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#21
Software / Re: BGCD 1 now on archive.org
Last post by Protocol 7 - Jul 02, 2026, 10:01 AMThe weird mastering is due to using Young Minds Inc.'s long filename implementation. That's the YM in those weird YMTRANS.TBL files you often found on discs of this era. The SKYLEE file is read by NS and translates the short file names to the long ones.
If I mount it here in Linux, the file and folder names are all truncated.
If I mount it here in Linux, the file and folder names are all truncated.
#22
Software / Re: BGCD 1 now on archive.org
Last post by wmlive - Jul 02, 2026, 06:01 AMChecking the profile of this user named kevin1024 reveals that he also uploaded BG3 and BG4 together with the Big Green Library (BGL) v2.0:
archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-cd-3.0-upgrade
archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-cd-4.0
archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-library-2.0
Good times for digital history research!
archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-cd-3.0-upgrade
archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-cd-4.0
archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-library-2.0
Good times for digital history research!
#23
Software / Four more Big Green CD discs n...
Last post by Rhetorica - Jul 02, 2026, 12:57 AMA couple of days ago, an archive.org user named kevin1024 uploaded the Big Green CD version 1.0 from 1992.
https://archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-cd-1.0/
Previously we had the 3-disc BGCD 8 set and the library disc from BGCD 5, so getting a glimpse into version 1 (which I think was mastered in August, though the filesystem timestamps are very screwy) is pretty different. This was between the release of the NeXTdimension and that of the NeXTstations, so the material here is all 68k and almost all monochrome.
Have any of you seen a GUI Fortune app for NeXT before? I sure haven't! Many of these aren't even in app bundles, which is a classic sign of being from the pre-3.0 era.
The disc is mastered a bit strangely: every directory has an executable "SKYLEE" file that's just a listing of contents, and the file dates range from 1976 to 1981... I guess their clock battery was in bad shape?
https://archive.org/details/nextstep-big-green-cd-1.0/
Previously we had the 3-disc BGCD 8 set and the library disc from BGCD 5, so getting a glimpse into version 1 (which I think was mastered in August, though the filesystem timestamps are very screwy) is pretty different. This was between the release of the NeXTdimension and that of the NeXTstations, so the material here is all 68k and almost all monochrome.
Have any of you seen a GUI Fortune app for NeXT before? I sure haven't! Many of these aren't even in app bundles, which is a classic sign of being from the pre-3.0 era.
The disc is mastered a bit strangely: every directory has an executable "SKYLEE" file that's just a listing of contents, and the file dates range from 1976 to 1981... I guess their clock battery was in bad shape?
#24
General Discussion / Re: The NeXT INDeX (2026 Editi...
Last post by Rhetorica - Jul 02, 2026, 12:38 AMThe newsfeed crapped out recently—it seems the GAP (GNUstep Apps Project) repo is empty and doesn't want to generate a list of commits. I've removed it from the list and things are working again.
You can get the INDeX newsfeed reprocessed for your favorite reader here: http://index.nextcommunity.net/rss.star Now with NextBSD repos!
You can get the INDeX newsfeed reprocessed for your favorite reader here: http://index.nextcommunity.net/rss.star Now with NextBSD repos!
#25
General Discussion / Re: NeXT history and folklore ...
Last post by ZombiePhysicist - Jun 25, 2026, 04:19 PMhttps://fortune.com/article/how-steve-jobs-linked-up-with-ibm/
The above is an article from forbes by @Protocol 7 share, about NeXT in general circa 1989 but somewhat around the IBM licensing of NeXTSTEP. It was shared in the discord <https://discord.com/channels/1407498171453538366/1407498172502380660/1519697157295177740> group, but I think worthy of posterity here for the community too!
The NeXT story is soap opera worthy. The "betrayal" of IBM is greek/Shakespearean in it f'd IBM but may have ultimately f'd NeXT itself even more in the contract terms, but set NeXT up as the perfect "poison pill" to take over apple. So its pettiness ended up serving NeXT well. Weird.
The saga is epic and sadly way beyond hollywood's ability to tell a tale. None of the steve jobs movies do well by the lore and myth and crazier-than-life reality of the jobs sagas.
By the "betrayal" what I'm getting at is that when IBM licensed NeXTSTEP they were tinkering with it to not keep it 'whole' and burried in the contract terms was that their license was limited to 1.0 of NeXTSTEP. Then, as NeXT was bleeding money, Steve wanted to pump IBM for more money for 2.0, and when IBM balked, NeXT said well youre stuck on 1.0 per the buried terms, and that helped the IBM project to die.
Weirdly, years later (when NeXT was somewhat more desperate to find its place and survive), NeXT itself 'bastardized' a perfect OPENSTEP on top of Microsoft Windows, which worked disturbingly well to let you run NeXT apps that would look and run native in Windows with tailored underlying NeXT libraries layer on windows.
Endless ironies.
The above is an article from forbes by @Protocol 7 share, about NeXT in general circa 1989 but somewhat around the IBM licensing of NeXTSTEP. It was shared in the discord <https://discord.com/channels/1407498171453538366/1407498172502380660/1519697157295177740> group, but I think worthy of posterity here for the community too!
The NeXT story is soap opera worthy. The "betrayal" of IBM is greek/Shakespearean in it f'd IBM but may have ultimately f'd NeXT itself even more in the contract terms, but set NeXT up as the perfect "poison pill" to take over apple. So its pettiness ended up serving NeXT well. Weird.
The saga is epic and sadly way beyond hollywood's ability to tell a tale. None of the steve jobs movies do well by the lore and myth and crazier-than-life reality of the jobs sagas.
By the "betrayal" what I'm getting at is that when IBM licensed NeXTSTEP they were tinkering with it to not keep it 'whole' and burried in the contract terms was that their license was limited to 1.0 of NeXTSTEP. Then, as NeXT was bleeding money, Steve wanted to pump IBM for more money for 2.0, and when IBM balked, NeXT said well youre stuck on 1.0 per the buried terms, and that helped the IBM project to die.
Weirdly, years later (when NeXT was somewhat more desperate to find its place and survive), NeXT itself 'bastardized' a perfect OPENSTEP on top of Microsoft Windows, which worked disturbingly well to let you run NeXT apps that would look and run native in Windows with tailored underlying NeXT libraries layer on windows.
Endless ironies.
#26
Marketplace / WTB: Notebook 1.2
Last post by xc68000 - Jun 24, 2026, 06:50 PMLooking for a working version of Notebook 1.2 by Millennium Software (68k).
#27
Hardware / Re: NeXTSTEP on PA-RISC | open...
Last post by xc68000 - Jun 24, 2026, 06:48 PMThe 712s were amazing machines back in the day. I had a job and would routinely swap between them and Sparc 5's and 20's. The HPs always felt snappier and the monitors were better too. The color recovery was superb. Really hard to tell between it and true 16/24 bit as I recall. The Sparc 20 with a SM75 and the 24bit VSIMM was pretty nice except for the obnoxious fan noise it made.
#28
Software / Re: List of NeXT-related repos...
Last post by ptek - Jun 20, 2026, 01:08 AMQuote from: Rhetorica on Jun 13, 2026, 06:25 AMAlso from Hayakawa Yoshinori:
https://github.com/y-hayakawa/nxchat - ChatGPT client for NS3.3
https://github.com/y-hayakawa/telnetd - Telnet daemon for NS3.3J
I'm not sure why he wrote another telnet daemon—as long as you set a password for the me account, OS4.2 will run one for you (also FTP.) Maybe this somehow got omitted in 3.3J? At any rate, it could be useful as a stub for building other TCP-based daemons.
I think his only telnet daemon client was so he could he use kanji, hiragana and UTF8 which is supported with NS3.XJ
#29
General Discussion / Rob Blessin - Black hole demon...
Last post by ptek - Jun 20, 2026, 01:06 AMVideos 1 and 2.
I really hope he uploads it
As we can see from the second CD he has the stencil font that he uses for the db kit example. It is also a fake network that he uses for demonstration which makes sense and is also interesting in its own way.
I really hope he uploads it
As we can see from the second CD he has the stencil font that he uses for the db kit example. It is also a fake network that he uses for demonstration which makes sense and is also interesting in its own way. #30
Off Topic / Obituary for Bobby Prince
Last post by Rhetorica - Jun 20, 2026, 12:36 AMRobert 'Bobby' Prince III has died. He was age 81.
Bobby Prince was the composer on most id games prior to Quake, and was responsible, in whole or in part, for scoring (or otherwise contributing to) 71 titles in total, which are listed here. (Although many of these are quotations or ports of titles from the id–Apogee heyday.) He is most famous for his work on the original Doom soundtrack, but personally I'll always remember him for Eat Your Veggies, better known as the Dopefish song, which was originally composed for the opening cinematic of the (unfinished) fourth Commander Keen game, Keen Dreams:
Farewell, Bobby! You will be missed.
Bobby Prince was the composer on most id games prior to Quake, and was responsible, in whole or in part, for scoring (or otherwise contributing to) 71 titles in total, which are listed here. (Although many of these are quotations or ports of titles from the id–Apogee heyday.) He is most famous for his work on the original Doom soundtrack, but personally I'll always remember him for Eat Your Veggies, better known as the Dopefish song, which was originally composed for the opening cinematic of the (unfinished) fourth Commander Keen game, Keen Dreams:
Farewell, Bobby! You will be missed.