NeXTSTEP Release 2.2

[Nitro]

Here's a thread for discussions about NeXTSTEP release 2.2. Maybe former NeXT employee @M Paquette can stop by and tell us more about this release.

[Nitro]

I'll place a copy of this here to keep all of the Release 2.2 information together.

Rob,

The NEXTSTEP & NEXTSTEP DEVELOPER photo is a shot of (most of) the folks who worked on the 3.1 release:  SW, QA, product marketing, admin, SJ.  The photo was taken between Building 1 and Building 2 at 900 Chesapeake.  If you look at the woman in the front row near the center, you'll see she is holding a box of NS3.1  This photo and a commemorative shrink-wrapped box of NEXTSTEP 3.1 was given to everyone who worked on the 3.1 release.  The box I was given is shown in another of the photos in the album.  The box is still unopened -- I don't believe the copies of 3.1 given out to us differed from what customers could buy.  I never heard any of my NeXT colleagues mention they found a golden ticket or the like in theirs 

Not surprising you haven't seen a CD copy of Release 2.2 -- they weren't terribly common even back in 1991.  NeXTStep 2.2 (iirc all caps for STEP didn't appear until 3.0) was the first (shipped) release that supported Turbo.  As I was the main person doing OS/ROM/driver work for Turbo, I ended up with some of the 2.2 CDs.  I remember there was a great amount of push-back from PM, SJ and others about making Release 2.2 available at all to non-Turbo system owners.  They didn't want to do it.  And so they also didn't want to put out a Release 2.2 CD so people could get it.

Their stance / spin was that the only changes in 2.2 were to support Turbo and that if you had a Turbo, you had 2.2 because it was shipped with it.  I.e. so if you had a Turbo, you already had 2.2 and if you didn't have a Turbo, you didn't need 2.2 so there was no need for a CD version.

The backstory was that what became 2.2 and what became 3.0 forked / branched many months before.  Most everyone in SW was working on the 3.0 branch.  Only two of us were primarily working on the 2.2 branch for Turbo.  Since 3.0 was seen as the next great thing (and it was already behind schedule), the senior team didn't want to make 3.0 even later by having people spend time putting any non-Turbo features or bugfixes in 2.2.  The reality was while PM didn't want non-Turbo changes to go in to 2.2, they also had to calm some customers down and had directed that some important bug fixes get put into 2.2.  I bellieve there also was some ND related updates dragged along.

There were certain customers who, despite not having Turbos, definitely needed some of what was on the 2.2 CD, and who couldn't do updates or rebuilds over the net.  So the result was, grudgingly, a CD of 2.2 was produced, but at the same time there was an effort to convince most folks they really didn't want or need it.

The packaging for the 2.2 CD release also shows how the CD was somewhat under the radar.  First, unlike most NeXT CD releases, the back of the packaging doesn't list a part number.  And the front of the CD packaging is "SOFTWARE RELEASE 2.2" under a NeXT logo with no mention of NeXTStep.  Or NeXTSTEP.  We thought back then, probably correctly, that the likely reason they left off the word NeXTStep or NeXTSTEP is that it would takes them weeks to decide which capitalization to choose.

-M

[barcher174]

Wow! First time I'm seeing this.

[Andreas]

Just as an addition - the Software 2.2 was mentioned in the european support bulletin as part as a service tool

[Nitro]

It's interesting that in the Technical Specifications section of the 25MHz NeXTcube brochure it lists hard drives as being preinstalled with Software Release 2.2.

https://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Hardware/nextcube.pdf

[Nitro]

After digging through more NeXT gear I found this gem. It's a 2.2a update for those that are running Release 2.2. Fortunately the floppy was still readable after all these years so the package has been extracted and placed in the archives here along with a scan of the install instructions. This update fixes an issue with corrupting DOS floppies when running Release 2.2 on non-turbo machines. NeXT Turbo cubes and slabs don't need this update. Please let me know if there are any issues with the installation package.

https://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/NEXTSTEP/Patches/NEXTSTEP_2.2/

[Nitro]