=?iso-8859-1?Q?Re: Best HW to run NextStep??=

[David Wetzel]

Laurent Julliard wrote:

> Anyway I'd like to run the NeXTstep OS again on some sort of hardware
> just to get a flavor of what the original was. What's the best solution
> for that:
> 
> A - Find a NeXT station (cube or pizzabox) that still works. Is this
> reasonable? What version of NeXTstep runs in these machines?

The latest version is OPENSTEP 4.2. It is usable if you have more than 64MB on 
black hardware. Web browsing is a bit too slow.
Try to get an monochrome TURBO slab or cube. They are faster.

> B - While visited the Apple site I realized that NeXTstep (actually
> OpenStep I guess) was ported to Sun SPARC platforms and also to Intel
> platforms. The hardware seems to be easy to find but I have several
> questions on that:
>   B.1 - Can the Intel or Sparc version be considered as "compliant" with
> the original flavor?

Yes. The Sparc port runs on Supersparcs. Ultras do NOT work.

>   B.2 - Where can I find (CD/download) the NeXTstep OS for these
> machines?

Ask someone who is in NeXT stuff. If you live in the Bay Area try to attend the 
BeNG meetings (www.beng.org) 

> Another point where I'm not clear at all is whether NeXTstep ran on
> Macintosh machines at some point or was it just the aborted Rhapsody
> project?

The aborted Rhapsody project is now called Mac OS X and ships with all new macs.
But the display is not display postscript and it needs MUCH more memory...
The finder is not that usabale as the NeXT thing but it is ok for an Apple ,-)
I hope that they fix it and kick out carbon (the old Mac compatibility layer) 
out soon.

HTH, dave

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