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> Years ago I acquired and refurbished a NeXT cube. They were certainly a distinctive-looking computer for the day, but I don't know that there was anything par

> Years ago I acquired and refurbished a NeXT cube. They were certainly a distinctive-looking computer for the day, but I don't know that there was anything particularly special bout the hardware that was worth recreating. The software was the interesting bit. A modern computer running the whole thing in emulation is not the same though. Whereas for example an FPGA implementation, that’s in line with my idea of “build your own NeXT”. Even though someone might say, that’s emulation too. And they’d be correct in a way. But like, do you see what I mean?

ido 5y ago
Would you consider an "IBM compatible" PC from the late NeXT era that can natively run NeXTSTEP/i486 authentic? Seeing as that's the (one of) the kind of computer that NeXT sold the OS for.
nuclearnice1 5y ago
Maybe the next four words of the title provide the required clarification? “Build your own NeXT with a virtual machine”
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Though those last four words were left out of the HN submission's title. Which may not be in accordance with the submission guidelines.
tablespoon 5y ago
>> Years ago I acquired and refurbished a NeXT cube.... > A modern computer running the whole thing in emulation is not the same though. >> Whereas for example an FPGA implementation, that’s in line with my idea of “build your own NeXT”. But the OP is not that. IIRC, there were two distinct versions of NeXTSTEP: a 68k version for their custom hardware, and a x86 version for PCs. The OP is setting up VM for the latter (which given its age does not seem like a trivial thing, either). So if you must have an FPGA version, it would be equally equivalent to have one that simulates a mid-90s IBM clone.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  NeXTSTEP also supported SPARC and PA-RISC.
  - a-dub 5y ago
    along with intel. they had sweet 4 way fat binaries that had code for all 4 architectures.
ragingrobot 5y ago
> Whereas for example an FPGA implementation, that’s in line with my idea of “build your own NeXT”. Even though someone might say, that’s emulation too. And they’d be correct in a way. But like, do you see what I mean? That would be acceptable, as you built a machine that functioned exactly like the original, running the OS on bare metal - not on unrelated hardware under emulation. That would fit my idea of "building" the machine as well.
moftz 5y ago
An FPGA would be hardware emulation rather than QEMU which is software emulation. For older systems, am FPGA can get you a lot closer to how an older hardware worked by mimicking the actual timing characteristics or by just straight copying the gates into RTL. It all depends on the goal, you may just want to run the software at the same speed like for games or you might want to just see how fast a softcore Z80 can run VisiCalc. With the development of systems like the RC2014, FPGAs and newer microcontrollers or SoCs have made their way into peripheral cards to allow easy connections to modern day interfaces like SD Cards, Wifi, and even HDMI. It takes almost no effort to connect an ESP8266 to the serial port of an ancient computer and send AT commands to access websites and network fileshares.

ido 5y ago

Would you consider an "IBM compatible" PC from the late NeXT era that can natively run NeXTSTEP/i486 authentic? Seeing as that's the (one of) the kind of computer that NeXT sold the OS for.

nuclearnice1 5y ago

Maybe the next four words of the title provide the required clarification? “Build your own NeXT with a virtual machine”

mumblemumble 5y ago
Though those last four words were left out of the HN submission's title. Which may not be in accordance with the submission guidelines.

tablespoon 5y ago

>> Years ago I acquired and refurbished a NeXT cube.... > A modern computer running the whole thing in emulation is not the same though. >> Whereas for example an FPGA implementation, that’s in line with my idea of “build your own NeXT”. But the OP is not that. IIRC, there were two distinct versions of NeXTSTEP: a 68k version for their custom hardware, and a x86 version for PCs. The OP is setting up VM for the latter (which given its age does not seem like a trivial thing, either). So if you must have an FPGA version, it would be equally equivalent to have one that simulates a mid-90s IBM clone.

saagarjha 5y ago
NeXTSTEP also supported SPARC and PA-RISC.
- a-dub 5y ago
  along with intel. they had sweet 4 way fat binaries that had code for all 4 architectures.

ragingrobot 5y ago

> Whereas for example an FPGA implementation, that’s in line with my idea of “build your own NeXT”. Even though someone might say, that’s emulation too. And they’d be correct in a way. But like, do you see what I mean? That would be acceptable, as you built a machine that functioned exactly like the original, running the OS on bare metal - not on unrelated hardware under emulation. That would fit my idea of "building" the machine as well.

moftz 5y ago

An FPGA would be hardware emulation rather than QEMU which is software emulation. For older systems, am FPGA can get you a lot closer to how an older hardware worked by mimicking the actual timing characteristics or by just straight copying the gates into RTL. It all depends on the goal, you may just want to run the software at the same speed like for games or you might want to just see how fast a softcore Z80 can run VisiCalc. With the development of systems like the RC2014, FPGAs and newer microcontrollers or SoCs have made their way into peripheral cards to allow easy connections to modern day interfaces like SD Cards, Wifi, and even HDMI. It takes almost no effort to connect an ESP8266 to the serial port of an ancient computer and send AT commands to access websites and network fileshares.