The NeXTcube is a high-end

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, 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 syste ...

computer developed, manufactured, and sold by

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

from 1990 to 1993. It superseded the original NeXT Computer workstation and is housed in a similar cube-shaped magnesium enclosure, designed by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, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and was launched with a list price.

Hardware

The NeXTcube is the successor to the original NeXT Computer, with a 68040 processor, a hard disk in place of the magneto-optical drive, and a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a 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 with a ...

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 It superseded the earlier NeXTcube workstation and is housed in the same cube-shaped magnesium enclosure. It runs the NeXTSTEP operating system. Har ...

was later produced. NeXT released the

NeXTdimension The NeXTdimension (ND) is an accelerated 32-bit color board manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1991

for the NeXTcube, a

circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a laminated sandwich structure of conductive and insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes and other features (similar to wires on a flat surface) ...

based on an Intel i860 processor, which offers 32-bit

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

color display and video-sampling features. The Pyro accelerator board replaces 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 and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

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

floating-point unit A floating-point unit (FPU), numeric processing unit (NPU), colloquially math coprocessor, is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multip ...

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 metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...

: 25 MHz Motorola DSP56001 * RAM: 8 MB, expandable to 64 MB (Sixteen 30-pin SIMM slots) * Floppy drive: 2.88 MB * Hard drive: 105 MB, 340 MB, 400 MB, 660 MB, 1.4 GB or 2.8 GB

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

drive * Network interface: 10BASE-T 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))

Legacy

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...

created the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

on the NeXTcube

in 1990.

References

External links

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

Hardware

Specifications

Legacy

See also

References

External links