My NeXTStation Turbo Color
NeXTSTEP
Without further adieu, here is my NeXTStation Turbo Color!
Here it is in all its glory with a 13w3 adapter to use a VGA monitor. Let's check out some specs, shall we?
- CPU: Motorola 68040 @ 33MHz
- RAM: 32MB
- ROM: 128KB
- VRAM: 1.5MB
- Display: 1120x832 Resolution with 14-bit color
- Network: 10Base-T and Thinnet
- Sound: Motorola DSP 56001 @ 25MHz
- Ports: RS-423 x2, SCSI2 x1, 13w3 VGA x1
- Disk: 4GB SCSI CompactFlash
- Floppy: 2.88MB (non-Mac)
- Released: September 18, 1990
My slab is running NeXTSTEP 3.3. I guess uname was a SysV thing so instead for Mach there is the hostinfo command. It's still in OSX to this day.
Here is a better shot of the internals. You can see the 4x 8MB SIMMs in there, running at 60ns. In the top-right is my AztecMonster CompactFlash to SCSI adapter board fitted with a 4GB CF card.
Right now, I'm using a Stock '040 heatsink that I hope to upgrade one of these days. The fan is an 80mm Noctua. It keeps things cool and quiet.
General system info while the NeXT rom is looking for a bootable device.
NXBench, showing overall system performance. Kinda Cool. Also drive performance showing a whopping (for the time) 1.6MBps read speed. Very slick.
Now I'm showing off. Here is X11 running over DisplayPostscript. It's as slow as it sounds. If you had a dimension board to offload the work, things would probably be a bit "snappier".
Here's me logged in to my FreeBSD box, just showing that modern ssh can be used on this little guy.
Since it was still coming into popularity in the early 90s, sudo wasn't yet a default option in many Unix systems. Alas, there is no such binary that I could find. Here is a fun and interesting alternative though! "asroot"
It's kinda possible. I'm still working out a few kinks though but here is OmniWeb! I think I botched something setting up the DHCP service on here as resolving web addresses are messed up for me at the moment.
Nevermind. It's working now. Behold the TimeCube!!
Doom was designed on NeXTSTEP! It runs... sorta. There is the DOS native 320x200 resolution. On a Turbo Color I get something like 10-15 FPS. Definitely need a cube to play this.
A note about my storage solution: I bought a CF-SCSI adapter originally to use in an old Mac SE/30. People who have worked with unsupported SCSI drives on that platform are familiar with the hoops it takes to get them working. The only time where I simply could not get things going with the AztecMonster (the name of this adapter) was in A/UX 3. Otherwise, I've used them from Mac OS 6-8 with no issues, and in NeXT with no issues. I love mine. They're insanely better then mechanicals simply because they're silent and fast.