NEXTcube

From: Mark Tapley <mtapley_at_swri.edu>
Date: Sun Dec 3 16:11:44 2000

Mike Ford wrote:

>Is anyone on the list an ACTIVE Next user or collector?

        Yo! My cube normally sits on my desk at Southwest Research
Institute (and is my only desktop machine at work, my other work computer
being a Powerbook 3400). I use it for websurfing (OmniWeb), compiling
command lists weekly for the IMAGE spacecraft (Perl 5.0, Terminal), pass
and orbit visualization (Rendezvous), attitude determination software
design, testing, and debug for IMAGE (Mathematica 2.0), newsgroup reading
(NewsGrazer), preparing presentations (Concurrence, Diagram), analyzing
attitude and other data (cc, Quantrix), and other stuff. I also do
incremental backups of my powerbook to it (ftpd, compress).
         It's got an optical and a 540M hard drive and a floppy internal
(using a special bracket to get the floppy to the second faceplate slot and
still hold the 3.5" hard drive in that same bay). It also has two 1.2G
externals in an old PC chassis (a far far nobler cause than that chassis
ever served before...gotta get that thing painted black... :-) ).
        The machine is now upstairs at home, because while trying to
upgrade to Mathematica 3.0, I used for the first time, to hook my CD drive
into the SCSI chain, a Centronix-to-Centronix cable that was apparently not
a SCSI cable. (What do I know, it came out of a box that said "SCSI cables,
$3" at Wierd Stuff Warehouse). The boot hard drive got scrambled, then I
discovered I don't know as much as I thought I did about "dump" and
"restore". I'm about recovered from that by now, so I'll try again (with a
*different* cable setup) on the Mma 3.0 install.
        BTW, as of a few weeks ago, Wolfram was about to quit doing
upgrades from Mma 2.2 and earlier, so if you've been putting that off,
don't.
        The 25 MHz 68040 CPU is not as fast as modern workstation
processors. That said, NeXTStep 3.3 on NeXT is a very solid and very useful
OS/Development environment for a workstation, and the amount of
freeware/shareware/payware out for NeXT is amazing. Since nothing I do
requires a lot of serious crunch power (or if it does can be run
overnight), the NeXT is a really good machine for me.

>I don't know if I would bring one home just
>to sell and pack for a profit. Most likely yes, but I know I would grumble
>all the way to the bank.

        I know of a couple of folks around here I'd like to get connected
with NeXTs. Also, I'd *love* to find a NeXTDimension board, cable, and
color monitor to add to my system at a price my wife will accept. Finally,
there are a couple of NeXT resellers still on the market who would likely
be interested in hearing about big piles of new hardware. If you see/hear
of another batch in peril, *particularly* if it includes a cube tied to a
color monitor, let me know and I'll hopefully arrange for you to grumble
back and forth to the bank several times.
                                                        - Mark
Received on Sun Dec 03 2000 - 16:11:44 GMT