Turbo Cube with 3 Dimension boards dual boot 3.3 and 4.2

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

Hello NeXT Community: Here is my first Turbo Cube with 3 Dimension boards that I completed for a customer. I have had a set up with 3 dimension boards but one would not light up at the time due to bad capacitors.
We have new Ceramic caps on all 4 boards  , new old stock power supply, new old stock floppy drive and dual 8Gb Micro SD 5.1 Cards . I installed one in an external box and set the scsi ID to 0 and 5so it boots 4.2 when connected and mounts 3.3.  I set the 3.3 internal 5.1 Card to SCSI ID's 1,2,3,4   so 4 2 gb partitions and it boots into 3.3 when the external box is not connected.

It keeps Openstep and NeXTSTEP independent  , the CD/DVD drive is set to scsi ID 6 .  

In the video I have it set with 2 NeXT Hitachi 21" Monitors, A Dell 1905FP 19" flat panel  and a NeXT Sony 4000A 17" Monitor.

NON ADB keyboard with creme keyswitches and non adb mouse.


https://youtu.be/xKxWxiGZaCs

[chrisrot]

Sweet. I want one too  

[zombie]

Sweet!  I want one!

I think there was a way to get up to 4GB partitions back in the day. I tricked the system, if I recall by formatting the drive with 1024k blocks instead of 512, and you could tweak a disktab to get you a 4GB partition.  The trick is it required a double kick. I forget how I did that, might have been off a small boot partition.

I figure with the SD cards being so big, there might be a way to partition it into a small kick partition and 2 4GB partitions (one could have NS 3.3 and one have OP4.2).  And maybe a few other 4GB partitions for apps, data.

One other thing I seem to remember is you do not want to do a "clean" OS 4.2 install. You want to do a clean NS3.3 install, then do an OS 4.2 upgrade as it then keeps all the NS 3.3 libraries for old NS apps. And you can run both on the same system, enjoying the real time renderman and other stuff.

Anyway, this looks great! I wonder how much it cost.

I also wonder if you couldnt work up some way to feed the 3 or even 4 inputs into a single 4k display where each would take up a quadrant and then you'd effectively and really have one large display.  I bet something like that is doable.

[gtnicol]

Hello NeXT Community: Here is my first Turbo Cube with 3 Dimension boards that I completed for a customer. I have had a set up with 3 dimension boards but one would not light up at the time due to bad capacitors.

Where did you get the dimension recapped? My eyes are getting bad enough that having someone else do recaps is somewhat appealing  

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

Hello NeXT Community: Here is my first Turbo Cube with 3 Dimension boards that I completed for a customer. I have had a set up with 3 dimension boards but one would not light up at the time due to bad capacitors.

Where did you get the dimension recapped? My eyes are getting bad enough that having someone else do recaps is somewhat appealing  

I have longtime  friend Matt Wingstrom that worked for Celestica Motherboards as QC control for years until the moved the plant to Mexico.  He does a really excellent job for $65 and I can test them right here. I was using Charles at MacCaps , he does a good job as well. If you compare Matt's work side by side with anybodies , his skills and training really shine through as he was the go to guy . He has a quick turnaround as well and the price is right, I know we have gone through 3 spools of 500 Ceramic caps , he also has done a great job repairing and replacing components or cleaning up previous factory or service center work .  Some of the boards are getting delicate to work with and he takes the time to do it right.  I'll put some photo's up of boards he recapped  this week for me .https://youtu.be/rDbvbC3c8pE