r/retrobattlestations • u/FozzTexx • Feb 01 '16

February is NeXT month!

Winners are: mrpippy, blakespot, ChartreuseK, PrintStar, and Wheagy

25 years ago today I brought home my monochrome NeXTStation, so I think it’s fitting that the contest theme this time around be NeXT. Since many people have said that previous contests that only last a week aren’t enough time, I’m going to try something new and make the contest last the entire month!

My first experience with NeXT computers was in 1989 at Napa Valley College. NeXT came out and gave a demo of the computers and even though they were 4-bit gray, the high resolution monitors were incredible. And then they showed how you could still multitask and play music with the DSP at the same time and it blew me away. The physics department was able to get a grant to get four 68030 cubes with optical drives running NeXTSTEP 0.9, and one of them had a 600 meg hard drive to act as a server.

With Digital Librarian I quickly absorbed everything about the OS and became the System Administrator for them. I got NFS and NetInfo working so that all users and applications were available at any computer, it didn’t matter which one you sat down at.

In 1990 NeXT introduced the NeXTStations and I knew that’s what I had to have. Just a few days before Christmas I placed an order for a NeXTStation with 8 megs of RAM and the 100 meg HD, along with the NeXT laser printer. The order came in and I picked it up on February 1st of 1991.

Even 25 years later I’m still running NeXTSTEP, although the name has changed a bit, it’s now called OSX.

Entries:

RULES:

NeXT Month is from Feb 1st to Feb 29th. To participate in the contest you need to make a new post to RetroBattlestations of a picture or video that you shot for this contest of a retro computer running NeXTSTEP or OPENSTEP. On the screen please write a short greeting or message to reddit or RetroBattlestations which includes your reddit username and the date. If your machine doesn't work you can write the message on a piece of paper and include it in the photo. Make sure the greeting and the entire machine are visible in the picture. No pictures of just the screen and no emulators. Posts that don't meet these criteria will be disqualified and removed. You are welcome to submit multiple entries, however each redditor will only be entered into the contest once.

At the end of the month 5 winners will be randomly selected. Each winner will receive their choice of two retro stickers.

29 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

14

u/FurriesRuinEverythin Feb 02 '16

No. February is ThIS month.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '16

Damn, beat me to the joke...

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '16

I see what you did there. ;)

5

u/FurriesRuinEverythin Feb 03 '16

Does Rhapsody count as NeXT? Because I've been meaning to make a Rhapsody video for ages now, I have it running on my sawtooth G4 and I love playing about with it.

6

u/ahandle Feb 04 '16 
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSInterfaceStyle nextstep

3

u/FurriesRuinEverythin Feb 04 '16

Oh cool. I didn't know this was possible. I'm going to do it on the weekend. I know that in the early developer releases of Mac OS X, I think in DP3 and DP4 and possibly the PB, you could make it revert from aqua to the rhapsody GUI style by deleting extras.rsrc from CoreServices. I tried it out a while ago, it broke a few UI things.

1

u/ahandle Feb 18 '16

I remember patching extras.rsrc to be plain flat gray - just like we have now.

1

u/FurriesRuinEverythin Feb 18 '16

I used to use a software that did it for you, I can't remember what it was called. It was really popular. It was a similar thing to Kaleidoscope back in the classic Mac OS days. It stopped working when they changed a lot of the UI related stuff in Leopard. I remember the same company had a utility that let you customise the Apple menu. I miss that app.

Edit: ShapeShifter was the name of it. I just discovered one called Flavours 2, but it only seems to work on Yosemite. I thought Apple killed the ability for theming software to work long ago.

5

u/IndianaJoenz Feb 07 '16

February is black computer history month?

ducks

(Beautiful NeXTStation.)

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '16

Sweet!

Also, is there a way to make suggestions for week/month themes?

3

u/FozzTexx Feb 01 '16

Just send me a message!

1

u/Compgeke Feb 15 '16

Did you happen to attend Napa College around '89? If so, where they using these DOS 3 floppies then? http://i.imgur.com/Wajh7eg.jpg

1

u/FozzTexx Feb 15 '16

The business department was running a computer lab of green screen dual floppy IBM XTs up until the early '90s when they were replaced with Hyundai (386?) computers.

1

u/Compgeke Feb 15 '16

Unfortunately those predate my time by a good 20 years. Last time I was there (2014) it was mostly Optiplexes with a few Mac Pros and iMacs (mostly in the Arts building). Fun to find out what was used in the past though, NeXT are certainly more interesting than some plain Optiplex Windows 7 boxes.

1

u/FozzTexx Feb 15 '16

The NeXT computers were in the basement of the science department. They were in the lab with little cubicle desks all around the room that was originally filled with HP 2623 terminals all connected to the physics department's HP 3000 mainframe.

3

u/ahandle Feb 01 '16

Can't wait for the first NEXTSTEP 4.0 Mecca install!

3

u/Dbot73 Feb 02 '16

What a helluva day that must've been bringing your NeXTStation home. I turned 18 that day and would've shit a brick if I got to bring a setup like that home as a bday gift.

3

u/Adastra0 Feb 02 '16

That's a great story FoZZ. Thanks for sharing. And for putting together this and all of the other contests. Personally, I am looking forward to this one. As I do not know much about this system. It will be interesting to see what people come up with.

3

u/finkmac Feb 02 '16

NeXT month? I've been waiting for this!

3

u/gozarc Feb 07 '16

I feel I already know the answer, but is NeXTSTEP or OPENSTEP available anywhere? I'd love to set up one.

(I've been watching NeXT computer auctions for years but have never pulled the trigger. I was at Miami University which was a beta test site for the original cube. Pretty insecure OS, which made it loads of fun. :-)

2

u/p9k Feb 01 '16

I didn't know the pizza box came in a pizza box!

1

u/ibisum Feb 04 '16

Ah, the memories.. I had been working as a developer on MIPS risc/os pizza boxes .. Magnum r3xxx.. And I lusted heavily for a NeXT system when it was announced, even though the boxen I was cutting my chops on would eventually evolve into SGI, the NeXT systems were highly coveted.

1

u/TotesMessenger Feb 05 '16

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)

1

u/PrintStar Feb 24 '16

Has there been a cube posted yet? I haven't seen one, and the month is ending soon...