NEXTcube

----- Original Message ----- From: "Miller Scott Contr 30CS/FTI" <Scott.Miller(a)vandenberg.af.mil> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 12:03 PM Subject: RE: NEXTcube of looking up Windows a 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 @25), and there were Turbo NeXTStation and NeXTStation Color systems (68040 @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(a)diablonet.net) | http://www.diablonet.net for or IMAGE at