blackcube.org
NeXT Computers
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Introduction
| NeXT was founded by Steve Jobs after his ouster from Apple. NeXT was not only about the striking black cubes, but a superior type of software design as well. NeXT started with the Mach kernel from CMU and implemented a BSD Unix with the kernel. Then a sleek GUI supported by Objective C as a development environment resulted in a stable, powerful platform that is still considered one of the best development systems of all time. The internet standards of http and www were written at CERN on NeXT cubes. NeXT hardware now seems slow and under powered, but those black cubes and pizza boxes brought super computing power to the desktop when first released. The design of the operating system was validated by the choice of NeXT to be developed into Apple's OS for the future, Mac OS X. |
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My NeXT
collection consists of two NeXT Dimension cubes and a trio of "slabs",
aka a pair of 25mhz monochrome NeXTstations and a NeXTstation
Turbo Color. One of my cubes has a working Canon 256mb optical
drive, a 2.88 mb floppy drive, a 2.1 gb hard drive, a 68040-25
mhz motherboard, the Dimension board, 64 mb of ram on the system board,
32mb ram on the Dimension board, non-ADB keyboard, sound
box and mouse, an external NeXT CD-ROM drive, the 400 dpi
NeXT laser printer and a NeXT-Hitachi 21" color monitor. This cube
started out life as a 68030-25 cube and had the motherboard and power
supply upgraded some time after.
The second
Dimension cube is a Turbo cube. A later model with a 33mhz processor, a
2.88 mb floppy drive, two 2.1 gb hard drives, a external SCSI box with
a 12x SCSI CD-ROM drive, a 2.1gb hard drive and a SCSI zip drive, the
Dimension board, 128 mb of system ram, 32 mb Dimension ram, non-ADB
keyboard and mouse, the NeXT laser printer, a 21" NeXT-Hitachi color
monitor, a 17" Megapixel monochrome monitor in a dual head
configuration and a NeXT Color Printer.
The Turbo
Color "slab" was my first NeXT system. It has 128 mb
ram on the motherboard, a 2.88 mb floppy drive, a 4.2gb hard drive, a
NeXT-Hitachi 21" monitor, ADB keyboard and mouse and an ADB sound
box. It is also equipped with a NeXT laser printer. I have
since supplied an external SCSI box with a SCSI zip drive, a 12x SCSI
CD-ROM drive and a 2.1 gb hard drive. I recently totally
refurbished the slab with a NOS power supply, a new cooling fan, new
SCSI hard drive, NOS floppy drive and a complete strip-down and
cleaning. It's ready for another ten years of worry-free
operation.
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A monochrome cube system.
The Dimension systems 
The NeXTstep Desktop. One
of the most elegant |
The Mono "slabs" are recent additions. One is currently outfitted with a 1gb hard drive, the 2.88 mb floppy drive, a N4000A Megapixel monochrome monitor, a non-ADB keyboard and mouse and the proper 1 meter "slab" short video cable. I have a larger hard drive to install as time permits. The other was a gift from the original purchaser. It was packed in it's original NeXT box with the invoice/packing slip from 1992 still attached. It also has a laser printer, NeXT CD-ROM drive, N4000A Megapixel monochrome monitor, non-ADB keyboard and mouse and all original documentation. The accessories were also packed in the original NeXT shipping cartons.
All of my NeXT systems are complete with NeXT logo power cords, serial cables, video cables, SCSI cables and printer cables. One cube has NeXT branded memory simms installed. Only the internal hard drives and the external SCSI boxes are not original NeXT supplied components.
I recently acquired a load of NeXT black hardware. There are two turbo stations, two non-turbo stations, a color station, a '030 cube, a laser printer and a large box of accessories, cables, software and documentation. There are also four N4000A Frog Design monitors. I'm looking forward to sorting and testing this addition to the collection.
