blackcube.org

I was introduced to collecting and using Unix systems by mistake.  I was shopping for gears and motors at a surplus dealer in Dallas when I noticed a pair of striking black computers sitting on a dusty shelving unit.  Upon  further investigation, I noticed they were NeXT slabs.  I ignored them for several months and finally one evening, I did some web searching.  Altavista.dec.com (Google wasn't around yet and DEC was still an independent company) led me to several web sites with information on NeXT workstations.  With only a passing knowledge of  a Unix-like system (Linux before v1.00) I decided I had to have one.  I went back, struck a deal and off I went into a new world.  I had to delete the root password to get into the system but there was a lot of instructional material on Usenet.  Apple was soon offering a free upgrade to NeXTSTEP 3.3 to fix some looming Y2K issues, so I got a copy of the OS media for free. The laser printer needed roller and gear replacements but the parts were available from several people on line.  It was up and running  and I found out what a smooth UI was really like.

After using NeXT's for a year or two, I became curious about Sun's and Sgi's.  They started appearing in local surplus shops and on ebay at steadily dropping prices, so like potato chips, I couldn't have just one.

When Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple, he sold his Apple stock and started NeXT, Inc.  NeXT's mission was to produce the "NeXT Big Thing" in computing.  Always aware of style, Steve commissioned Frog Design to handle the industrial design of the exterior cases, Paul Rand to design the corporate logo, assembled a team of software engineers by raiding Apple and others in Silicon Valley and set off to beat the world.  He was funded by Canon of Japan, Ross Perot and others.  NeXT chose a software base of BSD Unix but with the Mach microkernal from CMU.  The display and printing were both handled by the same Adobe Postscript engine so you were given a true WYSIWYG experience.  All of the hardware was housed in sleek matte black magnesium cases.  NeXT even squeezed another 100dpi out of the Canon/HP laser printer engine for typeset quality printing.  Even today the hardware might be slow but, the resulting GUI is a true joy to use.

NeXT never seemed to find it's focus, wandering from the educational market to scientific labs to the world of finance. A lot of impressive work was produced on NeXT cubes and slabs.  The first web browser and web server and the http protocol were all developed at CERN on NeXT hardware.  NeXT pioneered optical drive technology and was the first to distribute all software upgrades on CD-ROM.  NeXT dropped the hardware line in 1993 and concentrated on porting the NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP API to intel and then Sun Solaris platforms.  Finally, after only turning a profit once, Apple purchased NeXT for the foundation of it's "next" generation operating system.  Even now, the NeXTSTEP roots shows under the Mac GUI of MacOS 10.

My NeXT collection currently has a Turbo Dimension Cube, a Dimension Cube, a Turbo Color NeXTstation, two Turbo monochrome NeXTstations, a Color NeXTstation and  three monochrome NeXTstations.  All are fully outfitted with OEM NeXT monitors, cables, keyboards, sound boxes, mice and accessories.  It also includes four NeXT laser printers, a NeXT color printer and several OEM NeXT CD-ROM drives.

After NeXT decided to abandon the hardware side of the market, Canon marketed a short lived line of intel based workstations that were designed expressly for NeXTSTEP.  The whole affair left such a bad taste in Canon's mouth that no one at Canon will even acknowledge the existence of the object.stations.

I have two object.station 41's and one matching Canon monitor.  Both are equipped with  OEM Canon mice and Canon keyboards with the NeXTSTEP key layout.

Sun workstations have never been the graceful black icons of the \\\\\\\\\\\\\\ or the graphics powerhouses of the Sgi's but they are premier programmers workstations or file servers.  The Sparc processor line is still in development and production by both TI and Fujitsu.  The Sparc is one of the few remaining designs of the RISC revolution.  But the hardware, industrial strength as it is, comprises only half of the Sun platform.  Solaris is a descendant of System V Unix and is a true Posix compliant Unix.  Still under active development, for both the Sparc and intel chip, Solaris is still the trusted platform for enterprise servers.

One advantage of collecting Sun's is the liberal software licensing policy.  Sun makes Solaris available at little or no cost for non-commercial use.  Sgi should take note of this.

My Sun collection consists of 2 SparcStation 5-110's, 2 SS-5-170's, three SS IPX's, 1 IPC and a SparcStation 10.  I'm considering adding a couple of Ultra's to the stable since the prices have been dropping so steeply.

Sgi's are noted for having some of the most advanced graphics subsystems as well as some of the most colorful case designs in the industry. The bright teal, purple, blue and red cases are hard to miss in any environment.  The movie industry has depended upon Sgi for animation rendering for over a decade.  Linux rendering farms and workstations  are giving  Sgi a run for the money these days.  It's hard to market an advanced Unix workstation line that can compete on cost with a free operating system running on cheap Intel  hardware.  So Sgi has adopted a "if you can't beat them, join them" marketing plan.  Their latest models are the Altix machines that are based on Origin technology adapted to the intel Iantium2 processor and with Linux as an operating system.  Only time will tell if this was the right move.  As it is, this situation has allowed a large amount of really cool Sgi hardware to become available on the surplus market at prices a collector can afford.  If only Sgi would do something about software licensing costs.  I understand some progress is being made on that front

I have collected a fairly large number of Sgi machines ranging from the Iris Indigo to the Origin 200 server that hosts this site.