Category : Tutorials + Patches
Archive   : NEXT.ZIP
Filename : NEXT.TXT

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Main Office:
NeXT, Inc.
3475 Deer Creek Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(415) 424-0200
(415) 424-0476 FAX

Announcement Locations:
- October 12, 1988 - 9:30 a.m. to 12 noon
Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
(invitation only)
201 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, California
- October 13, 1988
The NeXT Day
(an event for developers)
San Francisco Hilton
- October 25, 1988
Scheduled Press Conference
(content unknown)
New York, NY
- October 25 - 27
NeXT at EDUCOM

Regional Sales Office:
Next Sales Office
Two NorthCenter
Pittsburgh, Pa 15212
(412) 231-4466

State of the Corporation:
- Founded: October 1985
- Members of the Board:
Steve Jobs: Chairman
H. Ross Perot: representing personal interests
John P. Crecine: representing Georgia Inst. of Tech. (was from CMU)
- Monetary Status:
$20M invested by H. Ross Perot
$660,000 invested by Stanford
$660,000 invested by CMU
$12M invested by Steve Jobs
- Ownership:
63% - Steve Jobs
16% - Ross Perot
2% - each of the (5?) people that originally broke away from Apple to
join him
1% - Stanford
1% - CMU
- Assets:
- Pixar:
- from dow-jones.indust.edp bboard: "A small computer-graphics
company in San Rafael, Calif. called Pixar Inc. -- also owned by Jobs --
already uses the [DSP] technology to generate in just second moving images that
other computers need hours to draw."
- Automated assembly plant - Fremont, CA

Board of Advisors: (24 college representatives)
- Barbara Morgan, director of advanced technology planning, UCB
- Williams Y. Arms? - CMU

Marketable Products:
NeXT T-Shirt: (shipped to many early developers)
- colored
- displays NeXT logo
- paid $100,000 to Paul Rand to design logo
NeXT coffee mug: (may be for company gifting only)
- clear glass with etched (monochrome) logo
NeXT pencils, bags, and folders: given away at NeXT Day
NeXT machine: see below for details

Capabilities of NeXT machine:
- Hardware Specs: (basic machine)
- 25 MHz 68030 main processor
- 25 MHz 68882 math coprocessor
- 25 MHz DSP56001 (2 cycles/instr giving 12.5MIPS) (confirmed)
- Integrated Channel Processor (ICP) - 12 DMA channel controller
- Optical Storage Processor (OSP) - provides ECC and double buffering
- 16 SIMM slots on main board - accepts 1MB modules or higher (when
avail.)
- 8 slots come filled with 1MB SIMMs for 8MB standard
- no parity or ECC - 8 1Mx1bit chips per SIMM
- 256 KB for display RAM
- 256 MB erasable optical disk (drive by Canon/controller by NeXT)
- 2 5.25" full height device bays - 1 taken by optical disk
- 2 16-bit D/A's (44.1 MHz) for stereo output (in monitor unit)
- 8-bit codec for voice input (in monitor unit)
- 4 32-bit, 25MHz, CMOS level NuBus like slots
- Form Factor: Eurocard Type C connector
- 1 slot taken by main board - 3 left open
- Universal power supply
- Ports:
- DB-19 monitor port - video, keyboard, mouse, stereo sound, microphone
input, and 12V DC power
- "thin" Ethernet port - 10Mbit/sec - AM7996 Ethernet transceiver chip
- DB-9 serial printer port - 1.8 mbps and 3.2 mbps
- DB-25 SCSI port - rated at up to 4.8 MB/sec (NCR 53C90 chip)
- 2 serial ports (Mac mini DIN-8, 230.4Kbps sync and 38.4Kbps asynch)
- DB-15 DSP port (to synch and asynch channels on port C of DSP)
- Externals: (incluystem)
- 17-inch 2 bits/pixel gray-scale monitor - 1120 x 832 pels, 94-dpi
- keyboard - 84 key - attaches to monitor
- mouse - 2 button optomechanical - attaches to keyboard
Software Included: (all on the boot disk)
- System Software
- MACH operating system (from CMU)
- system-call compatible w/ BSD4.3
- includes Sun NFS RPC service (version 2) built upon UDP
- includes current Van Jacobsen TCP code
- supports shared libraries
- NeXT mods are being reported back to CMU MACH
- Display PostScript Window Server and fonts (Adobe)
- System administration tools
- Application Development Tools
- Objective C 4.0 (Stepstone Inc., Sandy Hook, Connecticut)
- GNU ANSI C compiler (Free Software Foundation)
- libraries rewritten by NeXT
- compiled programs are not restricted by GNU license
- GNU C deegro Common Lisp (Franz, Inc.)
- Berkeley Unix utilities
- Terminal Emulator
- NeXT Step interface (sold rights to IBM for $10M)
- Interface Builder
- DSP Tools - assembler, debugger, and array processing routines
- Speech features - record and play only (recognition stuff *not*
bundled!)
- Object-oriented software kits:
- Application Kit
- Sound Kit
- Music Kit
- High-speed text-retrieval application (called "Find")
- Array Processing Kit (using DSP)
- Applications
- Mathematica (Wolfram Research)
- Write Now (word processor, owned by NeXT)
- Workspace Manager - window-based file manager
- Mailapp - electronic mail (including VOICE mail)
- Jot (Notepad, text database manager)
- NeXT SQL Database Server (Sybase)
- Digital Librarian - includes but is not limited to:
- Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate D's Collegiate Thesaurus
- Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Oxford Univ. Press)
- Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare (Oxford Univ. Press)
- NeXT technical references
- user and programmer manuals

Software in the Works:
- page layout program (Frame Technology Corp.)

Price:
- $6,500 to educational institutions only
- Does not include distribution and service charges? Institution will
have to handle that.

Delivery Dates: (none solid)
- 4thQtr 88 - version 0.8 - to developers only
- 1stQtr 89 - version 0.9 - developers & agressive users
- 2ndQtr 89 - version 1.0 - educational institutions & developers

Options:
- laser printer - $2,000
- customized, Canon based? print engine - 8 page/sec
- uses standard toner cartridges and paper trays
- 300 DPI @ 1.8 Mbit/sec and 400 DPI @ 3.2 Mbit/sec
MB winchester internal hard disk (Maxtor) - $2,000
- 660 MB winchester internal hard disk (Maxtor) - $4,000
- extra 256M optical disk drive - $1,500?
- optical diskettes - $50
- 25MHz CMOS NuBus interface chip - $25 to developers
- RJ-11 Phone Plug adapter - still under develpment
- (rumoured) color graphics (Pixar) - still under development

Steve Jobs:
- estimated worth on leaving Apple: $90M in stocks
- attended Reed - dropped out?
- Past hits: Apple II, Macintosh
- Past misses: Apple III, Lisa

Misc Goodies:
- It's black and made of magnesium
- NeXT.com is on the arpanet
- sunset.NeXT.COM (4.0/NeXT0.0-Aleph)
- next.NeXT.COM (4.0/SMI-4.0Beta)
- herman.NeXT.COM (4.0/SMI-4.0Beta)
- reminder: arpa rules - no business or commercial related use
- the desktop has a black hole for file deletion

Refeest general info
- Unix Review, October?
- EE Times, October 17, 1988
- PC Week - October 17, 1988; vol. 5, no. 42
- CMU Public Relations Office
- Byte article (also avail. on BIX) - ** best technical info.
- Newsweek - cover story - Oct. 24, 1988
- BusinessWeek - cover story - Oct. 24, 1988
- On-Line:
- Unix NetNews: comp.sys.misc
- Internet domain BBoard: info-mach
- Unix NetNews: comp.os.mach
- Gnu information: [email protected]

Interim contact for people interested in becoming a developer:
- John Ison, (415) 424-0200

NeXT employees: (total of 160 as of 10/20/88)
- Peter Schofield - Pacific NW regional manager for NeXT
- Ali T. Ozer, [email protected] - NeXT Developer Support
- John Ison
- Julius Smith
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