I was working on a NeXT BlueSCSI Toolbox app (via the Previous emulator) for a while but ran into issues where I couldn't tell if it was the emulator, me, or my code and it was getting a bit troublesome to debug further.
Luckily a kind soul @JdM74 reached out to me and offered to find and ship me all the parts I needed to get a NeXTStation up and running!
It's a NeXTStation with a NuBox to replace the soundbox for audio and adb, Y cable for VGA. 128MB of RAM.
I'm a noob at NeXT so this is just a thread to capture what I've learned on the way and maybe some info to help the next person who's thinking about getting a NeXT.
I Installed a BlueSCSI v2 of course and worked instantly, but the NeXTStation has an odd way to physically mount the HDD right on the motherboard. I found an existing model and remixed it to allow for any BlueSCSI v2 to work. https://www.printables.com/model/951896-nextstation-bluescsi-drive-bracket
I had an issue with the mouse - kept drifting and moving by itself. Was reading and saw maybe resetting the PRAM battery would help, but in resetting the PRAM I had to boot into monitor mode to set the boot device to the drive instead of the (default) network. Everywhere online says to use Command + tilde right after the self test, but it's actually left alt, + command + tilde!
That didn't fix the issue so I opened the mouse up, cleaned it, hooked it back up and it worked! sometimes. After some fiddling it seems there is a broken wire in the cable and if i hold it just right it'll work. Luckily I have a Wombat that works (oddly no Mac ADB mice will work). I should be able to repair the ADB NeXT mouse.
My next steps are to:
Transfer my files from my mac to my NeXT (hopefully via ftp)
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