I got really lucky today and managed to pick up one of these for cheap. Problem is, I don't have a mouse, keyboard, or soundbox.
Would it be at all possible for me to get the machine going without the soundbox? I do hear that it's possible to use ADB mice and keyboards, and I can source the parts to build a video adapter without much difficulty. Are there pinouts for the video port available?
I have heard that I need a later BIOS ROM (v7X or something) to use ADB devices. Problem is, I have a v66 ROM. Can I get around this by just burning a new ROM?
Quote from: "Computolio"I got really lucky today and managed to pick up one of these for cheap. Problem is, I don't have a mouse, keyboard, or soundbox.
Cool! How much?
Quote from: "Computolio"
Would it be at all possible for me to get the machine going without the soundbox? I do hear that it's possible to use ADB mice and keyboards, and I can source the parts to build a video adapter without much difficulty. Are there pinouts for the video port available?
You can boot the machine without a kbd/mouse/soundbox with the 470Ohm resistor trick. Look here:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/next68k/faq.html#no-monitorYou can then hook up a 13w3 (SUN-type) cable to a proper monitor to see the machine's video out.
But you won't be able to use a kbd/mouse without a soundbox. So at the very least you'll need a soundbox (even if you do your own wiring. if you don't do your own, then you need a Y-cable which splits the video port to 2 cables: video/monitor and soundbox, to which you eventually connect the kbd/mouse). But you really should search the forums because all this has been discussed in much greater detail in there.
Pinouts are here:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/next68k/faq.html#rom-monitorhttp://pinouts.ru/Video/nextcolor_pinout.shtmlQuote from: "Computolio"
I have heard that I need a later BIOS ROM (v7X or something) to use ADB devices. Problem is, I have a v66 ROM. Can I get around this by just burning a new ROM?
I'm sure you could, but you'll need a v7x ROM first :)
Quote from: "da9000"
Cool! How much?
$20.
QuoteI'm sure you could, but you'll need a v7x ROM first :)
Yeah, uh, how would I go about that? The ROM has to be patched with the ethernet MAC address from my previous ROM, right?
I just looked on Blackhole and $20 for a soundbox isn't too bad. It's the $25 for the non-ADB keyboard (and another $25 for the mouse!*) that's a little steep. It does look like enabling ADB will be a pain in the ass, so I guess I should just suck it in and go for the non-ADB soundbox? Are ADB soundboxes backwards compatible with non-ADB peripherals and systems?
*Apparently I can get away with wiring up an Amiga mouse- maybe I'll just do that instead. I have tons and tons of Amiga mice laying about.
Hi Computolio,
A v66 ROM indicates a non-turbo machine which can't use ADB peripherals, only non-ADB. If your NeXTstation has four main memory slots (excluding the 64 pin DSP memory expansion slot), then it has the Turbo chipset. Eight main memory slots in a NeXTstation indicates a non-Turbo chipset. The v66 ROM was the last one released for non-Turbos, and the v74 ROM was the last one released for Turbos.
You can modify other mice to work with non-ADB NeXTstations and Cubes:
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=386http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=403http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Hardware/replacement_non-adb__mouse.pdfThe ADB soundboxes aren't compatible with non-ADB peripherals, but you can convert them to non-ADB with the sound board from a non-ADB monitor. You can pick up a non-ADB keyboard and mouse inexpensively on Ebay if you're willing to wait for the right auction.
That's what I thought. My machine has 8 RAM slots, which is weird because the outer case clearly says "turbo". I guess this means I have a 32MB memory celing as well?
Quote from: "Computolio"That's what I thought. My machine has 8 RAM slots, which is weird because the outer case clearly says "turbo". I guess this means I have a 32MB memory celing as well?
Weird. Maybe someone swapped motherboards or boxes around ?! :(
I believe 32MB will be the limit, although I had a NeXT engineer tell me that it's up to the firmware to decide the memory size. I don't know enough to be able to say if that's fully true or not, but I do *believe* that the address en/decoding is done by hardware (chips) and thus the limitation is on the board, not the firmware. But, like I said, I was told otherwise... Any hardware gurus care to shade some light?
It doesn't work :((
I finally assembled all the parts I needed. I managed to get a keyboard, mouse and soundbox from Black Hole, inc., and then I built my own Y-cable out of a dead Sun monitor cable. Checked it with a multimeter and everything. No go.
The startup bong sound is scrambled, and I've tried 5 different monitors. I will get a scrambled picture on one monitor, and it looks like it's trying to boot from the network, but I can't get any response from the keyboard or the mouse.
This ********in' blows. I spent a fortune on this thing.
Quote from: "Computolio"It doesn't work :((
I finally assembled all the parts I needed. I managed to get a keyboard, mouse and soundbox from Black Hole, inc., and then I built my own Y-cable out of a dead Sun monitor cable. Checked it with a multimeter and everything. No go.
The startup bong sound is scrambled, and I've tried 5 different monitors. I will get a scrambled picture on one monitor, and it looks like it's trying to boot from the network, but I can't get any response from the keyboard or the mouse.
This ********in' blows. I spent a fortune on this thing.
Do you have RAM in all the slots? I've noticed that in most (maybe all) non-Turbo stations that if the RAM is in one bank that the startup sound is garbled. Just moving the SIMMs to the other set of 4 slots made the startup sound normal.
Good to know. I am pretty short on single-sided 4MB SIMMs, so I've only got two banks filled. I should try again once I find more of the right kind of RAM.
However, that still leaves the bizarre video behavior. Since it's sync-on-green, the video end of my Y-cable is a VGA connector with just the red, blue and green lines plus the red, green and blue grounds hooked up seperately. Should I be hooking all the grounds together?
There's a pin on the NeXT end called "monitor type 2" that I haven't hooked up; do I need to do anything with it? What's it for?
It turns out that I had green and blue swapped for some reason. I thought I'd checked for this twice while wiring up the cable, but just swapping green and blue on the BNC cables going into my monitor got me a perfect picture.
I also tried moving the RAM over for the time being, and that fixed the garbled audio. The keyboard and mouse actually do work- I guess I just couldn't tell because of the scrambled screen.
Basically, it works perfectly now. I can't actually use the machine yet because I don't know the login/password, but I hopefully should be able to get around that.
Just resetted the password. This thing's got a fair amount of software installed, software I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to find copies of.
There's also tons of personal files from the machine's previous owners. It looks like this was used as the family computer at one point. There's business documents, audio recordings and even kid's drawings on the thing. I kind of feel guilty rummaging through this stuff, even though it's all over a decade old.
I guess the proper thing to do is wipe the drive (I was going to replace it with a bigger one anyway), but I'm going to try to save as much of the software as I can first.
Use rsh/ssh to dump it over the network to another machine. (It doesn't have to be a NeXT - I backed up my turbo slab to an SGI Indigo2 and a Sun Ultra 2)
Quote from: "Computolio"There's a pin on the NeXT end called "monitor type 2" that I haven't hooked up; do I need to do anything with it? What's it for?
No you don't need to hook it up. I also didn't on my homebrew Y-cable (
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=811)
Oh, and glad you got it working! They're tough machines. They don't die easily ;)
BTW, I also noticed the garbled sound based on the memory bank used. I still have a funny feeling that it might be dried out electrolytic SMD capacitors (much like in certain Amigas), but I've not had a chance to replace'em and find out.
Quote from: "da9000"BTW, I also noticed the garbled sound based on the memory bank used. I still have a funny feeling that it might be dried out electrolytic SMD capacitors (much like in certain Amigas), but I've not had a chance to replace'em and find out.
Could be, but this always happens on mono stations in my experience. Also to note:
* It always happens on the same memory bank.
* It does not happen if both memory banks are full.
You don't recall having this problem on fresh (brand new or less then 5 year old) NeXTstations, do you? My first NeXTstation was 10+ years old...
I highly doubt the garbled sound was the norm - certainly Jobs would have whined to the engineers about that! :)