Hey guys, I have a Mono nonTurbo Cube that has a modified backplane and is running 4 030 motherboards. I believe they are 030, I'll have to double check. each board has 16mb of ram. Boots to a 2gb hdd running NS3.3. The unit has a MO drive, I do not know if it works. I do not have any MO disks to try out. The Cube itself is kinda rough; Missing some paint and the NeXT logo in the front.
I have a spare fan, covers and brackets and what not for it.
I even have a NeXT branded screw driver for the Cubes screws. I have a spare keyboard and mouse to go with the unit.
When the system boots, the 3 other boards, as far as I can tell, are trying to netboot. So you could probably get them all running without a problem through a netboot setup. NOT with 4 crts, though :P that would blow the PSU to bits...
I really don't want to sell it, but I'm not having a good 3 months financially... And I need to sell off some stuff. I wanted you all to have first dibs ;)
Anyone want to make an offer? Private message me if you do. I can get pictures of the unit inside and out, of it running, and all the spare parts.
would love to see some pics...sounds cool. what kinda price are u looking for?
i will take some tonight and try to get them uploaded tonight or tomorrow sometime.
I paid $150usd + 50 for shipping for it. I would kinda like to get atleast that back :)
how the hell did u get 4 mobos running in there? seems crazy
Quote from: "helf"When the system boots, the 3 other boards, as far as I can tell, are trying to netboot. So you could probably get them all running without a problem through a netboot setup. NOT with 4 crts, though :P that would blow the PSU to bits...
Wondering out loud if it would be possible to power the monitors externally. It would require some custom cable work ... any thoughts??
Chef
Ok, I booted the machine up last night and the main motherboard is a 040 @ 25mhz. I'll have to pull the other 3 and see if they are as well.
Also, just to clarify some, this is *just* the cube with spare parts. No monitor.
I'll be uploading some pics to flickr this afternoon.
Quote from: "helf"Ok, I booted the machine up last night and the main motherboard is a 040 @ 25mhz. I'll have to pull the other 3 and see if they are as well.
Also, just to clarify some, this is *just* the cube with spare parts. No monitor.
I'll be uploading some pics to flickr this afternoon.
sounds good, cant wait to see some pics
Ok, here are the photos. I'll have to take one of it hooked up and running later...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/sets/72157594408824999/MacG4 - The main board everything plugs into has been modified. As far as I can tell, it has been modified so that each slot is now "Slot 0" so the boards will boot properly.
Quote from: "helf"Ok, here are the photos. I'll have to take one of it hooked up and running later...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/sets/72157594408824999/
MacG4 - The main board everything plugs into has been modified. As far as I can tell, it has been modified so that each slot is now "Slot 0" so the boards will boot properly.
very odd setup. so does it actually take advantage of all 4 boards at once then?or does it just boot off one and the other 3 are there for show(and dont really have any function) did u mod this or someone else?
The guy I bought it off of modded it. One motherboard boots off the hdd. You could, iwth a bit of work, get the other 3 to properly netboot headless off the main motherboard.
Quote from: "helf"The guy I bought it off of modded it. One motherboard boots off the hdd. You could, iwth a bit of work, get the other 3 to properly netboot headless off the main motherboard.
awww i see...seems kinda pointless other than looking cool i guess
well, now a days its pointless... But you could do something like this and then be able to run renderman or what not over all 4 motherboards for faster renders or what not :)
Quote from: "helf"well, now a days its pointless... But you could do something like this and then be able to run renderman or what not over all 4 motherboards for faster renders or what not :)
yeah i guess...just a mod that i have never seen before
I still think it would be an impressive site to see this cube with 4 separate monitor/keyboard/mouse, all running there own install of NS/OS, but that is just me.
Chef
Quote from: "nextchef"I still think it would be an impressive site to see this cube with 4 separate monitor/keyboard/mouse, all running there own install of NS/OS, but that is just me.
Chef
yeah, that would be crazy. would have to have room for all 4hds' however
Quote from: "MacG4"[yeah, that would be crazy. would have to have room for all 4hds' however
I wonder if you could netboot the other three, and have them run their os off of another partition on the same hd? I have no experience with netbooting NeXT systems, or even if they could run the OS off a volume being exported off of another system on the network. It would only be a 10Mbit network, so it would probably be sloooow.
Chef
not a bad idea, again something i have never done ethier
Quote from: "nextchef"Quote from: "MacG4"[yeah, that would be crazy. would have to have room for all 4hds' however
I wonder if you could netboot the other three, and have them run their os off of another partition on the same hd? I have no experience with netbooting NeXT systems, or even if they could run the OS off a volume being exported off of another system on the network. It would only be a 10Mbit network, so it would probably be sloooow.
Chef
Not possible. As you only have one scsi drive with one channel. So, you can only connect to one mobo. Now, even assuming someone made a breakout cable for some silly reason, you need to deal with bsd disk labels(and of course IO, dma, etc. etc.).
Quote from: "multi"Quote from: "nextchef"Quote from: "MacG4"[yeah, that would be crazy. would have to have room for all 4hds' however
I wonder if you could netboot the other three, and have them run their os off of another partition on the same hd? I have no experience with netbooting NeXT systems, or even if they could run the OS off a volume being exported off of another system on the network. It would only be a 10Mbit network, so it would probably be sloooow.
Chef
Not possible. As you only have one scsi drive with one channel. So, you can only connect to one mobo. Now, even assuming someone made a breakout cable for some silly reason, you need to deal with bsd disk labels(and of course IO, dma, etc. etc.).
My thought was not to access the HD directly, but over the network. As I said before, I have no experience with netbooting NeXT hardware, but this is what I was thinking of.
Have one hard disk that contains 4 partitions on it, each a separate bootable install of NS (I guess you could also use 4 separate disks connected to the SCSI bus as well). Attach this to the "first" motherboard in the case, and have it boot normally off of the first partition. This machine would then mount the other 3 partitions and export them to the network by NFS or some other means. Ideally this "first" system would be running some kind of service that would allow it to hand out boot images when requested from the network. As the other three systems in the case would come up, they would send a request to the network looking for a boot server. By using the mac address differences of the systems, the first machine would hand the other three the proper kernel and links to the proper exported filesystem. They would then run the kernel, attach to the exported file system, and finish booting into the OS.
This is analogous to the way some "diskless" clusters are setup, minus the separate display/KB/Mouse and gui.
Chef
That's what netbooting does. The bootp server just dishes out the kernel and the options for where to nfs mount the root. Then it mounts root and runs everything off of nfs. I presently do this off of a linux box for three color stations that I have which I never got around to buying any drives for. It works fine.
As for this setup - the 4 mobos in one cube, it would make sense to use the 10baseT and connect all four to a switch. If you use a hub or use the bnc/10base2 then you are sharing the 10meg of total capacity. For my older stuff, suns , sgis, whatever, I use 3com totalswitches. You can find them on ebay for like $10 a pop and they are managed as well(so you dont waste any 10/100 ports on gear that can only do 10). So, plug them into a 10meg switch, and if the drive is big enough setup the boot server on the board 0 and the other three boards will mount root from it.
Quote from: "multi"That's what netbooting does. The bootp server just dishes out the kernel and the options for where to nfs mount the root. Then it mounts root and runs everything off of nfs. I presently do this off of a linux box for three color stations that I have which I never got around to buying any drives for. It works fine.
As for this setup - the 4 mobos in one cube, it would make sense to use the 10baseT and connect all four to a switch. If you use a hub or use the bnc/10base2 then you are sharing the 10meg of total capacity. For my older stuff, suns , sgis, whatever, I use 3com totalswitches. You can find them on ebay for like $10 a pop and they are managed as well(so you dont waste any 10/100 ports on gear that can only do 10). So, plug them into a 10meg switch, and if the drive is big enough setup the boot server on the board 0 and the other three boards will mount root from it.
Good to hear about netbooting NeXT hardware, so we know that at least that part is possible. The biggest issue now, besides actually getting 4 next mono monitors, would be figuring out how to power them all at the same time.
Chef
OK, guys. I have an offer which I'll probably accept in the next day or two. Just an FYI :)
Whatever multi said, I second. I've run Linux "nfs-rooted" before and it's a charm and even at 10MBits it's fast enough. Don't forget 10MBits will give you around 1MBytes/sec transfer rates, and a lot of the older SCSI machines wouldn't do much more than 1-2MBytes/sec sustained transfer rates, so it's not going to be so bad actually.
Also, having multiple motherboards isn't only useful for Renderman etc, but many other apps and "setups". For example, you could be running a web server one, and if you're doing programming (with Cocoa/NeXTSTEP) you can use distributed objects to have programs distribute workloads across systems (various applications use this)
Nice system helf! And ugly carpet :)
ha, that carpet *is* horrid. I took those pics of my grandparents. :P
I had grand plans for this machine... But I don't have time and need the money :P So someone else will get to have fun :D
Ok. the Cube is now *SOLD*! yay!
I shall keep the buyers identity a secret unless they want it to be known ;)
Thanks for all the interest! And I'm glad someone here bought it. I was *not* going to stick it on eBay :)
Quote from: "helf"Ok. the Cube is now *SOLD*! yay!
I shall keep the buyers identity a secret unless they want it to be known ;)
Thanks for all the interest! And I'm glad someone here bought it. I was *not* going to stick it on eBay :)
just because im curious did u make up for at least what u paid for it?
a bit more actually :) I'm very happy!
Quote from: "helf"a bit more actually :) I'm very happy!
Good for you helf.
Too bad you will not get to finish your "plans" for this cube, but hopefully the new owner will consider continuing the project you started.
Chef
Quote from: "helf"The guy I bought it off of modded it. One motherboard boots off the hdd. You could, iwth a bit of work, get the other 3 to properly netboot headless off the main motherboard.
Does anyone know specifically what kind of modifications were done to allow this. Is it just putting jumpers across some contacts, or is there more to it. I am not entirely clear what the pictures of the slots are trying to show.
Chef
Quote from: "helf"a bit more actually :) I'm very happy!
glad to hear that, at least the cube will have a good new home :lol:
I'll have to go dig the information up. Some traces are cut and some points are jumpered together.
AFAIK all this does is change the IDs of the slots to 0.
aha! Found the info on this modification.
5.40 68030 board in the same NeXTcube as a 68040 board?
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURE IS NOT SUPPORTED BY NEXT, INC.
AND WILL DEFINITELY VOID THE WARRANTY ON YOUR NEXT COMPUTER. FOLLOW IT
AT YOUR OWN RISK. I DISCLAIM ALL RESPONSIBILITIES FOR DAMAGES CAUSED
BY NEGLIGENCE IN FOLLOWING THE PROCEDURE. THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT
THE PROCEDURE WILL WORK ON ALL VERSIONS(?) OF THE NEXT CUBE HARDWARE.
ALL I KNOW IS THAT IT WORKED ON THE NEXT CUBE I WAS WORKING ON!!!! SO
BEWARE.
Here we go! I'll first provide a description of the hardware I was
using and comment on what I accomplished and how I got the information
on how to do it!
The hardware included a NeXT cube with 660 MB drive, OD, etc., a 68040
upgrade board, and a 68030 motherboard. I successfully installed both
the 68040 and 68030 boards on a SINGLE NeXT cube and linked them
together through their ethernet ports. The 68040 was configured as a
boot server and the 68030 was used as its client (booting off the
network for lack of an additional hard drive).
The procedure reconfigures slot #2 on the cube's back-plane as slot
#0. This provides two slots configured as #0, required for booting the
two motherboards. Once I determined what the slot pin-outs were
(thanks to my good friend John Chmielewski), it was a matter of time
before the two boards happily co-existed.
The procedure:
1. First, follow the procedure on the NeXT User's Reference manual
for removing the system board (Appendix C: Opening the Cube, page
291 of the 2.0 manual).
2. Using the NeXT supplied screwdriver, remove the two screws that
attach the power-supply housing to the cube (the screws are
located on the lower part of the housing) and gently pull the
housing out. Set it aside in a safe place (away from kids and
nosey friends!)
3. Remove the two plastic grooved plates (used to slide the system
boards in) at each side of the inside bottom of the cube. (For
each plate, lift the side closest to the rear opening and gently
pull them out). Set them aside.
4. Using the NeXT tool, remove three screws holding the back-plane to
the cube and then take the back-plane out of the cube. Let the
cube rest for a while.
Inspect the back-plane. You will see five bus slots (four vertical
and one horizontal). The horizontal slot connects the back-plane
to the power supply housing. We're only interested in the four
vertical slots. From the factory these slots are configured as 6,
2, 0, and 4 (starting from the left and going right with the
horizontal slot at the bottom).
The system board connects to slot #0 (which you've probably
noticed). Each slot contains three columns of 32 pins. Following
is an ASCII representation of one of the slots:
x y z C B A
o-o o 32 . . .
o-o o 31 . . .
o-o o 30 . . .
o-o o 29 . . .
28 . . .
.
.
.
3 . . .
2 . . .
1 . . .
...where x, y, and z are labeled GND, SID, and VCC, respectively.
The GND, SID, and VCC "holes" are used to configure the slot
number using simple binary encoding, where GND is logical zero,
VCC is logical one, and SID (for Slot-ID I guess) determines the
current bit state (one or zero).
Notice the four rows of GND, SID, VCC triads; each row is
equivalent to one bit position in the slot number, the bottom row
bit position 0, the top row bit position 3. This gives a total of
four bit positions, or 16 possible slot numbers. To encode a slot
number, you need to connect an SID row to its corresponding GND or
VCC row. For example, the diagram below shows the configuration of
the slots in my cube's back-plane (you'll have to look very
closely to see the actual connections):
SLOT 6 SLOT 2 SLOT 0 SLOT 4
BIT 3: o-o o o-o o o-o o o-o o
BIT 2: o o-o o-o o o-o o o o-o
BIT 1: o o-o * o o-o * o-o o o-o o
BIT 0: o-o o o-o o o-o o o-o o
5. To reconfigure slot 2 as slot 0, cut the trace between SID and VCC
for bit position 1 (see * o o-o * above) and connect SID to GND on
the same row. I used the SIMM removal tool supplied by NeXT in the
040 upgrade (talk about multi-purpose) to cut the trace! Very
gently, scrape the solder off between the two holes. Take a
paperclip, shape it to fit between the holes in SID and GND, and
trim it down to an even 1/4 inch (perfect fit)!
That's all there is to it. If for some reason you ever want to
revert to slot 2, just remove the paperclip from GND-SID and
reconnect it to SID-VCC.
6. Now put the cube back together. First, re-install the back-plane
using its three connecting screws, then snap on the plastic
plates, and finally insert the power-supply housing and secure
with its two screws.
At this point the cube is ready to take on the two system boards
(it is up to you to determine where/how you want to use the two
boards; I'll explain how I used mine) ...
7. I installed the 68040 in the original slot 0 and the 68030 in the
reconfigured slot 0 (previously slot 2). The 68040 was used as the
main processor board. I connected the 660 MB drive, the OD, and
the monitor to it.
NOTE: Before beginning the procedure, I went into the NeXT Monitor
on the 68030 and disabled the Sound out, SCSI tests and verbose
test mode and enabled serial port A as a console terminal. I also
made "en" the default boot device. I setup the 68040 as a boot
server and taught it about the 68030 (which took some time in
getting it setup properly).
8. I connected the 68040 to the 68030 using a thin-ethernet cable and
I booted. First thing I noticed was that the 030 timed-out a
couple of times waiting for the 040 to tell it to boot. But after
the 040 was up, the 030 booted nicely.
That's all folks. Hope all this made some sense and people find it
useful.
Comments:
* To power off the cube, I have to first shutdown the 030 (I run
"halt -p" as root from a telnet connection and wait for the 030 to
go down), and I then power-down the 040. If you shut down the 040
before the 030, you'll have to pull the power plug to turn the
machine off. The cube will not power off if either of the two
boards is providing a load to the power-supply.
* Remember, I've only performed this procedure on one system. I do
not know what will happen on your system. So make sure you plan
ahead what your going to do and that you understand the procedure.
* I don't know what problems may arise when you add a board that
uses the NeXTbus, such as the NeXTdimension, or how it will
behave. If someone is courageous enough to perform the procedure
and installs another board, please post your results to the net.
Update:
To clear up some misunderstandings with the settings in the "p"
command of the NeXT monitor (these settings are only required for the
system board that doesn't have the NeXT display monitor connected):
1. Sound out test must be "no"; the boot process will not proceed if
the monitor isn't connected to the board and this is set to "yes"
(the sound out tests will fail, aborting the boot procedure).
2. SCSI tests should be "no" if you don't have SCSI devices attached
to the board (SCSI tests will fail otherwise, aborting the boot
procedure).
3. Verbose test mode must be "no" for booting from the network. If
set to "yes", the boot process will timeout waiting for a BOOTP
and you'll be left in the monitor with no means of restarting the
board (except pulling the power plug)!
This is probably true also for booting from an OD that hasn't been
inserted (assuming the OD was attached to the board).
4. Allow serial port A as alternate console if you want to view the
boot process (for problems and peace-of-mind).
5. Other settings were not modified from their factory defaults or
had no effect on the procedure.
There is also a way in using 2 boards plus NeXTDimension board in one
Cube.
I've run my "screw with the backplane trick" cube with :
| <empty> | 32MB-ND | | 64MB-040 | 40MB-030 |
without any problems. Using the od got the system warm, but never had
a problem. The cool part was having the printer on the 030. One day I
tried to dump an 040 into the 030 position, but I couldn't get it to
boot. I played for a couple minutes, but put the 030 back in and went
on with life...
Quote from: "nextchef"Quote from: "helf"The guy I bought it off of modded it. One motherboard boots off the hdd. You could, iwth a bit of work, get the other 3 to properly netboot headless off the main motherboard.
Does anyone know specifically what kind of modifications were done to allow this. Is it just putting jumpers across some contacts, or is there more to it. I am not entirely clear what the pictures of the slots are trying to show.
Chef
I believe you have to cut some traces. NeXTBus only works if there's only one controller or master on the bus. If you have one system board and multiple addon cards you're fine, but if you instead have multiple system boards then you'd have problems. Cutting the traces, I believe, makes it so those other system boards can't access the NeXTBus, and only use the backplane for power.
I *think* you can do this same thing with an unmodified backplane, three boards that don't have NBIC chips (030s had sockets), and one main system that either did or did not have an NBIC chip (any cube board).
A friend of mine (the one who did the NeXT keyboard bus analysis I posted a while ago) did a setup like this back at Rose. Had the three 030 boards all netbooting off the master board, but I don't recall if he had to cut traces on the backplane or not.
Quote
Good to hear about netbooting NeXT hardware, so we know that at least that part is possible. The biggest issue now, besides actually getting 4 next mono monitors, would be figuring out how to power them all at the same time.
Chef
well i have a external power supply for a mono monitor. it has a monitor connector and a short cable with the other side going to the monitor. so i can use one monitor for several running stations and cubes. it was build for a firm using headless next stations as a call centre to service the machines. of course the monitor should be connected before boot, but in my crowded space it is a real help. actually the data and signal lines just pass, internal there are two 12 volt power supply's: + and - 12v, going to the power supply pins of the monitor. the power suply lines from the computer are not used.
@macsimski:
got any photos?
well nothng o bee seen. just a metal box with a db19m coming out of it and a db19f on the back, power inlet and a power switch. all homebrew by a company who onwned on one moment about 100 next computers just to handle calls with a menu structure
Oh I see. I thought they were produced and sold. My mistake.
thats a really cool idea. probably not hard to make at all. I need to try that :P