The NeXTcube is a high-end

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

computer developed, manufactured, and sold by

NeXT Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

from 1990 until 1993. It superseded the original

NeXT Computer 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 , aimed at the hig ...

workstation and is housed in a similar cube-shaped magnesium enclosure, designed by

frog design frog (styled as ''"frog, part of Capgemini Invent"'') is a global creative and design consultancy founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger in Mutlangen, Germany, where it was initially named “esslinger design”. Soon after the ...

. The workstation runs the

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprieta ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

and was launched with a list price.

Hardware

The NeXTcube is the successor to the original NeXT Computer. It differs from its predecessor in having a

68040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nami ...

processor, a hard disk in place of the

magneto-optical drive A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. Both 130 mm (5.25 in) and 90 mm (3.5 in) form factors exist. In 1983, just a year after the introduc ...

, and a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

drive. NeXT offered a 68040 system board upgrade (and NeXTSTEP 2.0) for . A 33 MHz

NeXTcube Turbo The NeXTcube Turbo is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT. It superseded the earlier NeXTcube workstation and is housed in the same cube-shaped magnesium enclosure. The workstation runs the NeXTSTEP operating s ...

was later produced. NeXT released the

NeXTdimension NeXTdimension (ND) was an accelerated 32-bit color board manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1991 that gave the NeXTcube color capabilities with PostScript planned. The NeXTBus (NuBus-like) card was a full size card for the NeXTcube, filling one of ...

for the NeXTcube, a

circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich struc ...

based on an

Intel i860 The Intel i860 (also known as 80860) is a RISC microprocessor design introduced by Intel in 1989. It is one of Intel's first attempts at an entirely new, high-end instruction set architecture since the failed Intel iAPX 432 from the beginning of ...

processor, which offers 32-bit

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

color display and video-sampling features. The Pyro accelerator board increases the speed of a NeXTcube by replacing the standard 25 MHz processor with a 50 MHz one.

Specifications

* Display: 1120×832 17 in (432 mm) 82 ppi grayscale MegaPixel Display *

Operating System An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

: NeXTSTEP 2.2 Extended or later * CPU: 25 MHz 68040 with integrated

floating-point unit In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...

Digital Signal Processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio si ...

: 25 MHz Motorola DSP56001 * RAM: 8 MB, expandable to 64 MB (Sixteen 30-pin

SIMM A SIMM (single in-line memory module) is a type of memory module containing random-access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module (DIMM), the most predominant form of memory ...

slots) * Floppy Drive: 2.88 MB * Hard Drive: 105 MB, 340 MB, 400 MB, 660 MB, 1.4 GB or 2.8 GB SCSI drive * Network interface:

10BASE-T 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

and 10BASE2

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

* Expansion: four NeXTbus slots (mainboard uses one slot) * Size (H × W × D): 12 in × 12 in × 12 in (305 mm x 305 mm x 305 mm (±1 mm))

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nextcube Computer workstations NeXT History of the Internet Steve Jobs 68k-based computers

Hardware

Specifications

See also

References

External links