Compgeke's Acquisitions

[Compgeke]

I get enough junk I figured I should start a thread for the odds and ends I get.

I'll start with today's pickup: A NeXT Cube. A friend sent me a link to one on Facebook Marketplace last night for $200, and by some miracle it was still available! 



It's a little beat up but shoot, the price was right. 

Let's ch

Let's check out that motherboard. 



Hey! It's got a 68040! This machine's not actually marked as being a Cube but instead just a NeXT. It's been upgraded at some point.



It also looks to have 8 megs of ram. That's acceptable - probably period.



Not only did it come with the software and stuff, it also came with NeXT branded power leads. Never seen these before!



Oh yeah, and printer is S/N 56. Wonder how many of these they made.

 

[bibilit]

Pretty nice. 

Hope the MO drive is still ok. 

The printer, don’t think many around, was expensive. 

 

[joshc]

Beautiful, what a great acquisition and the price sounds perfect!

I used to have a NeXTStation and still regret selling it.

It took me a long time to realise the NeXT keyboard and mouse are ADB, so you can use them with a Mac too.

 

[archer174]

That was an amazing deal! What MO disks came with it?

 

[Compgeke]

Came with what was once NeXTSTEP 0.9 and 1.0, but since overwritten. + one generic NeXT branded blank disk and one random third party disk.



What's currently on them? Great question! I'm going to try and image them in a SCSI MO drive to see if I can pull something off them. Unfortunately I can't go recap and get started working on my Cube's built in drive as it's slightly burnt. I guess that's why it came completely disconnected with the interface ribbon cable missing. 

 

[archer174]

Yeah, it was really common to reuse the os disk because blanks were so expensive. Unfortunately the canon MO mechanism is custom to these and their own branded version of the drive.  Further the next optical encoding was done in hardware on a custom ASIC so even the canon drives sharing the mechanism are no help. Long story short you’ll need a revived drive in a cube to read them. 

 

[Compgeke]

Came with what was once NeXTSTEP 0.9 and 1.0, but since overwritten. + one generic NeXT branded blank disk and one random third party disk.

View attachment 37114

(Late post, how'd I save it instead of posting?)

What's currently on them? Great question! I'm going to try and image them in a SCSI MO drive to see if I can pull something off them. Unfortunately I can't go recap and get started working on my Cube's built in drive as it's slightly burnt. I guess that's why it came completely disconnected with the interface ribbon cable missing. 

View attachment 37115

 

[Compgeke]

A few months ago I picked up a Mac IIci and a Mac IIsi for $40 off Craigslist. Tonight I got around to mostly finishing the IIsi  .

All things considered, the IIsi wasn't in the worst shape I've seen them. Some leakage, but not extreme. 

Power supply certainly wasn't pretty though. But what the heck, that's literally the reason I created the mAcTX. 

While I was in there, I also went ahead and replaced the 1/2 AA with a CR2032 and added a CPU heatsink. I've got a 50 MHz crystal to swap in eventually to overclock the machine to 25 MHz. I just need to unclog my desoldering gun  .

So here's how it sits now! I still need to go through and clean up the fan and where the fan goes on the chassis. Both are advanced caked with dust, not the kind of dust just some air will clean off. Gotta scrub it. 

I'd ultimately bought this lot so I could design a DC input holder for the mAcTX board. here's how that looks  

Overall I'm not upset with how the IIsi came out. It might not be my favorite machine, but they certainly aren't the worst! The IIci will need a lot more help when I get to it. I already know all three of the soft power related chips are shot, as is the bus driver for the last nubus slot. 

 

[Compgeke]

New Machine: Outbound 125. Got this from that ebay auction that ended last week! Not sure if it works or not yet - I need to get batteries for the keyboard. 

 

[cheesestraws]

New Machine: Outbound 125. Got this from that ebay auction that ended last week! Not sure if it works or not yet - I need to get batteries for the keyboard. 

I recently got hold of one of these but have been procrastinating my own conquests post until I get the thing booting; mine's the floppy model and is misbehaving something chronic.  When you get time, would you mind telling me what model of hard disc is in yours?

 

[Compgeke]

 When you get time, would you mind telling me what model of hard disc is in yours?

Sure!

 

[cheesestraws]

Sure!

Thankyou very much!

 

[ScutBoy]

Put 4 more 1MB SIMMs in those slots, and you'll get the "Silicon Disk" RAMdisk. Can be very useful as it persists between reboots (as long as the smaller battery in the battery compartment is there) and can be set as the startup disk.

I'm not sure if the floppy is the same between the external and internal version, but if it is, it's very likely the belt has failed in the floppy. If you put in a disk and all you get is a buzzing without any other action, that's most likely it.

I've got one of these guys, and perhaps an organ donor machine, so keep us updated on your progress.