Scott Miller wrote:
>How's the NeXTcube compare to the NeXTstation?
Cube is a chassis with backplane, 1 CPU/RAM/etc board and 3 slots
usually empty. One more slot can contain the elusive and valuable
NeXTDimension card, which drives a color monitor, eats video and does frame
captures, etc. I don't know of any other widely available boards for the
slots, so 2 slots are essentially superfluous. (Well, there is a hack to
put spare CPU boards in spare slots, but those CPUs do not communicate
over the backplane - they might as well be in a seperate chassis.) Cubes
(only) can accomodate the magneto-optical drive, and other 5.25"
full-height drives, in their central tower.
Station, as you know, is a pizzabox with less expansion room.
Performance, RAM capacity, etc. is generally identical between (Turbo,
non-turbo) cubes and mono (Turbo, non-turbo) Stations. Stations, both non-
and turbo, came in color versions. These were slightly slower than the
equivalent mono, and required external sound boxes. Their color capability
was not as good as the Dimension board's (not as many colors, no
frame-grabber, etc.)
>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.
<turns slowly green> ...how ... nice ... for ... you .... <sobs>
>...it's nice to see a
>system that makes good use of its resources.
NeXTs seem to do pretty well with what they have. The MO drive in the cubes
is a standout underperformer as far as speed goes, but otherwise they're
pretty responsive.
>With a 33 MHz 68040 and 32 MB of RAM, will this thing
>run a useable web browser?
OmniWeb. Look at
http://www.peak.org/next/apps/internet/www/
and grab everything that begins with Omni... . It will surf about 95% of
the sites I hit. No Java, no animations. I count that a blessing.
I also commend to your attention
http://www.peak.org/next/apps/LighthouseDesign/
for an office suite of tools.
I've got lots more NeXT-related bookmarks if anyone's interested in them.
>A bit off-topic, but do they have a release of AGI's Satellite Tool Kit for
>NeXTStep?
Nope. (I wish. I've suggested it, and for Mac.) Rendezvous is around $100,
and amounts to an STK-light. It does about everything the base (now free)
STK does, and a bit more, but nothing like as much as the full-up
$multi-00,000 STK suite. It's a bit pokey on a 25 MHz Cube.
General question: is modern software for classic machines off-topic? I see
it as a way to keep the machines productive, and therefore right on-topic.
>pretty nice launch if I remember right. Those Delta II's are really cool at
>night, though.
McBoing pretty much hit our target orbit dead-on. I saw the video from
Greenbelt MD. I was in the SMOC, telnetted to my NeXT and waiting to see
whether the satellite would turn on when it separated from the 3rd stage.
(It did. Whew! :-) ). Try:
http://pluto.space.swri.edu/IMAGE/
to see Your Tax Dollars at work.
- Mark
Received on Mon Dec 04 2000 - 13:55:52 GMT