Going Online with a NeXT Color Slab!

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If you need the best UNIXy computing experience that 1990 has to offer, look no further than NeXT! Today, we're spicing up a NeXTStation Color and talking about how this obscure line of machines helped push computing forward.
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#NeXT #SteveJobs #68K

[@Dreams_Of_Lavender]

Seeing the Next Station pinging Cloudflare's servers just conjures this mental image of a being that has been gone for a long time, reawakened and calling out into the void to receive a stunning response from something gigantic, eldritch, and powerful.

[@feederx08]

Dude. He's such a noob. He had that super expensive monitor that had one broken switch. Instead of fixing it, he uses a way worse screen. All he knows how to do is buy stuff. He never fixes stuff. He's not really taking care of it. Back in the day a real technician would fix that.

[@alchemist4189]

Why did I manage to visualize every single sentence in my mind and provide sounds for them? This is some Cyber Lovecraftian horror that goes beyond human comprehension

[@meap_me]

​@@feederx08 the important words are "back in the day" when the plastic wasn't brittle as a potato chip and wouldn't start breaking if you looked at it the wrong way, it's better to leave it by itself than fix it

[@CygnusTM]

That (or a NeXTcube) is my holy grail of vintage computers. I started my IT career on those. So great to see one running!

[@CygnusTM]

I’ve considered going that route. I’m also considering a 486 or Pentium build. Whatever I come across first I guess.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

@Lurch NEXTSTEP never supported SMP, it only uses a single CPU only, even if the system has multiple processors. It was later on, with Mac OS X, that support for multiple processors was added.

[@otopico]

I got my 1st one, a Turbo monochrome as part of a bulk sell off by a game developer (Trilobyte I think) in the mid 90s. It was $400 at the time, but still one of the best computers (along with the color Turbo) I have ever used or owned. I miss those days.

[@hankagura5355]

Ive always been into tech but recently learning a lot about the history and the future of it and I love the way the next computer looks. Also for the fact that the internet was born in it.

[@MistaMaddog247]

First time I've seen a screenshot of a NeXTstep was in Game Developer magazine in early 90s. They had a picture of John Carmack's NeXT desktop with a IDE, dock bar and DOOM running in a window. I've dreamed about having a computer like that ever since!

[@redstone0234]

now you have a million times more performant computer with an UNIX-like operating system on your pocket

[@charliekahn4205]

@@redstone0234 And yet, there's no userland to be seen.

[@light-gray]

Now you can safely say that you took the NeXT Step!

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Boooo!! 🍅🍅🍅

[@1Soniccool]

Oh Brother this guy STINKS!!

[@jimcabezola3051]

😂😅

[@jacobmckenna8661]

I regret reading the comments

[@markteague8889]

Bwahahaha!

[@tonecapone8021]

The answer to when OmniWeb was released on NeXT was right on the screen at 20:03 - "OmniWeb was originally developed by Omni Group for the NeXTSTEP platform, and was released by Lighthouse Design on March 17, 1995 after only one month's development time."

[@zaxchannel2834]

It was still updated for macOS till recently as well

[@nickwallette6201]

Huh! I use OmniGraffle all the time for network diagrams, floor plans, wood cut sheets, and lots of other stuff it was probably never meant to do. I had no idea they went back that far.

[@andrerenault]

"It's only one screw!" Actually, that's the most Steve Jobs thing I can imagine, except that the screw would be in some pattern where only he owns the bit for it and has to personally close and open every single computer himself

[@stitchfinger7678]

I imagine he lowers the lights and plays Barry White when he does it

[@faenethlorhalien]

And charge you 500 dollars for that.

[@skeleton_craftGaming]

I literally am like Windows all the way, however, even I have to admit that apples anti-consumerism is largely Tim Cook's fault; though it started, ironically during the time that Steve Job was exiled from his company

[@georgeprice4212]

@@stitchfinger7678 😂

[@meetoo594]

@@skeleton_craftGaming na, they have always been anti-consumer. Remember them trying to copyright rounded corners and swipe to unlock? Plus the crippling of the file system access and deliberately blocking flash video and sideloading. And don't get me started on that abomination that is iTunes and it's forced requirement or the fact you needed a Mac and expensive developer licence to do anything interesting with the thing and they still crippled it and made it awkward.

[@richardthunderbay8364]

Back in 1990-91, I was a physics graduate student who had a Sun SPARCstation sitting on my desk. A postdoc down the hall had a NeXTcube on the desk. I must admit to being intrigued. The operating system looked really cool.

[@pozdroszejset4460]

just wanted to say that monitor fits the rest of the set surprisingly well considering the age difference, looks pretty cool

[@AtoManPL]

I never really thought of it but Michael Scott in The Office really did EXACTLY what Steve Jobs did. Oh, how the turntables have...

[@yacobgugsa2524]

6:20 The SGI Indigo² also required a sync-on-green monitor. (I too watch LGR.)

[@auteurfiddler8706]

I remember worrying about sync on green or whatever the other sync was back in the day and it seemed every monitor worked with every computer and video card.

[@ctrlaltrees]

I hear that ctrl-alt-rees is a really awesome guy

[@ActionRetro]

Indeed

[@minty_Joe]

ctrl-alt-rees is a Hoopy Frood! He's just this guy... 🤣🤣🤣

[@JeffTiberend]

Yesssss! I've been wondering what you would do NeXT. Pardon the pun! This was a computer I was dreaming about in the 90's. I even had the first copy of the NeXT World magazine. It would also be cool to see you run Lotus Improve on your system. It was a spreadsheet program that was ahead of it's time.

[@MichaelAStanhope]

SyncMaster for the win, every, single, time! :) NEC Multisync is always a good choice too!

[@RetroTechChris]

You beat me to it! Was going to write just that!

[@varno]

The multiple languages thing in the welcome screen lasted well into the OSX era, I have not installed a current-gen machine, but even the setup has parts that live until today.

[@lokelaufeyson9931]

The fresh sounds of ware and tare from a long time of love and effort plus a privacy power button on the monitor, now we are all ready to take our neXt steps toward a more brighter and more positive future. I have a 21 inch CRT hunk of glass and plastic at home and its a special feeling when you want to move the CRT screen but the 75 Hz refresh rate makes me forget about the weight quick.

[@GodaiNoBaka]

Back in college, the campus computer lab I frequented had a few dozen PS/2s, a few dozen Mac's, and over in the far corner, half a dozen NeXT workstations. They had waiting lists where you signed up for an hour of time, up to twice a day, on the machine of your choice. I very quickly learned to use the NeXT since there was NEVER a wait and they never kicked you off - people were simply spooked by these odd black boxes and stayed far, far away from them. Nice to see you get this one in working order again. It's always been one of my wish list machines as well.

[@londongaz2]

Love the look of this machine, especially on the inside. Very tidy

[@TheRetroCount]

Fun to imagine what it was like to use one of these back in the day. Great vid!

[@JeffGeerling]

4:10 lol me every time I sit there hitting my head against a kernel panic bug

[@ActionRetro]

Hahaha

[@Michael-Madrid]

irony of this computer being so easy for the end user to open and service, what with the direction apple went, being next to impossible to take apart and fix without taking it to a apple store, great video

[@lumibraulius]

Lately I play the following game: every time you hit a computer/monitor, I take a shot. Here I am on a Saturday night (From Spain :P ) a bit drunk lol PD: thank you for your videos, I love them and they are very entertaining!

[@wskinnyodden]

Maan, thkx! I fell in love with this system first time I saw it on a Magazine with all the tech specs detailed, only thing not up my alley was mono audio but there where fixes for that anyway. Man, wish I had one, this things was a technical marvel in Hardware, Software and its design. One of the most if not the most beautiful system of the era.

[@brianandrews5084]

Lightly buffing the screen with a magic eraser can remove surface scuffs. Also, I wonder if a line doubler would help or even know what to do with the signal. Something like a Retro Tink or Open Source Scan Converter. They're both part of the retro video game scene so people can use old consoles on new tv's. Might be worth looking in to.

[@koztech]

Or perhaps if Pi Zero's become available again using the RGBtoHDMI could help?

[@askme8592]

Magic Erasers are abrasive. Bump the plastic and it'll look sanded.

[@LukeRichardson1981]

That's a really cool computer. Very clean interior design, especially for the 90s.

[@poofygoof]

I have fond memories of pizzaboxes and cubes in college, although I don't recall any color turbos. I think Steve felt bad about dropping out from my Alma Mater and granted them a bit of NeXT kit out of guilt. They weren't unix enough for the unix heads (who used tektronix X-terminals or decstations) and not approachable enough for normal folk (who used powermacs) so it was easy to get time on them in the computer lab, and I spent a couple years with a cube as my primary workstation. We didn't have OmniWeb so I would fire up the X server and use Mosaic from one of the decstations when I needed it -- even in B&W it was usable in the mid-90s. A co-worker of mine in the late 90s used a turbo cube with the display PDF accelerator as a workstation at home, and it was quite usable until javascript and flash started taking over the web. Around the same time, a classic 25MHz cube followed me home when they were being junked, but I never had desk space for it, and NS3.3 was not super usable in the early 00s web land, so I ended up giving it away to a local restorer. After replacing some failed DRAM, (makes me hurt for those plastic sockets,) he was able to get it booting once again. I miss the NeXT keyboard, mouse, sharp (2BPP) grayscale display, and the usability of NeXTstep itself. The "shelf" was a very handy visualization of cut & paste, and I half expected it to show up in OSX. My only major complaint with the NS UI was lack of true focus-follows-mouse, since the right mouse button (yes, NeXT had a two-button mouse,) brought up a context-sensitive menu so switching between windows of different apps required a mouse click. I thought it was worth the tradeoff at the time, and used windowmaker on the non-NeXT systems to keep a little of the flavor. I feel like the NeXT platform itself suffered from under-development and was capable of a lot but was stunted by SW development focus on other platforms. The UI usability blew contemporary unixes out of the water, and MacOS at the time was ridiculously crash-prone. In retrospect I think audio tools like sound designer (later pro tools) would've been a great match to NeXTstep and NeXT hardware, making full use of multitasking and the 56k DSP. But Steve went back to Apple, 68k lost to PPC, and while vestigial bits of NeXTstep ended up in OSX, it was more focused on providing a clear pathway back to MacOS rather than unix and NeXTstep. I don't know if NeXTstep source code will ever see the light of day, but a port to a coldfire or FPGA-synthesized 68k running at > 100MHz to 1GHz range seems in the range of technical possibility, while retaining binary compatibility. NeXTstep was also ported to multiple other architectures, and I know use of the multi-arch "fat binary" format (MACH-O?) was also used on OSX during the PPC to Intel transition, so a native x64 port of NeXTstep also seems an available path...

[@wiegraf9009]

Would definitely like to see an FPGA setup happen

[@blazetube80]

That background wall with hexagons made me stay to watch the video. The quality made me subscribe. Keep doing this great content!

[@macksie1984]

I've been waiting for something worthwhile to watch!

[@Professorke]

I have a MultiSync M321 monitor and it really can do everything. I'm into all kinds of retro computers and I'm glad I have this monitor.

[@crabdonkey6381]

At the Navy lab I worked in at the time, they bought a Next computer. It screamed NOT BEIGE! As I said they bought one. That says it all. No one wanted another one. Some decent work done on it, but a Mac II CI was a better buy

[@eDoc2020]

A Steve Jobs story that I heard is that when he came back to Apple he refused to use the Mac the company provided him, opting for a NeXT. He only allowed an Apple back into his office once they got NeXTStep running on it.

[@DavidRavenMoon]

Regarding the black border around the screen. That’s the way it was. Macs were like that too. The full resolution/dimensions of the OS was always a little smaller than the display, so you always had that black border. We would adjust the monitor picture controls to stretch it out. I run OpenStep in VMFusion. It’s an odd little OS. Has the chess app, as well as the screen grab app still in macOS.

[@BearMeat4Dinner]

Dude I had that SyncMaster back in the day! ❤

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

That t-shirt is fabulous! I need one!

[@dannyherrmann131]

MAN YOU GOT A NeXT !!! stoked4U

[@billgreenwood]

I was lucky enough to use the NeXT box. We used it in prepress and we ran Signastation imposition software. The OS was super smooth.

[@patrickazz5430]

Prepress?

[@billgreenwood]

@@patrickazz5430 yes. The software was released by Heidelberg

[@dkannegi]

LOL at that LCD, a similar model (white) did a great stand in for a CRT when said CRT died attached to a very key computer for a ship that I was an engineer on. The computer it was attached to was a 486 that served as the ship's engineering plant monitoring and alarm system - having a working monitor was key as dos based Telemechaniwur Monitor77 ran a very weird resolution.

[@BullockDS]

At first I was surprised about a Steve Jobs computer being so easily opened up, but then I thought it through some more and realized that it makes total sense for NeXT's professional-oriented primary demographic, being so opposite from Apple's intended demo (especially in the "Jobs' Revenge" era).

[@ClearComplexity]

I got a fully upgraded Mac IIci in the late 90s as a birthday gift when I was 7 that was a workstation at my Uncle's work that went with the cost is no problem approach to machine ram, processor upgrades, etc. That was around the Next era towards the beginning. The IIGS I got a year earlier from the same person/place fully maxed out with the best parts at the time. He also gave me disks for a proper Assembly and C development setup for both when I got them along with books so that's what I didn't my entire time off from school doing every day. I always liked the skin look of this model of the next workstations. Both my IIGS and IIci are technically small, but these next computers were something else. Apple was basically begging Jobs to come back due to being borderline bankrupt. They kind of ran him out of the company he cofounded to begin with prior. When he came back he axed tons of projects and had them focus all of their efforts on Macintosh using Next as a basis more or less. His shift in having the company focus on what was important saved them (and maybe a little help from Gates/Microsoft)

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

i always wanted a nextstep computer when i was a kid back in the early 90s i really love these machines even though i never used one lol

[@Dave102693]

You can use a Mac for that

[@kalasend]

You know it's really an understatement to say that $4999 in the 90s is ~$10k nowadays. That's because this kind of money is by definition discretionary spending which means that if not spent, it is probably invested in some asset(most likely stocks) and the equivalent in today's values is enormous.

[@MechaFenris]

I always liked Openstep. :) It just feels good and solid. A bit odd with the paneling, but nothing TOO out there. :)

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Very Cool Sean enjoy that machine

[@SuperNicktendo]

I wish I had room for more computers. The quirk factor is so much more diverse than consoles

[@connorsteffan8958]

Now this is NeXT level!

[@retropuffer2986]

Great video. I have the NextStation Turbo. My mouse is the rounder looking one and my monitor looks different. Be protective of the sound box. It supposedly scratches easy.

[@darjr]

Can't wait to see more with this machine. Are there accelerators?

[@Jonoth]

That computer is really really clean inside, much better than the Panelview!

[@BG101UK]

4:02 thereabouts: I had the same thing with a Philips TV years ago. The previous owner had been stuffing a matchstick in to keep the set on. I "fixed" it by opening up the switch and forming part of a paperclip to replace the latching hook. Wonder how many other such bodges are out there.

[@jamesthompson7694]

I would say NextStep is definitely more BSD Unix, than MacOS, mainly due to it using the Mach kernel. Though there are equally convincing arguements to say it isn't a Unix

[@Chumdo]

Love the video!

[@brandonupchurch7628]

The battery on that is easy to find a replacement for, it appears to be the same chemistry as a coincell just in a 2/3A cylinder configuration, a readily available CR123A camera/flashlight battery should fit.

[@hessex1899]

I still have mine from the mid 90s. It's the only computer from "back in the day" that I kept.

[@DaleDaviesUK]

Love your t-shirt mate 🙂

[@EilonwyWanderer]

I fully expected a cutaway to Whiteboard Guy at 22:18 with a time and date of exactly "when was the last time *that* happened?!" 🤣

[@archivis]

ii fell in love with nexts when i went to college in 1995 :)

[@retrodude6215]

Nice video! I am a fan of NeXT devices!

[@BrianMaddox]

I’ve found that sewing machine oil can quiet a noisy fan and even bring some back to life. I just have a bunch of little stickers I put on top of them when I’m done.

[@icyada_plays3492]

1:57 I'm looking at Google and it says "What computer was made in 1988?" "NeXT Computer (also called the NeXT Computer System) is a workstation computer that was developed, marketed, and sold by NeXT Inc. It was introduced in October 1988 as the company's first and flagship product, at a price of US$6,500 (equivalent to $16,100 in 2022), aimed at the higher-education market." NeXT's first computer was released not in '98 but '88 (and i see multiple sources saying this too)

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Anyone else wondering where Whiteboard guy is? Starting to think Action Retro did something...

[@lokelaufeyson9931]

I miss the whiteboard guy, he was a part of the channel.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@lokelaufeyson9931 🤣🤣🤣

[@kkolakowski]

Of course I should've expected that, but the first screen of NeXTStep OS setup is basically exactly the same as in current macOS - language choose, with "Welcome" in different languages... They just went from there 🙂

[@greyshadow9498]

I always wanted a slab... At the time I had a pile of Sun's and SGI's and my wife told me to go someplace really warm when I said I was going to get one. It's still on my "Wish" list. Along with the Onyx Infinite Reality and the Tadpole SparcBook 3

[@VK6NK]

Dang-it! ... Dang-it! I don't know why that made me giggle so much, but it did!

[@VK6NK]

*shoves fan lead under motherboard* ... Nice!

[@justjoeblow420]

Oh god some how I managed walk some one else through getting a SCSI2SD to work with an UNIX workstation (Indigo to be exact) and my god to say it has a lot of settings is an understatement.

[@BilisNegra]

19:09 I already knew it was like that, but to watch that beach ball spin, which of course belongs in the 21th century and macOS (right?) feels like sorcery.

[@wolfs298]

Wow neat video!

[@zzco]

Also, no. The Cube was 1988, not 1998. :p

[@BoxyBoy]

you scrolled right past the release date on wikipedia! it was even in the search results

[@perplxxd]

I would love to see that NeXT monitor working again, but like you said, future Sean.

[@rigeoff]

That Paul Rand logo! Love that.

[@alejandroalzatesanchez]

10:25 Charmful surprise XD

[@goqwertygo]

0:10 sounds exactly like what Michael Scott did in the later seasons of The Office, when he quits and starts his own paper company only to be bought back out to be manager again🤣🤣

[@NullStaticVoid]

If you ever did any Swift coding on Xcode you doubtless encountered many functions that started with NS like NSurl. The NS stands for Next Step. It was part of the codebase which they built OSX on.

[@compu85]

The Noctua fans don't have enough flow for the NeXTStation. Be sure your new fan is still moving enough air!

[@SP-zu3rg]

Hi Sean - the Thinkpad X230 looks like a pretty nice machine. Do you use it for day to day browsing? Would you recommend? Thanks

[@thelovertunisia]

Amazing channel. I grew up with win 3.11 and Linux 2.0

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Could you not use a SCSILVD to SATA adapter to let you use 100TiB SSD drives in the NeXT Step.

[@smoguli]

I have a 68040 that came from a friend's NeXT station. I used it to upgrade my Mac LC630 to a Quadra 630. The LC630 came from factory with a 68LC040 that lacked the FPU. I still have this Mac but it doesn't boot up anymore, the CMOS battery is dead.

[@ArniesTech]

Damn, I always wonder HOW the hell you get your hands on this amazing retro hardware 😄💪

[@chadmasta5]

I know it's probably a simple fix like replacing a spring or something for the power button on that crt but I also kinda want to see you replace the power button with a regular household light switch just to make it cursed. It could even be a black one to match.

[@MaGioZal]

This computer reminded me quite a bit of Apple’s Quadra 610/PowerMac 6100 and its slim desktop CPU - with the difference that in case of de Macs there were two latches instead of a single screw…

[@nemesisgay]

I wish you showed the inside of the chassi, rumors say its quite special.

[@jamtea388]

What plastic are you printing in? I was hesitent to use PLA because it has a bit lower heat tolerance, but maybe I never need to worry about that?

[@pixellography]

Don't you think the soldering on the bottom of the motherboard could short with that fan cable you put into the case and the mobo? By piercing its plastic wrap I mean

[@RWBHere]

That battery was almost dead flat. A fully charged one gives about 3.5 Volts, and end-of-life is anything below 3.0 Volts - or 2.5 Volts, depending upon the manufacturer.

[@GaryBeltz]

Is that big square box next to the monitor on the right the speaker for that thing? It's huge

[@ur1friend437]

I laugh too much when you said: "When was the last time that happened?"

[@HerrdesWindes]

I still need to get a mouse and the cable that goes in between the soundbox and the NeXTstation color for mine.

[@stitchfinger7678]

Nobody can say he was in it for the money at least... Used his severance to compete with the company that fired him, absolute chad move.

[@saifal-badri]

Man I’m shocked how modern this looks, Jobs really nailed this OS with his team.

[@JaredConnell]

I was wondering when you were going to post your next video

[@daspec]

I wonder if its possible to upgrade it by using an Amiga accelerator like Terrible Fire or something similar, maybe even a variant of Pistorm modded for the Next machine.

[@BH0001]

Sold them for a few years. Programmers in the financial markets loved them but the Motorola 68030/40 chip couldn't do CAD. If it could, they would have sold millions of them.

[@otopico]

You forgot to show the spinning beach ball that all Mac users know so well. This is where it started. I had a few NeXT stations back in the mid 90s. You will do yourself a world of good by hunting for the color turbo version of the machine. It has a faster cpu and allows up to 128MB of ram which makes a huge difference in performance of things like Doom. Your monitor not working is due to it being the lesser version of the color options. You have the Phillips version. There is a SONY version that uses a 17 inTriniton tube with shadow mask. They can be bright and crisp even after nearly 30 years. Before I got rid of mine in 2008ish, it still looked better than most crt displays on the market. You should also look for the Intel compatible version of the OS, OpenStep 4.2. You have to be careful with hardware, but it runs on a lot of period correct Intel machines. It benefits from being able to run on faster hardware plus the display resolution is adjustable. I wish I still had mine. Also, the original Cube had one of the first consumer grade video capture cards, the Dimension, and my roomates and I used one to capture video way back when, before KZbin was a thing. Take care of the Next and it will outlive you. They were huge achievements in engineering and a product of a time when Steve Jobs appreciated that computers were tools and needed to be both easy to use but worth the cost.

[@markjasonhauzen3234]

I love it the infamous pizza box

[@themacintoshnerd]

If I had a NeXTcube taking care of the thing would probably become my full time job

[@nextcomputerparts]

Dell LCD displays work pretty well.

[@zh84]

A machine I also covet. I looked for them on Ebay's Vintage Computers every week, but the prices were too high considering delivery - most were in America (I'm in Britain) and though there was someone in Central Europe who had one to sell, it had a localised keyboard which was very strange. Thanks to you, though, I now know I can download an image that will run on Intel hardware, so I hope to get it working in a virtual machine and at least be able to play with the famous OS!

[@somacruz8272]

Lad you have amigas an msx leave the next stateside

[@zh84]

@@somacruz8272 I think you confuse me with someone else. I have never had an Amiga or an MSX. I'm not the creator of this video, just an interested viewer.

[@somacruz8272]

@@zh84 europe right? You have amigas and msx there. You have no idea how rare that is stateside look online.

[@zh84]

@@somacruz8272 I am European but I do not have either of those types of machines MYSELF.

[@somacruz8272]

@@zh84 theyre significantly easier FOR YOU to acquire.

[@cooperschwartz318]

I would keep the crt since it’s nostalgic and cool but I understand your decision, crts are heavy, and the plastic just can’t support the weight anymore, I would try to get a case mould to maybe make a new case for the crt

[@DatBlueHusky]

This looked so easy to set up compared to macs. Too bad these things are arm and leg to get through, prob will come by one someday. Id love to see you get a older sun workstation computer going with linux!

[@dwarftoad]

Is that a speaker in that box on the side? Does it work?