I've got two HP 712 slabs and a SPARCstation 20 now happily running NS (OS 4.2 on the SPARC).
The HPs are rather interesting hardware. Pretty zippy, they use standard HD15 video and PS/2 keyboards and mice, and 72-pin FPM RAM (interchangeable with Turbo NeXTstations and cubes), but the most interesting feature is the video card. It's internally an 8-bit framebuffer, but it uses some DSP magic called 'Color Recovery' to simulate 24-bit color. This sounds like a kluge, but it's really just hardware-aided dithering. That said, the end result is *FAST* (faster than an ND or a Sun SX), and looks reasonably good. There are some visible artifacts when you display a true-color image, but they're not bad at all. I'll have to post a screenshot at some point here once I get some webspace, and once I get them connected to a better monitor than the chunderous 17" Compaq CRT I'm using now.
Also, they come in a nice little slab form factor! I ought to spraypaint mine NeXT black :) The floppy drive doesn't work, but I don't care since one of them lacks an FD altogether anyway. Everything else works great, including the PC-style parallel and serial ports, and the twisted-pair ethernet. My only real complaint about these is the internal housing - it uses blocks of *foam* to support the disks. There's only one bay designed for a hard disk, and it will only accommodate the 1" high variants, not the 1.6" variants common in NeXTs and Suns. You could, if you felt like doing some clever cable routing, jimmysquid a second disk into the floppy bay, but I haven't tried to do this yet.
The two came with HP-UX 10.20 installed, which in one case had a horribly broken filesystem. The other one was just abysmally slow for some reason, and was running the godawful-ugly HP VUE desktop (the forerunner of CDE). Clearly, this had to change, so I grabbed my handy NeXTSTEP 3.3 CD, an external Plextor 40x CDROM, and gave it a whirl. 2 hours later, everything was up and running, patches and lots of apps and tools installed. The only thing that's missing is the developer packages, since my CD is scratched. (grr)
As for the SPARCstation, it was a minor case of parts-juggling, since my SS20 came with both a VSIMM for the onboard SX graphics and also a ZX (leo) Sbus card, and had a HyperSPARC proc. So, I traded out for the SuperSPARC/60 in my SS10, and moved the ZX over to the SS10, and decided I'd give OPENSTEP on SPARC a whirl. Well, other than the fact that the install took *forever* because of the abysmally slow internal CDROM, everything works *great*. The SX is clearly the framebuffer of choice for NS/OS on SPARC. Full 24-bit color, as subjectively fast as an ND, higher resolution (1280x1024 with the 8MB VSIMM). I don't currently have an x86 NS/OS box, so this is the one I do any serious work on. I haven't benchmarked it, but other than graphics, it feels even with the HP 712/80, and considerably faster than the Turbo color slab. Also, unlike the 712, it has the OS 4.2 developer packages :)
As for the SS10. well, the combo of HyperSPARC proc and ZX video means there's only one real choice: Linux. Oh well, cant' win 'em all :P
QuoteThe only thing that's missing is the developer packages, since my CD is scratched. (grr)
Do all your cd's have cases?
Not the original cases, no. I've got them in newer slimline jewel boxes now, but the NS 3.3 dev one got damaged anyway, somehow. No clue how. Suffice it to say, I imaged the disks that aren't damaged, just in case!
Quote from: "kronoman"
...and was running the godawful-ugly HP VUE desktop (the forerunner of CDE). Clearly, this had to change, so I grabbed my handy ...
But of course! :D
BTW, you might be able to find a product called Brasso (sp?), that has been used by many to fix the scratched surface of many CD discs. There's another product, but I can't recall the name. If I find the info, I'll post it here.
Actually, the scratch on my Dev CD is on the top, clear through the recording layer, not on the plastic. It's just a pinhole, but it's enough to kill the disc.
Ah, that sucks! Indeed, nothing that can be done about that :( Maybe spot which file(s) got hit and work around it?
The affected files (well, dirs), unfortunately, are DeveloperLibs.pkg and DeveloperTools.pkg. Both barf. Everything else checks out OK.