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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