Early 68030 cube motherboards

[Nitro]

I found a box of three 030 cube motherboards after digging through some NeXT stuff. One of the boards is an early 25MHz motherboard. It's dated 02/89 on the back. Many of the components are dated late 1988. It even has the early NCR 53C90 SCSI controller rather than the NCR 53C90A revision. I noticed in the SCSI controller source code that it checks for the A revision vs original part number so I figured that some of the original SCSI controller chips made it out the door. This board is also completely populated with NeXT branded RAM.

The second 030 board has a capacitor soldered to the back of the board. The solder job is sketchy even by my standards. This board is dated 27/89.

I also found what looks to be a new/old stock late 030 board that I purchased from Fronberg back in the day. This one is dated 05/90 and looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. None of these 030 boards are rare or early enough to be prototypes, but it's interesting to see some of the hardware that actually shipped out.

[barcher174]

In some ways I think the yellow boards could be considered a prototype, or at least a prerelease. I estimate less than 2K of them in production (The newest unmodified cube I have seen with one was in the 1800 serial range) which places them as preorder or university evaluation cubes.

[Nitro]

I always liked the look of the yellow boards. I just noticed that the board with the added cap on the back has a metal surface mount cap with a broken lead. I need to do a lot of recapping.