NeXT Cubes, Workstations and Peripherals !
Latest update 9/6/2020 Easy just put in the comment section what you are interested in , we have a lot of cool items that are not listed ... Current pricing may vary from this old script, it has been running since 1997, it is 2020 and working NeXT equipment is hard to find. We have been proactive about repairing the equipment before damage happens including board level repair , it is a labor of Love.
The most up to date pricing is on our... eBay Computerpowwow store... We have been professionally replacing leaky electrolytic capacitors on the NeXT Motherboards with ceramic caps. We replace the spinning 30 year old scsi hard drives with a nice quiet scsi 2sd solution . The first NeXT Hard Drives weighed 7lbs now we boot off of an sd card the size of a finger nail. Some items are out of stock. not by choice , hey it is 2020 and I've sold hundreds of NeXT's recently , you can see tons of projects on my Rob Blessin Youtube NeXT Projects channel I'm doing the best I can with what I have, wait lists for rare items!
We also have custom dual comptible ADB and NON ADB Modified soundboxes ., but we are out the faceplates not by choice, We now have a custom 3rd party sound card. Whats nice about this , it is needed as the NeXT keyboard plugs into it. Now we can use flatpanels with our custom monitor cables we offer.
Our new PHP store is in the process of being upgraded , the main problem is with the shipping module.
>Black Hole, Inc. Phone number is 303-741-9998 Yes we are still alive and kicking and have the majority of items in stock including a lot of new old stock items. If you don't see something you are looking for just send the form at the bottom of this page and tell us your interest in the comment section.
As one of three original NeXT Board members, I am happy to see you guys keeping things going!! What do you think of Bud Tribble's and Andy's new Linux GUI enterprise?? John Pat Crecine (RIP)
Refurbishing and tuning up, Pat's NeXT Cube was a fun and cool NeXT hardware restoration . We honestly care about keeping as many of the NeXT's operational , as they are the coolest computers ever manufactured! Pat said his most serious challenge was keeping the other 2 NeXT board members apart .... Steve Jobs and Ross Perot.
The opportunity to own a NeXT computer was just a dream for most of us in the past. As original 68030Mhz NeXT Cubes commanded a $9,995 base model introductory price. It was a worthwhile investment for those that made it. In the long run as NeXT technology years ahead of its time has always been stable and eay to use , we even have repaired the pesky optical drives. NeXT computers are classic and still very cool even by today's standards, they still hold their own. The 2nd reason availability as only 50,000 NeXT's Computers were manufactured in total from 1988 to 1993 Q1 and a few more the Summer of 1993 finding one was a challenge at the time. I estimate may be 10,000 remain.
We have been fortunate enough and
sincerely enjoyed having had the opportunity to offer NeXT Computers, software
and peripherals to what we consider to be the most intelligent people in the
world our customers. Most stumble across us by luck or pure good fortune and
many have stumbled across NeXT technology through the years via NeXT's long
lasting and brilliant stealth , word of mouth
marketing plan which targeted the general public, government, corporate,
academic markets and now a growing collectors market from the unleashing of the
first cubes in 1988 , that continues to this very day.
USA Weekend Edition 12/31/1999 put NeXT
workstations and cubes as one of the top 26 most collectable items in new
Millennium , so the value will only go up , unlike those old 286's or 386's
running dos spawned in the same era.
In fact for a few weeks in 1993,
(humorously only 1 day, February 9, 1993), I had the opportunity to sell NeXT's
that were actually rolling off of the assembly line in Redwood City, CA., so we
welcome you to shop at BHI as we are still here and still firmly believe
Microsoft is truly a lame alternative to a far superior OS known by many names
but by most as NeXTSTEP.grand daddy to MAC OS
We make an effort to replenish our supply
of NeXT hardware, but it is becoming more difficult to locate NeXT's as they
are becoming scarce, let us know if you have any as we try to save as many as
possible from being melted down by Sun or scraped; literally
and We find good homes for them.
On the other hand ; we recommend if you are truly
interested in owning one of the most amazing workstations ever manufactured we
strongly recommend making your purchase soon before we are sold out!
When items are out of stock, we do our
best to update this page and note them as sold out. We have very limited stock
of some items not by choice; they are just becoming hard to find, please note
you can always ask if we have something in the comment section at the bottom of
the page. We have had ram manufactured as well as DB19 connectors .
NeXT computers that we have saved and
found good homes for with storied histories arrived recently stickered with old Top Secret, may reportedly and seriously
appear to us from legendary places like Area 51, CIA, NASA, SAC and other
interesting places. We suspect some of these NeXT's actually can think and
learn or time travel must be possible and is involved in spirit with some of
the items we have received recently and NeXT reportedly actually turned the
assembly line back on in the summer of 1993 for Secret Squirrels, many of us
only wish Apple would do this again.
Especially cool lately are donations
toward our in progress NeXT Museum display of 75 NeXT's, which will have a time
capsule NeXT as part of exhibit to be started up 100 years from now or who
knows many of the on display units may actually still be in operation through
hand me down internships. A Professor at MIT contacted us and they will be
proceeding with a Linux port to NeXT hardware , we
will have information soon if you are interested in helping.
(I think this exdeavor fizzled) but we now have a 68K emulator called Previous!
so we can actually recover your legacy NeXT softwre and have it
available for you on modern Mac's and PC's
We fortunate Users of NeXT have been
spoiled by the ease of use of NeXT equipment. We have been so far ahead of our
time that "new technology" like sending E-mail with sound, graphics
and video, well it is old hat as some of us have been doing that since 1988 on
our trustworthy NeXT's.
I.E. Interesting items appear daily, like
factory sealed New NeXT Non ADB Mice, occasional equipment still new and in the
factory box , an 030 Cube appeared from LANL running release 1.0 that had not
been booted in 9 years, from an amazing gentleman that engineers guidance
systems for Patriot Missiles on NEXT via Fortran and is helping NASA to
calculate optimal trajectory change for optimal rescue orbits for most of the
worlds Satellites so they won't spin out of control and in theory come crashing
back to Earth before their time when the NeXT electromagnetic solar flare cycle
forecast to kick in ~ 2003 develops. Amazing coincidence after I wrote this a
major solar flair happened so I believe it to be true.
Another arrived with a modified login
panel that says Feynman, as in Richard,very famous
physics dude, also custom software like laser trajectory , oscilloscope ,
satellite tracking and other stuff out of back to the future that individuals
have developed is impressive that I've located recently in NeXT software
archives. A box of 25 shrink-wrapped NeXT manuals appeared (sorry already sold out, know of any more please let us know).
I have Larry Ellisons Turbo Color and NeXT Cube number 4 :)
The NeXT Big Thing book arrived authored
by Randall Stross. Stross
does an incredible job finding every possible way to put Jobs and NeXT down.
Spending 250 Million dollars was a small investment to produce the finest
computer ever manufactured and still by far the best and easiest to use
operating system and developer environment. I finally read the NeXT Big Thing
in April of 2000, so it appears all these years later that Stross
was way off course and probably never even used NeXT as he must have been so
thoroughly blinded and impressed by the much superior Windows 3.11 at the time;
unfortunately so was most of world that NeXT was weak in comparison according
to him. NeXT ran circles around Windows NT
Who laughs now as Steve Jobs CEO of
Apple, Avie Tevanian NeXT
software guru and Rubenstein NeXT hardware genius and a cast of thousands have
turned Apple from a floundering company spiraling to impending doom into a
powerhouse in just a few short years and with solid foundation NEXTSTEP soon to
be unleashed as MAC OS X; well it has not yet reached most of general public
but it is a winner!
NeXT World Magazines tell of amazing
things like a never released DEC Alpha port and incredible experiments of which
we will put a few here as well. My favorite item to date is an engraved NeXT
Cube made of Crystal Glass , which speaks of a meeting
this just possibly may be from the future. Strangely after receiving this cube ,Apple released a G4 Power Cube , history repeating.
Interesting orders from one of the worlds
foremost authorities on Black Holes, Kip
Thorne a professor at CIT , at the time his
presentation for NASA loomed large and he needed a Scanner driver called Scanomatic, he was humored as he searched the web and
discovered the Black Hole , Inc. was the source for this NeXT product locally.
We enthusiastically repaired Tim Berners
Lee NeXT Cube. Tim invented a little thing called: The World Wide Web and
the http standard on a NeXT Cube while at Cern. He
currently uses the completely refurbished NeXT Cube at MIT. Tim is President of
the WWW Consortium and he sent me an autographed copy of Weaving Web that tells
his amazing story. It is interesting to read and you can order it here at our
bookstore.
NeXT hardware symbolizes all that the
NeXT Operating System is about. Only with original NeXT hardware is your
NEXTSTEP experience complete and the black magnesium case with matching
components well to sum it up in cybersurfer
terminology are just really awesome. The NeXT computer is the roots or
foundation of Steve Jobs dream project dubbed the reality distortion field and
in my opinion was a very successful endeavor to make the coolest machine around
as Pat Crecine said, "Steve came to me after
leaving Apple at CMU and said he wanted to make the best computer in the world
for academic computing." From this thought was spawned the vision for the
NeXT cube.
Specifically NeXT's mission was to secretly
to the point of ridiculous , successfully manufacture
the best personal computer in world. NeXT accomplished this
with Jobs at the lead. After flying Jolly Roger at Apple over
disagreements about the future of Job's pet Macintosh project; Steve Jobs left
Apple in 1985, over disagreements with the CEO John Sculley
in philosophy and direction that Apple should take; after Steve left Apple ; Apple went into a tailspin .
Specifically Steve's brilliant vision of
a new object oriented operating system, developer environment and amazing 100%
perfection in a the final product a personal computer were in his future plans
for Mac and so he left Apple with this thought in mind. Our rebel crew has been
following Jobs journey to NeXT and the development of the dream machine , he has been our hero ever since and NeXT hardware
still rules!
"In looking at 6 guys from
NeXT", one respected higher up in a fortune 500 company leaned to Michael
Carter an administrator at Stanford and said ; "
I know IBM is a 60 Billion dollar company and I've seen 200 engineers at IBM
working to deliver NeXT generation IBM workstation round the clock but I give
these 6 guys in blues jeans at NeXT an odds on chance of winning
eventually"
In his wake Steve Jobs harvested and
recruited the world's best engineers , scientists and programmers from Apple
and around the world to create a masterpiece in engineering and the result was
a much maligned all be it ,one heck of a spare no expense company NeXT
Computer, Inc.
Jobs notorious rebel perfectionist,
talented world class crew of lead engineers and developers from the Apple
Macintosh project and the cream of the crop recruiting produced the Monochrome
NeXT Cube Computer which originally boasted an advanced Optical drive as the
oot drive with no floppy drive much to the dismay of those that owned one and
heck hard drives were optional at a staggering $9,995 price tag in 1989 most
folks had justifiable sticker shock. Yes, Cubes were really incredible systems
for the time and even today they are very usable however only 400 were
manufactured and sold in 1989 because of price , keeping demand at bay ,
projections were for 40,000.
In fact no one questions the fact that
all of NeXT technology was and still is literally years ahead of its time, and
yes for the time it was a lot of computer for the money but a lot of money for
the computer for most folks only a dream. Some of NeXT's most sophisticated
features and technology have yet to be seen in modern hardware and some of the
old school NeXT software features only now appear in software from the evil
empire MS as "new" stuff.Well Fortunately
prices have dropped significantly and these NeXT workstations have held their value , only to go up and maintain usability over all this
time, as evidenced by the lack of people looking for 286's running dos from
1989.
NeXT's are still incredibly usable even
today although not super quick , they can now be had for under $2000 even under
$500 for some models, like owning an old Ferrari , that someone forgot
about, well we still care.
At the heart of NeXT technology is the
operating system, in fact NeXT was very first computer company to distribute
software on CD-ROM with NeXTSTEP release 3.0 and had
Sony put together a 1X CD Drive this under much critical skepticism CD-ROM's ,
"what a joke" they will never catch on as floppy drives worked much
better they echoed.
So if you need seamless, smooth
integration and unparalleled stability even today 30 years later of NEXTSTEP
3.3 running on NeXT hardware and enjoy the incredible fun of using NeXT 3rd
party applications and perhaps some of you would like to endeavor to invent
your own applications like Time Berners Lee did, it
is easy to do on a NeXT; well you've found the right place ,
BHI.
We can also upgrade you to the latest
version of the operating system Openstep 4.2 called
the most respected software on the planet by Byte Magazine , we know it as AKA NeXTSTEP and or help you get your old NeXT working again
with Openstep 4.2 for Mach or NeXTSTEP
3.3 and Y2K patches , Apple will call it OS X. Even if you just appreciatethe museum fine quality workmanship of NeXT
magnesium encased hardware and keep in mind we are putting together a NeXT
museum display to show the future what making the best computer was all about a
long time ago, I'll bet it starts right up 100 years from now and they'll read
this and laugh and that ought to humor us all , who
knows may be a lot of them will still be running.
May be they will send someone back as
long as it is not the terminator, yikes. Check out the offers below and feel
free to place an order today via phone 303-741-9998, e-mail:
bhi1@ix.netcom.com or fill out the form at the bottom of the page for a
quote, the form is optional, just makes it easier for everyone, we do ship
globally. As an added bonus NeXT Computers are Guaranteed NOT to run Windows
by design!
Please note most of the above text was
originally written in 2000 ; as for 2020 we are going
to put together a cool NeXT museum display and will post photo's on the site
soon ! I'm working on a nice working exhibit for customers in Germany
and successfully installed Kanji and Korean for another customer in South Korea.
Price
and availability subject to change.
To get a QUOTE, please FILL in Quantity that you seek ! (We will quote you the lowest price on the site):
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Rob and Cat in Black Hole!