Recent posts

#21

Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...

Last post by tygre - Feb 16, 2026, 04:03 AM

Hi there,

So, I continued my journey: I tried to make rumba work with my NAS, no luck. I also tried NSF as suggested by Rhetorica, and following their guide, no luck either
But I'm learning and can still use yftpd!

Then, I decided to change focus: I installed GCC 2.95.3 and tried to compile two simple client/server programs.

GCC complains that the symbols _inet_pton (and _inet_aton when I used inet_aton() instead of inet_pton()) do not exist.
I read that NeXTStep is not fully POSIX-compliant (?). Could that be the reason? If so, what can I do?

Cheers!
Tygre

#22

Off Topic / Re: Inaugural off-topic thread

Last post by stepleton - Feb 15, 2026, 05:02 PM

I have been spending a lot of time using a PERQ 2 workstation, an influential predecessor to the NeXT. To run a PERQ is to know sorrow, as a PERQ breaks all the time, what with being made of around 600 discrete ICs. Yesterday something in the guts of the I/O system has broken, and it is now time to attach the logic analyser to try and figure out what it could be. The culprit is almost certainly a single IC that has gone faulty. Alas...

#23

Off Topic / Re: Inaugural off-topic thread

Last post by wmlive - Feb 15, 2026, 04:51 PM

Thanks for all you do, Rhetorica!

I have now left Discord behind and will limit any future activities and communication to this wonderful forum.

#24

Off Topic / Inaugural off-topic thread

Last post by Rhetorica - Feb 15, 2026, 03:08 PM

Despite our best efforts, not everything worth discussing is directly related to NeXT. In order to keep community activity and attention more focused, this board has been created to catch whatever mental drippings avail themselves to us. Post away!

#25

General Discussion / Re: NeXTbot LLM?

Last post by Protocol 7 - Feb 15, 2026, 09:14 AM

It's certainly not a dumb idea. So long as it's can give back accurate results, anything that can make all that information more accessible would be good. It's fun to go digging through the old usenet posts now and then to discover random tidbits of info, but there's a lot there.

#26

General Discussion / NeXTbot LLM?

Last post by ZombiePhysicist - Feb 15, 2026, 08:32 AM

What if we take all our next answers and all the next Usenet groups, and maybe any other resources, like ocr scans of some next books, maybe even some programming books to help code things, and feed it to a local llm we make and make a NeXTbot?

Would that be useful to the community or is that a dumb idea?

Curious what others think?

#27

Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...

Last post by jeffburg - Feb 12, 2026, 06:53 AM

Also, thank goodness that @andreas_g and Previous do this all automatically for you via NETINFO if you are emulating.

#28

Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...

Last post by jeffburg - Feb 12, 2026, 06:52 AM

Whelp, now we have a guide

#29

Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...

Last post by Rhetorica - Feb 11, 2026, 03:13 PM

NFS is the way to go. Any Mac or Linux computer can be an NFS server and NextStep can mount the NFS share. @Rhetorica probably knows exactly where a guide is.

Where a guide is? To be honest I stumbled through it like a real programmer, squinting in confusion at NeXTanswers articles all the while. Alas, that thread is gone. Here are some steps that should work:

1. Make sure your NFS server has every possible legacy connection option enabled. We need NFSv2, and possibly even NFSv1. Modern NFS servers will offer NFSv4 by default, and even systems from the late 90s will serve up the limit-removing NFSv3.

2. Open up NFSManager.app. Here's my configuration for sharing one directory from haneWIN's Windows NFS server:



3. At this point you ask, "what the hell did you put in the server name field, I thought this was a Windows machine?!" — and the answer is that I faked an entry in HostManager.app:





(Just don't try to browse it by clicking the name in the "Domain:" browser control, or HostManager will freeze.)

This should be adequate to get the share working without any trouble, though I found that my configuration (haneWIN nfsd + VirtualBox) can be extremely slow for accessing directory listings. I'm still not 100% certain these Expert Options settings for the mount are correct (or sane):



...but feel free to experiment if you have a surplus afternoon.

Here is NeXT's official documentation for all this: http://index.nextcommunity.net/docs/ns33admin/04_nfs/index.html — but I don't recommend relying on it too much unless you have NetInfo running on your NFS server also.

#30

Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...

Last post by jeffburg - Feb 11, 2026, 02:42 AM

NFS is the way to go. Any Mac or Linux computer can be an NFS server and NextStep can mount the NFS share. @Rhetorica probably knows exactly where a guide is.