NeXT Computers

TheNeil · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:48 am Post subject:

OK now I'm getting frustrated.

Tried firing the slab up again last night but it just wouldn't do anything when I hit command+~. I tried holding the keys down as I powered up, as the 'testing system' message appeared, holding down both command keys etc. and it just went straight to the 'booting from network' message.

As I've been powering up via the keyboard's power key I was assuming that the keyboard was OK but does anyone know how I could verify it? Typically it's the non-ADB type so even if such a thing could work, I can't even borrow a keyboard from one of my Macs Sad

Jenne · Joined: 06 May 2006 Posts: 338 Location: Switzerland

In this state Your machine simply finds nothing to boot from, so You will have to connect a CD drive and / or a harddisk at last. Are You sure You pressed the right keys? On non-ADB-Stations it looks like this:

http://www.blackmac.ch/nextstation/pages/software.html (sorry, all in German)

If pressed the ROM monitor should pop up...

J
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http://www.blackmac.ch

TheNeil · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:05 am Post subject:

TheNeil · Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject:

Ok I'm making progress but I'm still not up and running.

Spent a bit of time just messing around this afternoon and got the slab to go into the ROM monitor (command+~ didn't work but command+[top left key on keypad] did). Setup the boot params so that it tries to boot from SCSI drive rather than network etc. etc. etc.

Then tried booting from floppy disk. The drive chugs away but then complains with the following message:

NeXT> bfd<enter>
boot fd(0,0,0)
Bad version 0xb80000fa
Bad cksum
Bad cksum
Bad cksum
Bad label
NeXT>

I've tried re-running Rawrite with the floppy disk images from the Apple site (both the 3.3 boot disk and 3.3 floppy driver disk) on two different PC's, with different floppy disks (just to avoid any chance of a dodgy drive or a dodgy disk) but keep getting the same results. Tried running both with my Apple CD-ROM hooked up and not hooked up but no joy either way.

Anybody got any ideas?

Jenne · Joined: 06 May 2006 Posts: 338 Location: Switzerland

As far as I know there are two versions of RawWrite and the later one caused troubles so I used the first one (think something like version 0.7 or such).
And of course I bought new diskettes - quite hard to find by now over here. Maybe this helps.

J
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http://www.blackmac.ch

jheis · Joined: 18 Mar 2007 Posts: 81 Location: Wine Country, CA

The Quantum Fireball drives will work in a slab. One of my turbo color NeXTstations has a Fireball 1280S in it and it works fine (it's the one with the Seagate ST51080N that I can't get to work).

So, if you've got a Quantum drive, give it a try.

James
_________________
NeXT Turbo Cube (acquired at factory auction), 128 MB ram, 2 Gig HP drive, running OPENSTEP 4.2.
2 Color Turbo NeXTstations.
Early mono NeXTstation.

stevebez · Joined: 26 Feb 2008 Posts: 63 Location: San Dimas, CA

TheNeil · Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 1:27 am Post subject:

Ah so the Fireball might work? That's good news as one of my Macs has a second drive in it.

I'll give the older version of Rawrite a try but can anyone just confirm which disk image I need to use? I've tried the Boot Floppy and Floppy Driver disks but the link to the Motorola disk image is dead.

Nitro · Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 4:05 am Post subject:

jheis · Joined: 18 Mar 2007 Posts: 81 Location: Wine Country, CA

Neil:

FYI the (working) jumper settings on my Quantum 1280S are:

TE (termination enable)
A0 (SCSI ID# 1)

James
_________________
NeXT Turbo Cube (acquired at factory auction), 128 MB ram, 2 Gig HP drive, running OPENSTEP 4.2.
2 Color Turbo NeXTstations.
Early mono NeXTstation.

TheNeil · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 6:06 am Post subject:

AARRGGHH

OK, I've downloaded the disk image, managed to write it to a floppy disk (both Rawrite and Rawrite2 didn't want to know but WinRawrite was happy with it), booted the slab and...error.

If I go into the ROM monitor and try to boot from the floppy disk (bfd) I get:

Exception #3 (0xc) at 0x1000374

If I try it again I then get:

Exception #2 (0x8) at 0x4380012

I've tried a couple of different floppies, with and without the CD-ROM hooked up but it seems to make no difference

cubist · Joined: 20 Sep 2007 Posts: 209 Location: Cambridge, MA

Jenne · Joined: 06 May 2006 Posts: 338 Location: Switzerland

This looks to me like the internal SCSI chain is mis-configurated somehow. Did You terminate the end of the chain? Did You use "Termination power from bus"?
_________________
http://www.blackmac.ch

TheNeil · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:38 am Post subject:

Jenne: I've made sure that the CD drive has a SCSI terminator plugged in, there's no internal HD (yet)(wanted to just get to the point where I need the drive before I actually worry about openign that particular can of worms).

Cubist: I don't understand what you mean. All I have at my disposal in terms of software are the downloadable floppy images and a NeXTStep 3.3. CD. As for hardware it's either an Apple CD ROM, a Pioneer CD multi-changer, and the slab's internal floppy.