9 Oct
2011
9 Oct
'11
10 p.m.
From: Josh Dersch
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2011 1:08 PM
On 10/9/2011 12:20 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
> I think the MO was the single biggest thing that
killed what would
> have been a great line of machines.
This may be apocryphal (I can't find a reliable
source on this now that
I'm trying to look it up), but one thing I recall is that Jobs' original
vision for the optical drive was that the Cube would have *no* internal
storage (save maybe a small hard disk for paging) and each user would
have their own optical disk that the system would boot from, containing
the full OS, and the user's applications and files. It's an interesting
idea, in that a user could carry his whole world around with him. If
I'm recalling correctly, the original Cubes did ship in configurations
meeting that vision, but the drives were so slow and unreliable it
didn't take long for that idea to be dropped.
It's not apocryphal.
We got at least a dozen, more likely 2 dozen, Cubes at LOTS. The MO disk
as personal universe was touted as a major advantage. As the OS went from
0.8 to 0.9 to 1.0, we provided upgrades to those students who had purchased
disks.
Remember that the NeXT cube was priced at $5,000 with a metric boat load
of software. I priced out a Mac IIfx and an IBM PS/2 Model 80 (which were
brand new at the same time, and comparable in processor specs) with the
same software load (or nearest equivalents, if necessary). Both of them
came in at close to $12,000. That was the university pricing, of course.
I have a Cube with an optical drive, never did bother
trying to find
optical media for it... I wonder if it still works.
I still have a couple of NeXT MO disks. They may have become highball
coasters in the last 25 years, but next (<snrk!>) time we're both at the
SRCS meeting with your NeXT, we can try them out. (OK, now I have to dig
them out of the closet.)
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/