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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

Wow, 81 comments and not one mention yet of the NeXTcube. That perfect 305mm x 305mm x 305mm (1 foot x 1 foot x 1 foot) magnesium cube was hell to produce, but gorgeous to look at. And, it was the machine that the original web server ran on at CERN. [0]

I've kind of always wanted one of them, but I've also kind of wondered if I'd be disappointed by it, if I got one. After all, it only ran at 25mhz.

What I'd really like to do is get an empty case and put a modern PC inside it. That would be awesome. You'd probably have to gut the case and put in new mounting hardware, but a mini-ATX or micro-ATX board would definitely fit in there. There should be room for drive rails and a PSU, but I wonder if ventilation would be a problem.

Perhaps the most fitting thing to stuff in there would be a Mac, or, maybe, a Hackintosh.

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[0]: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/original-next-comput...

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I’m not a fan of taking old computers and “harvesting“ their cases. People used to do this a lot with the original Macintosh models. Often they would turn them into aquariums. Now all those computers are collectors’ items, and many of them have been butchered. The original NeXT computers are much more rare than those Macintoshes. In my opinion they deserve to be preserved for history.

That's a good thought. I wonder if such a case mod as I propose could be done non-destructively. That is, if you were done with the modern PC inside, could you easily re-convert it back to a NeXTcube? I have no real idea, since I've never seen inside of one. :/

I worked in academia, and there were a few old NeXT machines around. I said, I'll collect these! None of them worked, but I figured my little office had enough space to give them a new home. A few other people had them, saw I was keen, and gave me theirs. I ended up with a cube and two slabs. Never got them to work.

Found out that another colleague had a few of them in a storage closet, and had aspirations of cobbling them together to make a working one. I gave him the machines.

He went on vacation, someone cleared out the closet, and fucking recycled them all. When he came back he was livid. I still feel the loss.

Software guy going hardware here, throwing down on machining hardware here in China next week. Funnily enough, I actually saw magnesium being machined for the first time on Monday: a part for a medical device. The machinist said it requires different coolant (white in his case) but sources online say you can go dry as well. You also need different fire suppression systems in order to safely machine it, as the chips may burn from friction on blunt tools or excessive feed rates. I wondered why bother, so I just looked it up, assuming in the NeXTcube case it was aesthetics. It does not match aluminium in terms of its thermal conductivity, but allegedly may be one-third lighter, more dent-resistant, more easily machinable, and better able to shield electromagnetic radiation and dampen vibrations. Seems a lot to pay for some nominal benefits unless specialist applications demand it. PS. Never saw a NeXTcube except in a museum maybe, but earned some of my first Unix software money programming embedded cryptographic applications for the abortive Cobalt Qube and Raq ecosystem, incidentally the only MIPS target I've ever written for, but no doubt NeXTcube-inspired.

I dunno, just seems fetishistic & insular. Physical product design is not why I personally got into computers. Quite the opposite, the liberation of feeling like you had joined a plane of of thoughts & ideas, decoupled yourself from the material. Apple still kicks out ultrapowered trash cans & cheese graters, & while sometimes the density is impressive, the showmanship of it has always been off-putting & encouraging bad-think to me, takes away g distracts from far more important realities.

As far as I know, Wikipedia is wrong and it was not a perfect cube.

cube: 305 mm x 305 mm x 315 mm

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co82323...

I think that’s correct but it looked like one and this helped.

It was called the NeXT Computer. Only later models were called the Cube.

This seems kind of pedantic, since the "NeXT Computer" and the "Cube" where both cubes. They needed to change the name after the slab (NeXTstation) was released.

They’re different models I think. The slower one is the Computer and then later they’re Cube with a faster chip.

Yes, I understand they are different models, but informally both are referred to as Cubes (obviously due to the shape of the case.) In fact, if you look on ebay, the first "NeXT Cube" I found was actually a "NeXT Computer." I believe they may both actually have the same N1000 model number, despite CPU differences.

The faster 68040 motherboards were available as an upgrade for the older 030 models. So it's not like a "NeXT Computer" couldn't have the 040 inside.

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