Manufacturer | NeXT |
---|---|
Type | Workstation |
Release date | April 7, 1992 [1] |
Discontinued | 1995 |
Operating system | NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, NetBSD (limited support) |
CPU | Motorola 68040 @ 33 MHz, 56001 digital signal processor (DSP) |
Memory | 16–128 MB |
Display | 1120×832 2-bpp grayscale |
Dimensions | 1-foot (305 mm) die-cast magnesium cube-shaped case |
Predecessor | NeXTcube |
The NeXTcube Turbo is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT. It superseded the earlier NeXTcube workstation and is housed in the same cube-shaped magnesium enclosure. It runs the NeXTSTEP operating system.
The NeXTcube Turbo is a development of the earlier NeXTcube. It differs from its predecessor in having a 33 MHz 68040 processor.
The NeXTdimension board can also be used in the NeXTcube Turbo.
There was also a very rare accelerator board known as the Nitro; between 5 and 20 are estimated to have been made. It increased the speed of a NeXTcube Turbo by replacing the standard 33 MHz processor with a 40 MHz one. [2]
The Motorola 68030 ("sixty-eight-oh-thirty") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030.
NeXT, Inc. was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later developed web software. It was founded in 1985 by CEO Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who had been forcibly removed from Apple that year. NeXT debuted with the NeXT Computer in 1988, and released the NeXTcube and smaller NeXTstation in 1990. The series had relatively limited sales, with only about 50,000 total units shipped. Nevertheless, the object-oriented programming and graphical user interface were highly influential trendsetters of computer innovation.
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprietary workstation computers such as the NeXTcube. It was later ported to several other computer architectures.
OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification developed by NeXT. It provides a framework for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and developing software applications. OpenStep was designed to be platform-independent, allowing developers to write code that could run on multiple operating systems, including NeXTSTEP, Windows NT, and various Unix-based systems. It has influenced the development of other GUI frameworks, such as Cocoa for macOS, and GNUstep.
NeXT Computer is a workstation computer that was developed, marketed, and sold by NeXT Inc. It was introduced in October 1988 as the company's first and flagship product, at a price of US$6,500, aimed at the higher-education market. It was designed around the Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 floating-point coprocessor, with a clock speed of 25 MHz. Its NeXTSTEP operating system is based on the Mach microkernel and BSD-derived Unix, with a proprietary GUI using a Display PostScript-based back end. According to the Science Museum Group, "The enclosure consists of a 1-foot die-cast magnesium cube-shaped black case, which led to the machine being informally referred to as 'The Cube'."
Apollo/Domain is a series of workstations that were developed and produced by Apollo Computer from c. 1980 to 1989. The machines were built around the Motorola 68k series of processors, except for the DN10000, which has from one to four of Apollo's RISC processors, named PRISM.
NeXTstation is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured, and sold by NeXT from 1990 until 1993. It runs the NeXTSTEP operating system.
The SGI Tezro is a series of high-end computer workstations sold by SGI from 2003 until 2006. Using MIPS CPUs and running IRIX, it is the immediate successor to the SGI Octane line. The systems were produced in both rack-mount and tower versions, and the series was released in June 2003 with a list price of US$20,500. The Tezro was released alongside the SGI Onyx 4 and rack-mountable Tezros share many components with it, including plastic skins. The rack-mounted Tezros are functionally very similar to an Infinite Performance-equipped SGI Onyx350. Tezro marked the return of the original cube logo to SGI machines.
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The Macintosh Quadra 950 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1992 to October 1995. It replaced the Quadra 900 that was introduced several months earlier, increasing the CPU clock rate of its 68040 CPU from 25 MHz to 33 MHz, and improving the graphics support. The two computers were otherwise identical, including the price. With a Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card installed, this computer is known as the Power Macintosh 950.
The SPARCstation 20 or SS20 is a discontinued Sun Microsystems workstation introduced in March 1994 based on the SuperSPARC or hyperSPARC CPU. It is one of the last models in the SPARCstation family of Sun "pizza box" computers, which was superseded by the UltraSPARC design in 1995.
The SPARCstation 10 is a workstation computer made by Sun Microsystems. Announced in May 1992, it was Sun's first desktop multiprocessor. It was later replaced with the SPARCstation 20.
SPARCstation 5 or SS5 is a workstation introduced by Sun Microsystems in March 1994. It is based on the sun4m architecture, and is enclosed in a pizza-box chassis. Sun also offered a SPARCserver 5 without a framebuffer. A simplified, cheaper version of the SS5 was released in February 1995 as the SPARCstation 4. Sun also marketed these same machines under the "Netra" brand, without framebuffers or keyboards and preconfigured with all the requisite software to be used as web servers. An estimated 400,000+ SPARCstation 5s were sold.
The NeXTcube is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured, and sold by NeXT from 1990 to 1993. It superseded the original NeXT Computer workstation and is housed in a similar cube-shaped magnesium enclosure, designed by frog design. The workstation runs the NeXTSTEP operating system and was launched with a $7,995 list price.
The Macintosh Quadra 650, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 650, is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from February 1993 to September 1994. The Centris 650 was introduced alongside the smaller Centris 610 as the replacement for the Macintosh IIci and Quadra 700, and it was intended as the start of the new midrange Centris line of computers. Later in 1993, Apple decided to follow an emerging industry trend of naming product families for their target customers – Quadra for business, LC for education, and Performa for home – and folded the Centris 650 into the Quadra family.
The NeXTdimension (ND) is an accelerated 32-bit color board manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1991 that gives the NeXTcube color capabilities with PostScript planned. The NeXTBus (NuBus-like) card is a full size card for the NeXTcube, filling one of four slots, another one being filled with the main board. The NeXTdimension features S-Video input and output, RGB output, an Intel i860 64-bit RISC processor at 33 MHz for Postscript acceleration, 8 MB main memory and 4 MB VRAM for a resolution of 1120x832 at 24-bit color plus 8-bit alpha channel. An onboard C-Cube CL550 chip for MJPEG video compression is in the announced specification, but this was omitted from the delivered product. An estimated three-month delay in delivering the CL550 caused NeXT to redesign the product to accept a daughterboard providing image compression functionality. Few engineering prototypes for the MJPEG daughterboard exist.
The NeXT Laser Printer [NeXT PN N2000] was a 400 DPI PostScript laser printer, sold by NeXT from late 1988 to 1993 for the NeXTstation and NeXTcube workstations and manufactured by Canon Inc. It included an adjustable paper tray, which enabled it to print on several paper sizes including A4, letter-size, and those of legal and envelope varieties. It was very similar to other printers based on the Canon SX engine, such as the Apple LaserWriter II series and HP LaserJet II/III, although those other printers only printed at 300x300 dpi. Some parts are interchangeable with the LaserJet II/III.
The Sun Microsystems Ultra 80 is a computer workstation that shipped from November 1999 to 2002.
The DraCo, also known as DraCo Vision in one of its later models, was a non-linear video editing workstation created by MacroSystem Computer GmbH in 1994, based on the Amiga platform.
American Computer & Peripheral, Inc. (AC&P), also written as American Computer and Peripheral, was an American computer company based in Santa Ana, California. The company was founded in 1985 by Alan Lau and released several expansion boards for the IBM PC as well as a few PC clones before going bankrupt in December 1989. Obscure in its own time, the company's 386 Translator was the first plug-in board for Intel's newly released 80386 processor and the first mass-market computing device to offer consumers a means of using the 386 in July 1986.