NEXTcube

From: Sean Caron <sean_at_techcare.com>
Date: Mon Dec 4 14:55:33 2000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miller Scott Contr 30CS/FTI" <Scott.Miller_at_vandenberg.af.mil>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 12:03 PM
Subject: RE: NEXTcube


> How's the NeXTcube compare to the NeXTstation? I'd never touched a NeXT
of
> any sort until last night. Someone on a local BBS posted a message
looking
> for a good home for an unwanted complete NeXTstation Turbo Color, so of
> course I was there within the hour loading the thing up. It booted right
up
> and ran pretty dang well for a 33 MHz system. Running the Mandelbrot demo
> program showed the lack of underlying horsepower, but I think it's still
> more responsive overall than my old SPARCstations. For that matter,
Windows
> Explorer on a PII-400 can be a frustrating experience and it's nice to see
a
> system that makes good use of its resources. Plus, the whole thing just
> LOOKS really cool. With a 33 MHz 68040 and 32 MB of RAM, will this thing
> run a useable web browser? I've got an SGI Indigo2 in the living room for
> web surfing right now, but maybe it's time to swap it out for an
> easier-to-use system.

Well, it depends which sort of cube you're talking about. There were two
types,
one based on the 68030 processor (at 25 MHz, I think), and one based on the
68040 (at 33, I think). They were identical chassis-wise, but the system
boards
were different, and the internal peripherals differed somewhat.

The older 68030 systems shipped with a NeXT proprietary 256 megabyte
optical drive. It's noisy and slow, but I think it's kind of cool anyway
just in the
fact that NeXT was the only vendor to ever ship optical storage as default
on
a system. In older 68030 systems you'll probably find smaller drives too
(unless
the system was upgraded). On the low end (a system designed to run off the
optical drive and/or network), the system included a 40 megabyte drive for
"paging", and things moved up from there. I think some REALLY old NeXT
68030 cubes might have shipped with TWO optical drives (or only one
optical drive), but this arrangement was pretty detrimental to performance.
System board video on the Cubes was grayscale, and everything (keyboard,
mouse, etc) was broken out via the monitor which connected to the
computer via a DB-15 connector which provided both power and data to
the monitor.

I've never used or seen a 68040 cube in real life, but as far as I know, it
is pretty similar to the 68030 cube in terms of the case being the same,
except it is fitted with a 33 MHz 68040 processor. If you're lucky, some
of these systems were shipped with NeXT's top-of-the-line NeXTDimension
accelerated 24-bit color board. Consider yourself lucky if you've got
one of these!

Likewise, there were a few different types of Slabs. There were "regular"
NeXTStation and NeXTStation Color systems (68040 _at_25), and there
were Turbo NeXTStation and NeXTStation Color systems (68040 _at_33).
You'll probably get performance equivelent to a "regular" 68040 Cube with
either of the Turbo Station systems, however if your Cube happens to
contain a NeXTDimension board, you'll blow everything else out there
out of the water (when it comes to NeXT Black hardware).

Will it run a usable Web browser? Depends on your definition of usable. You
can get OmniWeb which is a nice browser, but, notably, it does not support
features such as Java, JavaScript, style sheets, and frames (I think). It's
not
a speed daemon, but it's not terribly unusable either (although it can be
kind
of a dog when rendering lots of graphics; my system is a Color Slab with
32 megs of RAM and a 2 gig Barracuda to establish a frame of reference
with what you may be using).

NeXT made some really elegant systems, and I love the two that I've got
(although they're pretty much used only recreationally). Is the NeXT Cube
going to stack up to an Indigo2 in terms of raw power? Not likely. They
are really nice systems though, and I'd definitely suggest hanging onto it,
especially when you have a nice specimen such as a 68040 Cube.

--Sean Caron (root_at_diablonet.net) | http://www.diablonet.net
>
> A bit off-topic, but do they have a release of AGI's Satellite Tool Kit
for
> NeXTStep? It runs pretty well under IRIX. How does Rendezvous compare,
or
> have you used STK? I'm actually about three miles from the pad where
IMAGE
> was launched, BTW. We all climbed up on the roof to watch that one...
> pretty nice launch if I remember right. Those Delta II's are really cool
at
> night, though.
>
> Scott
>
Received on Mon Dec 04 2000 - 14:55:33 GMT

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