I'll state from experience that these are quite nice machines for NeXTSTEP 3.3. Alas they won't run OPENSTEP - but there's as many here as anyone could want.
Item number: 230130078372
So how fast/responsive of a system would this be running NS? Does it require any special peripherals, such as keyboard, mouse, or monitor? Would love to add a "green" system to my collection, but want to make sure I pick a good example.
Chef
Quote from: "nextchef"So how fast/responsive of a system would this be running NS? Does it require any special peripherals, such as keyboard, mouse, or monitor? Would love to add a "green" system to my collection, but want to make sure I pick a good example.
Chef
The HP Geckos are quite a bit faster than a TurboColor in my experience. I have two 712/60 here running 3.3. The nice thing about these machines is that they use standard PC peripherals - PS/2 keyboards and mice, VGA monitors (with standard 15 pin Sub-D connector).
-- cuby
Yep, cuby's experience mirrors mine. With one of mine, I'm using an MS optical mouse with a USB->PS2 converter, works fine. Only catch is you'll need an external CD drive for installation (50-pin SCSI. If it works with a NeXT or Sun, it works here). Also the floppy doesn't work.
The 712/60 is about equivalent to a SPARCstation 20 at 50MHz, and the 712/80 is a bit faster. Also, the monitor is explicitly *not* sync-on-green. Every LCD panel I've tried has worked like a charm with mine.
Thanks for the info guys, as it sounds like this is a good opportunity to pick up a Gecko for the NS collection.
Chef
Now that I have a 712/80, what is the proper procedure for getting NS 3.3 installed on it. I have an external sun cdrom drive hooked up to it, and the NS3.3 RISC disk in, but it just sits there at the boot rom screen "selecting a system to boot". I have tried pressing the ESC key to get out, but the keyboard seems to be locked.
Any help and/or guidance is greatly appreciated.
Chef
:EDIT:
I apparently waited too long to press it, as I am now in the boot admin. I did a search to find bootable systems, and it shows the hd at ID6 and my cdrom at ID5. When I do a "boot scsi.5" it flashes to the boot screen but then comes back to the boot admin. The cd in question works fine for installing on sun systems, along with the sun 411 drive, so that should not be the issue.
:EDIT2:
According to www.openpa.net/next.html it appears my cdrom drive may not be compatible? For those who have installed NS3.3 successfully, what make/model of SCSI cdrom worked for you.
Found an old yamaha burner that allows me to boot from the cd and start the install. The problem is the install fails stating that "you must have a disk with at least 120MB of free disk space". The hp has a 2.1G Quantum VP32210 at SCSI ID 6, and I set the Yamaha CDR400t as ID2. Is the install trying to install to the cd because it is the lower number? How does one go about changing the internal disks ID? Can it be done in the rom monitor, or does one have to do it with jumpers on the drive, and further how do you open the case up to get to the drives?
Questions, questions, and more questions...
Chef
:EDIT:
Found a service manual link on OpenPA site, and was able to get in and change the id's around. Following the instructions on the above site, I set the HD to ID0, and the CD to ID1, booted from the cd, and started the install process. It still errors out saying not enough space to install, but earlier it scrolls by a message asking to insert media in drive0 id0??? Could the hard disk be bad, or possibly one that NS3.3 does not know how to work with without a custom disktab?
:EDIT2:
Hooked up a sun external enclosure with a seagate drive in it, and NS is installing on it. Will try to see if I can initialize the Quantum disk after NS is finished installing on the external disk. Hopefully I can determine if it is a disktab or an actual bad disk.
:EDIT3:
First stage install completes, but then it errors out after I press ctrl-c to cancel the networking setup. It is sitting at the "starting RPC and network services .." line, and will not go any further ...
reinstalled again, and it dropped into the monitor again after checking disks. I manually did a fsck on the disk and then did an "exit" to let it finish booting. I am now sitting at the "Summary of Devices" screen, and I have no functioning keyboard or mouse. I have tried a couple of different ps2 keyboards/mice, but none seem to work at this step.
:EDIT4:
Looks like the cdrom was bad, at least as far as NS was concerned. Took another one out of a Sparc20 and it seems to be working better, as it is now installing the software packages from the cd.