Intro NeXTstation Turbo Questions

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon Sep 14 00:47:16 1998

>Great, congrats. NeXT is where my loyalties lie.

NeXT has a look that other computers wish they had, the hardware is classy
and the GUI polished.

>> Is it safe to set the 17" monitor on top of the box? The box seems
>> rather flimsy for that.
>
>The box is die cast from magnesium. No worries.

Oh, in that case <zip, zing, whoose>, OK, it's booting :^) Had to hunt for
a while for a place to plug the power cord into the monitor though I'm
afriad. Then I realized there wasn't one :^)

>> Also is there anything I should be aware of when initially powering
>> the thing on? Does it need to be attached to my network prior to
>> powering on?
>
>No, although if the box was previously a network client, it may time out
>looking for a Master NetInfo server that doesn't exist. That is mostly

Well, it's now sitting in the "Mounting file systems" state, has been for a
few minutes, don't know if it's fscking the drive, or looking for NFS
volumes, for all I know it could be expecting some external volumes, but
with a 1Gb HD I kind of doubt that.

<waiting>

OK, it's been about half an hour and the progress bar has sat at that point
the whole time. Anyone have any ideas?


>easy to fix, though, so no worries. The ROM monitor can be accessed by
>pressing command-command-tilde (comand bar-tilde if you have an ADB
>machine) any time after the keyboard self-tests complete (the shift-lock
>lights flash) and the machine may be booted into single user mode from
>there if necessary.

Hmm, sounds like a plan, OK, I've just dropped into the monitor, and see
that I've got 48Mb of RAM instead of 32 <yipee>, but only a 239Mb HD
instead of a 1GB <sigh>. Gotta love an error msg of "WARNING: preposterous
time in Real Time Clock".

OK, playing some more with the ROM monitor, it looks like it's actually got
some RAM that needs reset, or it's got a bad 32Mb SIMM, I know there are 4
SIMMs, but it only shows 3, one 32Mb, and 2 8Mb (cool).

Some more playing and I somehow got it to do a verbose boot (I was actually
trying to power down :^/ It is in fact stuck on trying to mount a remote
file system, namely /usr/local (hmm, shouldn't be devistatingly important).

>Feel free to contact me with specific questions.
>
>ok
>r.

OK, how do I boot single user so I can make changes to /etc/mtab? For all
that goes does it use /etc/mtab? <hoping single user mode isn't password
protected>

Also, I'll try to figure it out after sending this, but how do I shutdown
this thing properly? It's looking like a halt from the monitor, which will
apparently sync the HD, and then pull the plug <gulp>.

Also is there a FAQ on these systems somewhere? I took a look out on the
net, but didn't dig anything up.

                                Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh_at_ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh_at_holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
Received on Mon Sep 14 1998 - 00:47:16 BST

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