
Previous: A NeXT emulator - rcarmo
http://previous.alternative-system.com/
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jcr
I love the name of this emulator, but unfortunately, an emulator really takes
all the fun out of a NeXT... --namely, you can't light it on fire!

[http://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html](http://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html)

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dmd
And you can't put your accordions on them:

[https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5337/7050763215_020e0aa978_b....](https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5337/7050763215_020e0aa978_b.jpg)

(By the way: any HN folk in Boston/Cambridge interested in trying to get some
NeXTs running again, please contact me...)

~~~
csixty4
I'd be interested in _trying_. Can't promise anything. Might be a good excuse
to get out of the apartment this winter. Contact info in my profile.

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mcphage
I'm a little disappointed it's not called PReVIOUS...

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rcarmo
There's a fair amount of info about it in this forum thread:
[http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2642&pos...](http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2642&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=585)

...and on this wiki (inc. screenshots):

[http://com-emu.meximas.com/doku.php?id=previous](http://com-
emu.meximas.com/doku.php?id=previous)

~~~
BaryonBundle
From the last page of this forum thread, it looks like the project is
currently dead:

> i have stopped my work on Previous during the last month. It is unlikely
> that i will continue development in the future. I'm sorry for the bad news.
> I hope someone else will pick up the project and complete it. I'd be happy
> to assist with informations.

~~~
rcarmo
Source is here:
[http://sourceforge.net/p/previous/code/HEAD/tree/](http://sourceforge.net/p/previous/code/HEAD/tree/)

Tried to build it on an ARM machine, but ran up against a few missing
dependencies - trying to get those installed...

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krylon
As the Beach Boys used to sing: Wouldn't it be nice?

I know this guy who collects old computers, who also has a NeXT workstation at
home. I was always so envious of him. Now, I might be able to have my own.
Sort of. At least, with emulation you don't need to worry about fragile
20-year-old hardware breaking.

~~~
smacktoward
When I was in college, my department had a computer lab that was nothing but
row upon row of shiny NeXT cubes.

Unfortunately, for some reason it belonged to the university's
_communications_ department, not their computer science department, so nobody
who had access to those machines had the foggiest idea what to do with them.
Throwing a bunch of early '90s communications majors onto a real UNIX
workstation desktop turned out to not be the smartest idea. Who'da thunk?

Kinda the story of NeXT in a nutshell, I guess -- all that potential, more or
less completely wasted until it was injected into the near-dead body of
Apple...

~~~
krylon
The idea of putting a bunch of normal everyday computer users in front of a
Unix system manages to fill me, at the same time, with joy, fear and
surrealism (if that is an emotion).

At work, I oversee a network of about 70-90 Windows clients, mostly in the
hands of users who are pretty clueless when it comes to computers. Sometimes I
cannot help but think what it would be like if all those computers ran a Unix
system.

Some aspects of my work would become easier (no more dreaded Patchdays!), but
realistically, those dreaded PEBKAC-calls from users asking simple but
tedious/annoying questions would turn into torrent that would make my phone
melt.

 _Sigh_ Still, one cannot help but wonder what the world would be like if
either everybody used a Unix system, or if Microsoft hadn't won and we would
have a flourishing diversity of operating systems. (I'm not saying the result
would be better - I'm just saying I am intensely curious to know but don't
want to live in such a world without knowing ahead of time if it would be an
improvement on the current situation.)

Maybe next lifetime, maybe in another parallel universe, we'll find out.

~~~
lstamour
If you consider OS X as Unix, you might not need a parallel universe, just
another decade or two? ;-)

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rcarmo
Oh, and for those of you wanting a relatively recent Linux that looks and
feels like the NeXT, I just found out
[http://wmlive.sourceforge.net/](http://wmlive.sourceforge.net/) was updated
this September!

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rbanffy
For those who'd like to continue, there is NeXT support in MESS:

[http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/mess/drivers/next.c](http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/mess/drivers/next.c)

~~~
jaxb
MAME/MESS moved to github, so

[https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mess/drivers...](https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mess/drivers/next.c)

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srtjstjsj
Is there anything in NeXT that didn't get ported to OS X / Objective-C ?

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protomyth
Enterprise Objects Framework, NeXTSTEP's File Viewer and Shelf (better than
Finder), Digital Librarian (nice concept they should have kept), and a lot of
utilities.

I also miss the NeXTSTEP menus, as for a big display, they are much easier
than scrolling up to the top of the screen.

~~~
rcarmo
I used WindowMaker for years because of those very menus. Of course, these
days it looks a bit dated... And Étoilé seems to have died off, too..

~~~
mdm_
My work desktop is FreeBSD 10.1 running WindowMaker and I personally love the
"dated" look. Reminds me of my teenage years, running Redhat 6.x, listening to
nu-metal with XMMS and spending way too much time on IRC.

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rebootthesystem
Made me wonder if there might be an Irix VM available. I really enjoyed
running the old Origin Series Silicon Graphics machines.

~~~
tjl
I might have some Irix programs I wrote somewhere.

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digi_owl
Now i find myself pondering MO and removable storage in general...

