9 Oct
2011
9 Oct
'11
7:52 p.m.
On 10/9/2011 2:00 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
Cool -- I'd be happy to bring mine along, just let me know when you're
going to be attending!
- Josh
From: Josh Dersch
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2011 1:08 PM
Definitely. Very cool machine for the cost, and the OS and software
were amazing. (And I'm having a hard time picturing a PS/2 Model 80
being in league with one... yow.)
How long did you stick with the optical drives?
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.)