Comment by boie0025
6 hours ago
I have a working NeXT workstation with a monochrome monitor and working system keyboard and mouse. Running the original NeXTSTEP os. It's not a cube, just a workstation, but I'm happy to have it. I dumpster dove the workstation sometime around 1997, and my HS girlfriend's dad donated the KVM to me when he learned I obtained a workstation. He kept the cubes for himself; three previously employed at his now defunct typesetting company.
I have it displayed on the stairs to the basement of my software consulting firm. I nod at it every time I walk by.. and then ponder the chaos that would ensue if I plugged it into the internet.
I'm not Jobs' biggest fan, but we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Not a lot would happen if you plugged it into the internet, unless you happened across a bot that had some exploit for a 40 year old OS at the ready and thought it was worth the time. NeXTSTEP is well into the "secure through age" part of the bathtub curve.
That seems reasonable.. "secure through age" is effectively "security through obscurity", which is stunningly effective most of the time... yet, I'll take a hard pass. I will let it rest in peace. Note that your point is well taken. I have an arbitrarily large collection of legacy compute that I have acquired over the years, and it all stays offline because I don't have the time or energy to deal with any fallout of plugging it in. I'm sure everything would be fine. The NeXT box, the old BBS servers, the CP/M crap I can never find time to dork around with.. maybe one day if I am able to retire I'll spin up the inefficient hoard and enjoy it. But until then, I can't risk the distraction. I miss when it was a hobby and not a career.
As long as it's not running PHP you should be fine.
Not a lot would happen because it doesn't have a DHCP client. You would need to open HostManager manually set up the interface.
I used a NeXT mono slab for 8-10 months while working at a NeXT reseller in the mid 1990s. It was a fantastic experience.
I should note that it runs "a patchy server" on boot.