NeXT Cube

Overview

Long before the Power Mac G4 Cube, Steve Jobs created the NeXT Cube, a 12" black box with more power than any Macintosh then available. The NeXT Cube was innovative in many ways: It used Postscript both to display images on its four-shade grayscale monitor and to print them out on its 400 dpi laser printer. The Cube incorporates a Motorola 56001 digital signal processor (DSP) to process graphics in real time.

Like OS X, which is descended from it, the NeXTstep operating system was firmly rooted in Unix.

One almost prescient feature: like the 1998 iMac, the 1988 NeXT Cube had no floppy drive.

Details

• introduced Oct. 1988 at $6,500 with monitor
• display: 1120 x 832 17" grayscale
• OS: requires NeXTstep 1.0 or later
• CPU: 25 MHz 68030
• FPU: 25 MHz 68882
• DSP: 20 MHz Motorola DSP56001
• performance: 15 MIPS, 2 MFLOPS
• ROM: 128 KB
• RAM: 8 MB, expandable to 64 MB
• VRAM: 256 KB
• video: 1120 x 832 at 2-bits
• hard drive: 40 MB SCSI drive (optional)
• floppy drive: none
• optical drive: 256 MB
• networking: Thinnet and 10Base-T ethernet
• RS-423 serial ports: 2
• SCSI-2 ports: unknown
• NeXTbus slots: 3
• PDS slot: unknown
• size (H x W x D): 12" x 12" x 12"
• weight: unknown
• PRAM battery: unknown

Accelerators & Upgrades

• NeXT offered an upgrade to the 68040-based NeXTcube.

Online Resources

• Commonly asked (by Mac users) questions about NextStep/OpenStep systems, Kevin Coffee. Best single-page resource I've seen about NeXT stuff.
• If you know of good NeXT pages I should link to, please . Thanks!

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