It's been awhile (hi, new stuff, help, apologies, etc...)

From: Mark Gregory <gregorym_at_cadvision.com>
Date: Wed Jul 19 09:54:59 2000

    ----Original Message-----
    From: Mike <dogas_at_leading.net>
    To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
    Date: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 8:13 AM
    Subject: It's been awhile (hi, new stuff, help, apologies, etc...)


    I rushed home with my new MegaPixel, fondiling it along the way, and
immediately hooked everyting up. Power! ...Well, it boots. I get to the
NeXT rom monitor ver 1 rel 46 and can exercise the machine from there. It
doesn't have the floptical in it and a 'b sd' boot command returns a read
capacity error on the scsi hard disk. With the rom monitor I can boot to an
ethernet attress or scsi target. Is there anyway I can get a disk image of
ole NeXTStep on a compatible scsi drive and can I use something like an
Apple scsi CD-ROM with it?

Hi Mike,

I'd recommend contacting Deep Space Technologies (www.deepspacetech.com).
They're a NeXT vendor of long standing, and they still sell NeXT hardware
and parts. They sell hard drives formatted with NeXTstep as part of their
systems; they'll probably be willing to unbundle one for you. Licensing
isn't an issue, since Apple takes the very sensible position that possession
of the hardware entitles you to run the OS. However, you got an exceptional
deal on your NeXT, so you may pay as much for the drive and OS as you paid
for the rest of the system.

Almost any SCSI CD-ROM will work with a NeXT. I don't know if a Cube will
boot from CD-ROM, (I never had a CD-ROM when I had my Cube), but if it
will, you could get a copy of NeXTstep on CD (see next paragraph) and do an
install to any SCSI drive you have lying around.

You should also contact Apple and request the Year 2000 Upgrade/NeXTstep 3.3
upgrade from them. If you send in your machine's serial number, they'll send
you free of charge a CD containing the last version of NeXTstep and some Y2K
patches. I believe you can also request Openstep if you prefer that.

You should also try and get an optical drive - a Cube just isn't complete
without one. Brand new ones were selling on eBay for reasonable prices
($30-40 IIRC) 4-6 months ago.

Enjoy your Cube!

Mark (who has a mild case of seller's remorse after parting with his Cube a
few months ago)
Received on Wed Jul 19 2000 - 09:54:59 BST