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NeXT cube HD install

bibilit

68030
I have a Cube at home with a bad HD.

I have downloaded Nextstep and a floppy image, but i think only found the Intel version, not the 68k one.

Any owner here can supply a better link ?

Also, will a CD-Rom from a Powerbook will work with the cube, in order to do a clean install ?

 
That CD hardware should work in general, but the problem is that a Cube won't boot directly from CD. The ROM doesn't know how to handle it.

IF you had a SCSI floppy drive, you could then boot from the floppy and all would be well. But since I've only ever seen one SCSI floppy I'm guessing that you may be out of luck.

Best bet is if you know someone with a working NeXT (doesn't matter, Cube or Slab) hook your HD up externally and use BuildDisk to make a new HD. It will be be a full, "factory fresh" bootable install.

 
Hi, thanks,

The Cube is provided with 2.88 Mb Floppy Drive, but as far as i know, this is no the SCSI one.

I can use the Monitor to boot from the FD using "b fd"  (IIRC)

I had a look yesterday at my CD-Rom drive, and being a Cd 300 plus, looks like this unit is supported by the Cube.

 
Hmm - if the floppy is in the cube (is it a Turbo Cube motherboard?) then you should be OK. I've never been that lucky :-)

Yes - then "b fd" to get you booted should work, and the install should proceed from the CD at the proper time. I don't recall if the installer expects a certain SCSI ID for the CD drive; don't have time to google that right now. All the normal rules about termination, etc. apply...

Let us know how it goes!

 
Hi,

Is not the Turbo, the previous version (68040 25Mhz) but apparently pretty complete, still have the MO drive, 2.88 Mb floppy drive and the dead HD (450 Mb IIRC)

Will let you know...

Next1.jpg

next2.jpg

next3.jpg

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Will let you know...
Well, spent a lot of time on this one, but so far not working...

Was able to make the floppy disk, no problem here (worked first time scanning for CD rom drives)

The CD-Rom wasn't detected at first, so in the end, asked the owner to get me a ready to go hard drive and he get a HD with Next Step 3.3.

But this didn't worked either.

The NeXT seems to try booting from the hard drive, but get stuck at the Rom Monitor window.

The SCSI is tested ok, and i tried to terminate the hard drive, to use the external scsi connector, the HD will blink the led for a couple of seconds, then nothing, just spinning around.

Am i missing something ?

The other problem is , once the Rom monitor is stuck, the only way to shutdown the Next is to pull the plug from the wall.

IMG_1061.jpg

IMG_1066.jpg

IMG_1059.jpg

 
I am thinking problem is on the logic board side.

tested with two HD and several CD-rom drives, the process starts but never ends, and i am stuck at the above Monitor, whatever the media.

drives are ok, and i set a computer with a Linux distribution yesterday to check that the disk was created properly with the ISO found online.

My disk is ok.

so maybe the SCSI chip is bad (but the Cube test says is ok) or something else is not enabling the boot process.

 
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