Archive-name: NeXT-Hardware-Internal-FAQ Last-modified: Fri Aug 27 01:27:51 EDT 1993 Version: 3.0 Every four weeks (depending on the phase of the moon) a number of postings are made to comp.sys.next.announce which are a compilation of answers to frequently asked questions in the comp.sys.next.* Usenet newsgroups. The FAQ list is broken into sections and posted separately. These sections focus on various aspects of NEXTSTEP and NeXT machines. Items that appear within sections are not in any particular order, and get added and removed over time. Posting the sections separately allows people to find the sections interesting to them quickly. Within each section each question will be preceded by a "Subject:" field, allowing news readers to break up the file into separate questions. Each question has its own unique number. The FAQ is kept on-line at several ftp sites, including: cs.orst.edu sonata.cc.purdue.edu srawgw.sra.co.jp [133.137.4.3] Many FAQs, including this one, are available via FTP on the archive site rtfm.mit.edu in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers. The name under which this FAQ is archived appears in the Archive-nameline above. Questions marked with a "+" are new to this issue, and questions with changes since the last issue are marked by a "!". Submissions, corrections, comments, input, etc., should be directed to Nathan Janette . Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned in this posting. If you have any corrections, additions, questions, or answers to add to this list, please send email to: This compilation is meant primarily as a service to the comp.sys.next community. Newsletter editors wishing to excerpt from this work for publication should consider using local electronic bulletin boards to disseminate this information rather than preparing hardcopies. This allows for readers to access the most recent information, and perhaps save a couple of trees. We do not collect any royalties, charge any fees, or compensate anyone in connection with this endeavor. TABLE OF CONTENTS: ------------------ L1. What can be done about older 030 NeXT cubes that have a fan that turns in the "wrong" direction? L2. Can I connect SONY MPX-111N to my 68030 NeXT Computer? L3. Why does the OD continually spin up and spin down? L4. How many colors can NeXT machines display? L5. Why is my machine so slow when I run the monochrome and NeXTdimension displays? L6. Where to obtain replacement mouse parts? L7. Where to obtain extra batteries? L8. How to convert a Turbo system to use ADB? ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L1. What can be done about older 030 NeXT cubes that have a fan that turns in the "wrong" direction? The fan on older 030 NeXTs cubes sucks air out of the back of the cube which means that it draws unfiltered air in through the optical disk on the front of the cube. This causes optical disks to succumb to dust must sooner than cubes with the new-style fan which turns in the opposite direction. NeXT has apparently reversed their decision regarding fan reversal in the case of machines that have been upgraded to 040 processor boards. It is now considered okay to reverse the direction of fans in these machines. If you have many third-party cards installed in your cube or an older processor board, you may wish to consider not reversing fan direction (overheating could become a problem). In any case, do not reverse the fan's polarity, only reverse the fan assembly itself. Perhaps the best solution is obtain the cleaning kit and OD filter from NeXT. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L2. Can I connect SONY MPX-111N to my 68030 NeXT Computer? The SONY MPX-111N internal 2.88 MB floppy drive which was shipped with all the 68040 NeXT machines is *not* a SCSI device, therefore there is no way of connecting that particular drive internally on a 68030 system. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L3. Why does the OD continually spin up and spin down? A big problem with the Canon optical drives is that air flows through the drive to cool it. Dust accumulates inside the drive causing it to fail with the continuous spin-up spin-down syndrome. NeXT as part of it's 040 upgrades provided a dust filter to prevent this. If your drive has this problem it usually can be fixed simply by cleaning out dust from the drive. NeXT sold a cleaning kit for both the drives and the optical disks. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L4. How many colors can NeXT machines display? The monochrome machines can display 4 gray levels. You can use color apps on a monochrome machine, they will converted into monochrome images and dithered accordingly. Color NeXTstations can combine 4 bits of red, green and blue primaries for a total of 4096 "pure" colors. The imaging functions dither the image to produce intermediate colors. NeXTdimension can combine 8 bits of red, green and blue for 16,777,216. There are not 16 million points on the display so all can not be displayed at once. Further display technology limits the usable color space. None of the NeXT products support color look up tables where the user can define their own color palette on a per window basis. This feature is useful for displaying images which have adaptive lookup tables, and display pure grayscale images on the color NeXTstation. On the NeXTdimension images can be converted to full 24 bit representation. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L5. Why is my machine so slow when I run the monochrome and NeXTdimension displays? There is a bug with the window system in which if you select the monochrome display as your primary display the server will be much much slower. The solution for those wishing to use both displays is to select the color (NeXTdimension) display as the primary display. The most optimal configuration at present with the NeXTdimension is to run only the color display. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L6. Where to obtain replacement mouse parts? [jdavidso@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu] For those who have need of a new button in their mouse, and don't want to pay for the whole mouse when it is only the button that has gone bad, we have recently discovered a satisfactory replacement for the Omron switch. It is in the Digikey catalog, # 931, Jan-Feb 1993, page 141, under Cherry switches D4, DG, and DH series. Digikey part # CH164-ND, Cherry part # DG1C-B1AA. We ordered one of these, and just received it today. Tried it out, and it sems to be working flawlessly so far. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L7. Where to obtain extra batteries? Battery part number: BR 2/3A 3V Lithium Battery (Panasonic) Source: Engineered Assemblies & Components Corporation 5204 Green's Dairy Road Raleigh, NC 27604 Phone: 919-790-9700 (ask for Debra) Price: $16.71 for 2 batteries incl. shipping & C.O.D. ____________________________________________________________________________ ~Subject: L8. How to convert a Turbo system to use ADB? [From: Brad_Sime@NeXT.COM (Brad Sime)] If ADB equipment are used with older NeXT systems they won't work properly. Here are the ADB requiments: a) A Turbo computer. b) CPU eprom version 74. c) New revision computer to soundbox/monitor cable. The part number is molded at both ends of the connector: Cable NEW OLD (Non ADB) NeXTcube 4534 150 NeXTstation 4535 1532 NeXTstation color 4536 2286 d) New revision monitor which uses a vertical scan rate of 72hz instead of 68hz, except on NeXTdimension systems color monitor stays 68hz. Monitor NEW (72hz) OLD (68hz) 17" mono ACX (N4000b) AAA (N4000a & N4000) 17" color ADF (N4006) ABG (N4001) 21" color ADB (N4005a) ABH Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at E:\listplex\SYSTEM\SCRIPTS\filearea.cgi line 455, line 212. (N4005) e) ADB soundbox for color sytems. S/N prefix ADD instead of ABN. ____________________________________________________________________________ Editor: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu -- Nathan Janette Voice: 203 432 5065 Systems Manager Fax: 203 432 3923 Brunger Lab Internet: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu Yale Univ Dept MB&B/HHMI "I'm a NeXTstep Man, I'm a NeXTcube Guy"