NeXT Computers

[hawkman]

Hi, I have had a NextStation Color 25MHz for many years and the hard drive finally died. I purchased a RaizinMonster and a 4 GB compact flash card. I was getting ready to install NextStep but now I find that my floppy drive is dead and I can't find a CD-rom drive of the correct vintage.

Before I go on an eBay shopping spree, is there any way that I can put an image directly on the compact flash card?

Many thanks.

[barcher174]

Yes, you should be able to DD the image directly to the card on a linux or OS X PC. There is also a version of DD for windows you can download.

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

[hawkman]

Thanks for the info. I have a Mac so dd is available to me. Where can I download the image file from?

[bobo68]

Google: "nextstep 3.3 image" or something similar.

BTW, I would analyze why the floppy failed. Maybe the capacitors on the mainboard are leaking which might soon ruin the whole machine.

[hawkman]

I've done some intense Googling and the best I've found is here:


http://vetusware.com/download/NeXTSTEP%203.3%20HD%20Image%20with%20Previous%203.3/?id=10456

It's a sketchy looking site but the file downloads and unzips to be a 2 GB ".dd" file along with what appears to be a Windows emulator and some ROM files. I'm only interested in the DD file.

Any tips before I do some trial and error?

[hawkman]

Update on progress.

I downloaded that file, extracted it and put it on the CF card using these commands on my Mac:

sh-3.2# diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk7
sh-3.2# dd if=/dev/disk7 of=NS33_2GB.dd bs=64k
61306+1 records in
61306+1 records out
4017807360 bytes transferred in 612.880765 secs (6555610 bytes/sec)

I then put the card in the reader, in the NeXTStation and booted to ROM monitor and set the boot to be "sd".

However when I boot from the ROM monitor, the light on the CF-SCSI adaptor flashes a little then I get:

booting SCSI target 1, lun 0
Bad version 0x33c08ed0
Bad version 0x0
Bad version 0x0
Bad version 0x0
Bad label
NeXT>

Any ideas?

[barcher174]

I suspect something is wrong with writing the image to the CF. It usually takes much longer than 10minutes.

[barcher174]

I think what you want is:

dd if=NS33_2GB.dd of=/dev/rdisk7 bs=512k


looks like you wrote a blank 4GB output to the NS33_2GB.dd file the way you have it now, so make sure you use a new copy of the disk image.

[hawkman]

That's pretty funny... yup, I did exactly what you said - I got my input and output files mixed up. Thanks.

Re-dd'ing now...

[hawkman]

HOLY COW - that worked!

sh-3.2# diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk6
Unmount of all volumes on disk6 was successful
sh-3.2# dd if=NS33_2GB.dd of=/dev/rdisk6 bs=512k
3839+1 records in
3839+1 records out
2012774400 bytes transferred in 78.120462 secs (25765009 bytes/sec)

And it was fast!

Now I just need to figure out how to get the Y2K patches installed and a DHCP client working without floppies... but I have a NeXT GUI for the first time in years on my machine!

Thanks everyone.