6 ms·

Someone lucky got id Software's original NeXT hardware

89 points by jaxb 14y ago

garyrichardson 14y ago
Yeah, it's Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug.. I'd say it's in pretty good hands.
AndrewNCarr 14y ago
It is "id" software, no caps, no periods. It is named for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego I used to make similar mistakes years ago, for a long time thinking it was "Eye Dee Software", so I'm posting this to enlighten others, rather than being a grammar commie. Interestingly, there was a game called iD published in 1986: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_%28video_game%29
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  I've been calling them eye dee software since the first wolfenstein came out. I forget when I learned it rhymed with lid, but I just can't make myself say it that way.
  - rm445 14y ago
    It might help you to know that 'id' is a real word, part of the mind (in Freud's theory) along with the ego and super-ego. Many apologies if this is patronising, just the way you wrote rhymes with lid rather than just the word id made me unsure if you were aware of it.
- jaxb 14y ago
  Corrected, thanks.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  No, it is a lowercase shortening of the acronym for Ideas From the Deep, which is what they called themselves before id. Ideas From the Deep becomes IFD becomes ID.
  - AndrewNCarr 14y ago
    http://www.idsoftware.com/business/history http://www.idsoftware.com/business/history "Taking its name from Freud's primal, instinct-driven face of the human psyche, id Software is, by general acknowledgement, the coolest game shop in the world."
    - 1123581321 14y ago
      That is still not the origin.
codeonfire 14y ago
If someone asks you to wipe data that is not yours, you need to do it otherwise no one will trust you. This guy is oblivious: "Carmack had me promise more than a decade ago that I'd wipe the drives if I ever passed them along, and I'd hate to lose any priceless data that's on them." Second, Junk is junk, throw it away or recycle.
- arrrg 14y ago
  What are you going on about? Could you elaborate? You make no sense.
  - codeonfire 14y ago
    I think I made it pretty clear. One person gave another person some hardware and asked him to wipe the data off of it, which he doesn't plan to do. The hardware is over a decade old and should be recycled. What part are you confused about?
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Did you even read any of the other responses that were given to you?
    - Gigablah 14y ago
      That's some seriously deceptive rephrasing of his original account. > asked him to wipe the data off of it If he passed it along. That means he's been given permission to keep the data.
- packetslave 14y ago
  Presumably, if Carmack didn't want him to have the data, he would have deleted it before giving/selling him the gear 10+ years ago. What he's asking here is: "I have these old NeXT boxes I want to get rid of. I promised I wouldn't give the data to anyone else, so I want to copy it somewhere safe before wiping the disks" Don MacAskill is anything but oblivious.
- untog 14y ago
speeder 14y ago
I pinged Romero, I hope he see my message... He is a game history activist and probably would love to archive that stuff.
jfb 14y ago
I used to rock a cube with a NeXTDimension board. That was glorious.
onethumb 14y ago
Hi guys, I'm the "someone lucky". :) Great definition, because it was mostly luck that I fell in with id, 3DRealms, and the rest of the FPS crowd. John knew I was into NeXT stuff (my father worked for Steve Jobs as head of Developer Relations at NeXT, so I hung out there pretty much every waking moment when I was a kid) and so when id no longer needed the gear, he offered them to me. We'd known each other a few years (and I'd been trusted with other id secrets including early software), so I don't think there was a trust issue and he felt fine with my promise that I wouldn't pass along anything I found on the disks. I still haven't, and I wouldn't without his permission. It has been a long time, so if there is anything of archival value that he'd be fine releasing, I'll leave that up to him. I've kept them safe & sound all these years, but haven't done anything really useful with them. They really belong in a museum, or in a collector's hands, who will cherish them more than I would. I'd like to auction some/all of them off with the proceeds going to Child's Play, but if the Computer History Museum wants one or something, that'd be awesome too. Mostly, I don't want them to still gather dust at my house - they should be helping someone if they can. I'm positive Romero (we still stay fairly close) would like this stuff, but it was Carmack I made the promise too, so I wouldn't give the data to Romero without Carmack's ok. Happy to answer any other questions if people have them. They're pretty unique pieces of hardware, especially considering what NeXTStep has turned into (Mac OS X and iOS - you can still find NeXT strings in them) and what they built (DOOM and Quake) and what other famous NeXTs have done (created the web). Also happy to take suggestions on good homes for them, if you have any.
- Bud 14y ago
  I've still got a NeXTStation Turbo Color and a NeXT Laser Printer as well; they both still work, although the disk in the Turbo Color is no longer bootable. So I'd love to take one of the systems off your hands, and it'd be really helpful if you've got a bootable drive so I could get mine running again. I used to own a Cube but sold that to another NeXT lover years ago. Would love to add another system to my collection.
- VonGuard 14y ago
  Hey! www.themade.org ! I posted on yer link as well. We're a non-profit videogame museum in downtown Oakland. Additionally, on the data: If Carmack is amenable, the data could be entrusted to Stanford. Stanford's curator is on our board, and they are able to do something similar to Mark Twain's agreement with UC Berkeley: hold his papers in a locked room for 100 years. Something similar could be worked out between the three of us. Please email me at alex at themade dot org.
asveikau 14y ago
For some odd reason (I think it was cited in a Wikipedia article or something) I happened to be reading Carmack's .plan file from 1998 this week: http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1998.pdf http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1998.pdf In it, he mentioned that he was getting rid of the last of id's NeXT hardware that year. Seemed to me like pretty late to be doing that, but hey, I can also see not wanting to let go of them. His old writings were definitely an interesting time capsule. He writes about Windows NT being, ironically, the best platform to write OpenGL at the time. He writes about Apple's Rhapsody (first impressions: he liked the NeXTiness but was skeptical of Carbon/Classic; then later, he writes that he's more satisfied with it after a deeper look). He writes in passing about trips to Apple and talking up OpenGL to Steve Jobs.
- onethumb 14y ago
  Wow, talk about a blast from the past. Had forgotten he'd .plan'd about that. "Onethumb gets all of our old black NeXT hardware" (note my nick still, to this day, here on HN).
Zarathust 14y ago
Somehow I was half expecting some kind of "Hey, John Carmack here, you can...". This is the internet after all
newman314 14y ago
I loved the NeXT. It was one of the first Unix based machines that I ever used and have fond memories about hearing "this web thing" and Viola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW) I'm bummed that Apple didn't bring the shelf over with the Finder. I wonder if ddt would want one of them.
ja27 14y ago
Ugh. I still have a couple NeXT magneto-optical disks that haven't been used in 20+ years. Maybe I should donate them to a time capsule.

89 points by jaxb 14y ago

Yeah, it's Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug.. I'd say it's in pretty good hands.

It is "id" software, no caps, no periods. It is named for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego I used to make similar mistakes years ago, for a long time thinking it was "Eye Dee Software", so I'm posting this to enlighten others, rather than being a grammar commie. Interestingly, there was a game called iD published in 1986: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_%28video_game%29

DigitalJack 14y ago
I've been calling them eye dee software since the first wolfenstein came out. I forget when I learned it rhymed with lid, but I just can't make myself say it that way.
- rm445 14y ago
  It might help you to know that 'id' is a real word, part of the mind (in Freud's theory) along with the ego and super-ego. Many apologies if this is patronising, just the way you wrote rhymes with lid rather than just the word id made me unsure if you were aware of it.
jaxb 14y ago
Corrected, thanks.
1123581321 14y ago
No, it is a lowercase shortening of the acronym for Ideas From the Deep, which is what they called themselves before id. Ideas From the Deep becomes IFD becomes ID.
- AndrewNCarr 14y ago
  http://www.idsoftware.com/business/history http://www.idsoftware.com/business/history "Taking its name from Freud's primal, instinct-driven face of the human psyche, id Software is, by general acknowledgement, the coolest game shop in the world."
  - 1123581321 14y ago
    That is still not the origin.

codeonfire 14y ago

If someone asks you to wipe data that is not yours, you need to do it otherwise no one will trust you. This guy is oblivious: "Carmack had me promise more than a decade ago that I'd wipe the drives if I ever passed them along, and I'd hate to lose any priceless data that's on them." Second, Junk is junk, throw it away or recycle.

arrrg 14y ago
What are you going on about? Could you elaborate? You make no sense.
- codeonfire 14y ago
  I think I made it pretty clear. One person gave another person some hardware and asked him to wipe the data off of it, which he doesn't plan to do. The hardware is over a decade old and should be recycled. What part are you confused about?
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Did you even read any of the other responses that were given to you?
  - Gigablah 14y ago
    That's some seriously deceptive rephrasing of his original account. > asked him to wipe the data off of it If he passed it along. That means he's been given permission to keep the data.
packetslave 14y ago
Presumably, if Carmack didn't want him to have the data, he would have deleted it before giving/selling him the gear 10+ years ago. What he's asking here is: "I have these old NeXT boxes I want to get rid of. I promised I wouldn't give the data to anyone else, so I want to copy it somewhere safe before wiping the disks" Don MacAskill is anything but oblivious.
untog 14y ago

speeder 14y ago

I pinged Romero, I hope he see my message... He is a game history activist and probably would love to archive that stuff.

jfb 14y ago

I used to rock a cube with a NeXTDimension board. That was glorious.

onethumb 14y ago

Hi guys, I'm the "someone lucky". :) Great definition, because it was mostly luck that I fell in with id, 3DRealms, and the rest of the FPS crowd. John knew I was into NeXT stuff (my father worked for Steve Jobs as head of Developer Relations at NeXT, so I hung out there pretty much every waking moment when I was a kid) and so when id no longer needed the gear, he offered them to me. We'd known each other a few years (and I'd been trusted with other id secrets including early software), so I don't think there was a trust issue and he felt fine with my promise that I wouldn't pass along anything I found on the disks. I still haven't, and I wouldn't without his permission. It has been a long time, so if there is anything of archival value that he'd be fine releasing, I'll leave that up to him. I've kept them safe & sound all these years, but haven't done anything really useful with them. They really belong in a museum, or in a collector's hands, who will cherish them more than I would. I'd like to auction some/all of them off with the proceeds going to Child's Play, but if the Computer History Museum wants one or something, that'd be awesome too. Mostly, I don't want them to still gather dust at my house - they should be helping someone if they can. I'm positive Romero (we still stay fairly close) would like this stuff, but it was Carmack I made the promise too, so I wouldn't give the data to Romero without Carmack's ok. Happy to answer any other questions if people have them. They're pretty unique pieces of hardware, especially considering what NeXTStep has turned into (Mac OS X and iOS - you can still find NeXT strings in them) and what they built (DOOM and Quake) and what other famous NeXTs have done (created the web). Also happy to take suggestions on good homes for them, if you have any.

Bud 14y ago
I've still got a NeXTStation Turbo Color and a NeXT Laser Printer as well; they both still work, although the disk in the Turbo Color is no longer bootable. So I'd love to take one of the systems off your hands, and it'd be really helpful if you've got a bootable drive so I could get mine running again. I used to own a Cube but sold that to another NeXT lover years ago. Would love to add another system to my collection.
VonGuard 14y ago
Hey! www.themade.org ! I posted on yer link as well. We're a non-profit videogame museum in downtown Oakland. Additionally, on the data: If Carmack is amenable, the data could be entrusted to Stanford. Stanford's curator is on our board, and they are able to do something similar to Mark Twain's agreement with UC Berkeley: hold his papers in a locked room for 100 years. Something similar could be worked out between the three of us. Please email me at alex at themade dot org.

asveikau 14y ago

For some odd reason (I think it was cited in a Wikipedia article or something) I happened to be reading Carmack's .plan file from 1998 this week: http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1998.pdf http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1998.pdf In it, he mentioned that he was getting rid of the last of id's NeXT hardware that year. Seemed to me like pretty late to be doing that, but hey, I can also see not wanting to let go of them. His old writings were definitely an interesting time capsule. He writes about Windows NT being, ironically, the best platform to write OpenGL at the time. He writes about Apple's Rhapsody (first impressions: he liked the NeXTiness but was skeptical of Carbon/Classic; then later, he writes that he's more satisfied with it after a deeper look). He writes in passing about trips to Apple and talking up OpenGL to Steve Jobs.

onethumb 14y ago
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. Had forgotten he'd .plan'd about that. "Onethumb gets all of our old black NeXT hardware" (note my nick still, to this day, here on HN).

Zarathust 14y ago

Somehow I was half expecting some kind of "Hey, John Carmack here, you can...". This is the internet after all

newman314 14y ago

I loved the NeXT. It was one of the first Unix based machines that I ever used and have fond memories about hearing "this web thing" and Viola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW) I'm bummed that Apple didn't bring the shelf over with the Finder. I wonder if ddt would want one of them.

ja27 14y ago

Ugh. I still have a couple NeXT magneto-optical disks that haven't been used in 20+ years. Maybe I should donate them to a time capsule.