On Mon, 19 Mar 2001 MTPro(a)aol.com wrote: Those are not 'original 1988 boxes'. The original 1988 NeXTcomputer had a 25 MHz 68030 board in the backplane. You have the later NeXTcube systems. The 33 MHz system is a Turbo as you have guessed, and does not support the optical drive. <command>-<command>-'~' will drop you into the ROM monitor from where you may boot the system with other-than-default options. It has some amount of help available online, but I forget how much. All theoretically possible, but some drives don't play nice. Additional information about the type of drive, its configuration, and your cabling setup will be required to troubleshoot. ok r.

Dug this out of an old newsgroup posting : ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is the procedure for breaking the password: To assign a new root password when you're unable to log in as root, follow these procedures: 1. Turn the computer off and then on, using the Power key. 2. During the boot process, immediately after the "Testing System" message is replaced by the "Loading from disk" message, hold down the Command bar and press the ~ key (without pressing Shift). On keyboards with two Command keys, hold down the right Command key and press the ~ key. This displays the ROM monitor window. Warning: If a hardware password has been set, you must supply this password before you can boot the computer. If you don't supply the hardware password, you'll be unable to complete the remainder of this procedure. (For more information on the hardware password, see "The ROM Monitor" in Chapter 9.) 3. Start up the machine in single-user mode by entering one of the following commands at the ROM monitor prompt: bsd -s (To boot from the hard disk) bfd -s (To boot from the internal floppy disk) bod -s (To boot from the optical disk) ben -s (To boot from the Ethernet) The system starts up, displaying a series of messages. When startup is complete, you see the single user prompt #. 4. At the single user prompt, start up the system services by entering the following command: sh /etc/rc & You see a series of messages appear on the screen as the rc shell script executes. During this process, NetInfo is started. You won't see a shell prompt after these messages unless you press Return. 5. Set the root password. Enter: passwd root You're prompted twice for the new password. 6. Turn the system off and then on again. After the system boots, you can resume normal operation with the new root password. Warning: Don't try to continue the boot into multiuser mode. If you do, you'll start duplicate system services, which will cause a number of problems. You must halt the system and reboot. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As regards the 4gig HD, IIRC You are limited to 2gig or less partitions. larry Reply to: lgwalker(a)look.ca