/index.html there are links to NeXT diagnostic utilities - maybe these include a RAM test or give some clues as to what might be malfunctioning?
Aha, yes, many thanks. I have copied this to the Color's HD and it does, indeed, include memory tests (as well as DSP, sound in/ out, ethernet controller, timer, SCSI, etc). It passed all the tests with no issues. Which is both good news, I guess, but somewhat vexing as the problem still persists.