Some beginner NeXT cube questions

[adcurtin]

So I found a next cube in a student lab at my school. I'm hoping they'll sell it to me. Anyway, I had a couple questions about it:
1. are all cubes B&W?
2. would it be possible to make the cube work with a standard monitor (is it pin compatible)?
3. I am pretty sure the cube didn't have an rj-45 port, so does that mean its a 68030?
4. When I turned it on, it failed to boot. It may have a bad hard drive, I don't know. What do I need to reinstall? I have a few external scsi cd rom drives, but if I need a boot floppy, how would I hook that up (the lab does have an old apple external floppy drive that I could use). I already have the cds and floppies.
5. Does it use the MO drive as a hard drive, or does it actually have another drive too?
6. Is there anywhere I can get MO discs for a reasonable price? It has one that was in the drive, and that's it.
7. Is it worth $50? (monitor, keyboard, mouse, cube) even if it doesn't work?

Thanks,
Andy

[pentium]

So I found a next cube in a student lab at my school. I'm hoping they'll sell it to me. Anyway, I had a couple questions about it:
1. are all cubes B&W?
2. would it be possible to make the cube work with a standard monitor (is it pin compatible)?
3. I am pretty sure the cube didn't have an rj-45 port, so does that mean its a 68030?
4. When I turned it on, it failed to boot. It may have a bad hard drive, I don't know. What do I need to reinstall? I have a few external scsi cd rom drives, but if I need a boot floppy, how would I hook that up (the lab does have an old apple external floppy drive that I could use). I already have the cds and floppies.
5. Does it use the MO drive as a hard drive, or does it actually have another drive too?
6. Is there anywhere I can get MO discs for a reasonable price? It has one that was in the drive, and that's it.
7. Is it worth $50? (monitor, keyboard, mouse, cube) even if it doesn't work?

Thanks,
Andy

1: No. There were systems that had color. It was called the NeXT Dimension board but they sell for loads when they appear on ebay.
2: Others here have done it albeit it was a little expensive.
3: My 040 cube has an RJ-45 (Cat5) connector for the networking. I think the 030 cube only had BNC networking.
4: You need a NeXT floppy drive. Apple drives look like they would work but they won't.
5: At one time the hard drive was an option and yes the MO drive was intended to be the main drive however even in the late 80's using an MO drive as a hard drive was incredibly slow. Most MO drives today have long since died anyways.
6: I have trouble finding them as well. Sorry I can't help here.
7: $50 for a cube with mentioned extras is one hell of a deal. It (the cube) was turning on and giving you the ROM monitor, correct?

[adcurtin]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply.

It turned on and said it couldn't find the boot device. I don't know how to get into the NeXT> prompt, but I think it would do that if I knew how to. I don't know if they'll sell it to me, but I don't see why not, they could use the money and it's just sitting there. It does need a new paint job badly.

Is there anything else I can use instead of a next floppy drive? Could I make the apple drive work? There isn't a floppy drive with it, and I don't know if I'll be able to find one easily.

Lastly, is there an easy way I can use the BNC on a modern rj-45 network? I have some BNC cables, but no adapters or anything. (I do haave an old hub with an SQE port).

Thanks,
Andy

[pentium]

I'm one of the most active people here. I check this site several times a day.

Okay, so the cube works but the internal hard drive is dead.
I think you can boot from other scsi devices like ZIP and Jaz drives so if you want to try dumping the install cd onto a spare hard drive or Jaz drive you should be able to bypass the floppy part and directly start the installer.
you can also netboot a cube (I have no idea how) and yes BNC to Cat5 converters do exist. Just poke around ebay and you will find one.

[Andreas]

Is there anything else I can use instead of a next floppy drive?

you can try to dig out a SCSI-floppy from eBay. You need a floppy at least if you try to install programs from floppy. There isn't unfortunatly a "loopback" device on next for mounting floppy images.

[adcurtin]

So I could copy the whole install CD to a hard disk and install from that (where would I get the drivers from, aren't they only on the floppy)? If that's the case, thats awesome, just like installing Leopard or Snow Leopard without burning a DL DVD.

It surprises me that I don't thin I have anything that will work instead of a scsi floppy (plus that I don't have a scsi floppy, everything I've seen is the standard floppy connector or from the 80s [c64, //e])

Would it be possible to image the floppy disks to zip disks? I have a couple external zip drives (but only one disk). Also, did macs ever use scsi floppy drives? I have a color classic and a powermac 6500, if either of those had a scsi floppy, that might work too.

[Andreas]

So I could copy the whole install CD to a hard disk and install from that (where would I get the drivers from, aren't they only on the floppy)? If that's the case, thats awesome, just like installing Leopard or Snow Leopard without burning a DL DVD.

For black hardware the only driver on floppy is the driver for the CD-ROM. If you have imaged the CD to a harddrive you don't need that.

Would it be possible to image the floppy disks to zip disks?

Maybe it works, i've never tested it. Unfortunatly a lot of NeXT software is in 2,88MB floppys, how will you image that to your ZIP?

You need at least something like that:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390030736118

or you can dig out a 68040 board wich have a floppy connector.