NeXT Computer – NeXT Cube
and NeXT Station

NEXT Cube update 01/01/2023 We have a new Next Computer Store Klick here:  STORE 

Latest update 9/6/2020 Easy just put in the comment section what you are interested in , we have a lot of cool NeXT Cube items that are not listed … Current pricing may vary from this old script, it has been running since 1997, it is 2020 and working NeXT Computer equipment is hard to find. We have been proactive about repairing the equipment before damage happens including board level repair , it is a labor of Love.

The most up to date pricing is on our… eBay Computerpowwow store… We have been professionally replacing leaky electrolytic capacitors on the NeXT Motherboards with ceramic caps. We replace the spinning 30 year old scsi hard drives with a nice quiet scsi 2sd solution . The first NeXT Hard Drives weighed 7lbs now we boot off of an sd card the size of a finger nail. Some items are out of stock. not by choice , hey it is 2020 and I’ve sold hundreds of NeXT’s recently , you can see tons of projects on my Rob Blessin Youtube NeXT Cube Projects channel I’m doing the best I can with what I have, wait lists for rare items!

We also have custom dual comptible ADB and NON ADB Modified soundboxes ., but we are out the faceplates not by choice, We now have a custom 3rd party sound card. Whats nice about this , it is needed as the NeXT Cube keyboard plugs into it. Now we can use flatpanels with our custom monitor cables we offer.

Our new PHP store is in the process of being upgraded , the main problem is with the shipping module.

>Black Hole, Inc. Phone number is 303-741-9998 Yes we are still alive and kicking and have the majority of items in stock including a lot of new old stock items. If you don’t see something you are looking for just send the form at the bottom of this page and tell us your interest in the comment section.

As one of three original NeXT Computer Board members, I am happy to see you guys keeping things going!! What do you think of Bud Tribble’s and Andy’s new Linux GUI enterprise?? John Pat Crecine (RIP)

Refurbishing and tuning up, Pat’s NeXT Cube was a fun and cool NeXT hardware restoration . We honestly care about keeping as many of the NeXT’s operational , as they are the coolest computers ever manufactured! Pat said his most serious challenge was keeping the other 2 NeXT board members apart …. Steve Jobs and Ross Perot.

The opportunity to own a NeXT computer was just a dream for most of us in the past. As original 68030Mhz NeXT Cubes commanded a $9,995 base model introductory price. It was a worthwhile investment for those that made it. In the long run as NeXT technology years ahead of its time has always been stable and eay to use , we even have repaired the pesky optical drives. NeXT computers are classic and still very cool even by today’s standards, they still hold their own. The 2nd reason availability as only 50,000 NeXT’s Computers were manufactured in total from 1988 to 1993 Q1 and a few more the Summer of 1993 finding one was a challenge at the time. I estimate may be 10,000 remain.

We have been fortunate enough and sincerely enjoyed having had the opportunity to offer NeXT Computers, software and peripherals to what we consider to be the most intelligent people in the world our customers. Most stumble across us by luck or pure good fortune and many have stumbled across NeXT technology through the years via NeXT’s long lasting and brilliant stealth , word of mouth marketing plan which targeted the general public, government, corporate, academic markets and now a growing collectors market from the unleashing of the first cubes in 1988 , that continues to this very day.

USA Weekend Edition 12/31/1999 put NeXT workstations and cubes as one of the top 26 most collectable items in new Millennium , so the value will only go up , unlike those old 286’s or 386’s running dos spawned in the same era.

In fact for a few weeks in 1993, (humorously only 1 day, February 9, 1993), I had the opportunity to sell NeXT’s that were actually rolling off of the assembly line in Redwood City, CA., so we welcome you to shop at BHI as we are still here and still firmly believe Microsoft is truly a lame alternative to a far superior OS known by many names but by most as NeXTSTEP.grand daddy to MAC OS

We make an effort to replenish our supply of NeXT hardware, but it is becoming more difficult to locate NeXT’s as they are becoming scarce, let us know if you have any as we try to save as many as possible from being melted down by Sun or scraped; literally and We find good homes for them. On the other hand ; we recommend if you are truly interested in owning one of the most amazing workstations ever manufactured we strongly recommend making your purchase soon before we are sold out!

When items are out of stock, we do our best to update this page and note them as sold out. We have very limited stock of some items not by choice; they are just becoming hard to find, please note you can always ask if we have something in the comment section at the bottom of the page. We have had ram manufactured as well as DB19 connectors .

NeXT computers that we have saved and found good homes for with storied histories arrived recently stickered with old Top Secret, may reportedly and seriously appear to us from legendary places like Area 51, CIA, NASA, SAC and other interesting places. We suspect some of these NeXT’s actually can think and learn or time travel must be possible and is involved in spirit with some of the items we have received recently and NeXT reportedly actually turned the assembly line back on in the summer of 1993 for Secret Squirrels, many of us only wish Apple would do this again.

Especially cool lately are donations toward our in progress NeXT Museum display of 75 NeXT’s, which will have a time capsule NeXT as part of exhibit to be started up 100 years from now or who knows many of the on display units may actually still be in operation through hand me down internships. A Professor at MIT contacted us and they will be proceeding with a Linux port to NeXT hardware , we will have information soon if you are interested in helping. (I think this exdeavor fizzled) but we now have a 68K emulator called Previous! so we can actually recover your legacy NeXT softwre and have it available for you on modern Mac’s and PC’s

We fortunate Users of NeXT have been spoiled by the ease of use of NeXT equipment. We have been so far ahead of our time that “new technology” like sending E-mail with sound, graphics and video, well it is old hat as some of us have been doing that since 1988 on our trustworthy NeXT’s.

I.E. Interesting items appear daily, like factory sealed New NeXT Non ADB Mice, occasional equipment still new and in the factory box , an 030 Cube appeared from LANL running release 1.0 that had not been booted in 9 years, from an amazing gentleman that engineers guidance systems for Patriot Missiles on NEXT via Fortran and is helping NASA to calculate optimal trajectory change for optimal rescue orbits for most of the worlds Satellites so they won’t spin out of control and in theory come crashing back to Earth before their time when the NeXT electromagnetic solar flare cycle forecast to kick in ~ 2003 develops. Amazing coincidence after I wrote this a major solar flair happened so I believe it to be true.

Another arrived with a modified login panel that says Feynman, as in Richard,very famous physics dude, also custom software like laser trajectory , oscilloscope , satellite tracking and other stuff out of back to the future that individuals have developed is impressive that I’ve located recently in NeXT software archives. A box of 25 shrink-wrapped NeXT manuals appeared (sorry already sold out, know of any more please let us know). I have Larry Ellisons Turbo Color and NeXT Cube number 4 🙂

The NeXT Big Thing book arrived authored by Randall Stross. Stross does an incredible job finding every possible way to put Jobs and NeXT down. Spending 250 Million dollars was a small investment to produce the finest computer ever manufactured and still by far the best and easiest to use operating system and developer environment. I finally read the NeXT Big Thing in April of 2000, so it appears all these years later that Stross was way off course and probably never even used NeXT as he must have been so thoroughly blinded and impressed by the much superior Windows 3.11 at the time; unfortunately so was most of world that NeXT was weak in comparison according to him. NeXT ran circles around Windows NT

Who laughs now as Steve Jobs CEO of Apple, Avie Tevanian NeXT software guru and Rubenstein NeXT hardware genius and a cast of thousands have turned Apple from a floundering company spiraling to impending doom into a powerhouse in just a few short years and with solid foundation NEXTSTEP soon to be unleashed as MAC OS X; well it has not yet reached most of general public but it is a winner!

NeXT World Magazines tell of amazing things like a never released DEC Alpha port and incredible experiments of which we will put a few here as well. My favorite item to date is an engraved NeXT Cube made of Crystal Glass , which speaks of a meeting this just possibly may be from the future. Strangely after receiving this cube ,Apple released a G4 Power Cube , history repeating.

Interesting orders from one of the worlds foremost authorities on Black Holes, Kip Thorne a professor at CIT , at the time his presentation for NASA loomed large and he needed a Scanner driver called Scanomatic, he was humored as he searched the web and discovered the Black Hole , Inc. was the source for this NeXT product locally.

We enthusiastically repaired Tim Berners Lee NeXT Cube. Tim invented a little thing called: The World Wide Web and the http standard on a NeXT Cube while at Cern. He currently uses the completely refurbished NeXT Cube at MIT. Tim is President of the WWW Consortium and he sent me an autographed copy of Weaving Web that tells his amazing story. It is interesting to read and you can order it here at our bookstore.

NeXT hardware symbolizes all that the NeXT Operating System is about. Only with original NeXT hardware is your NEXTSTEP experience complete and the black magnesium case with matching components well to sum it up in cybersurfer terminology are just really awesome. The NeXT computer is the roots or foundation of Steve Jobs dream project dubbed the reality distortion field and in my opinion was a very successful endeavor to make the coolest machine around as Pat Crecine said, “Steve came to me after leaving Apple at CMU and said he wanted to make the best computer in the world for academic computing.” From this thought was spawned the vision for the NeXT cube.

Specifically NeXT’s mission was to secretly to the point of ridiculous , successfully manufacture the best personal computer in world. NeXT accomplished this with Jobs at the lead. After flying Jolly Roger at Apple over disagreements about the future of Job’s pet Macintosh project; Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, over disagreements with the CEO John Sculley in philosophy and direction that Apple should take; after Steve left Apple ; Apple went into a tailspin .

Specifically Steve’s brilliant vision of a new object oriented operating system, developer environment and amazing 100% perfection in a the final product a personal computer were in his future plans for Mac and so he left Apple with this thought in mind. Our rebel crew has been following Jobs journey to NeXT and the development of the dream machine , he has been our hero ever since and NeXT hardware still rules!

“In looking at 6 guys from NeXT”, one respected higher up in a fortune 500 company leaned to Michael Carter an administrator at Stanford and said ; ” I know IBM is a 60 Billion dollar company and I’ve seen 200 engineers at IBM working to deliver NeXT generation IBM workstation round the clock but I give these 6 guys in blues jeans at NeXT an odds on chance of winning eventually”

In his wake Steve Jobs harvested and recruited the world’s best engineers , scientists and programmers from Apple and around the world to create a masterpiece in engineering and the result was a much maligned all be it ,one heck of a spare no expense company NeXT Computer, Inc.

Jobs notorious rebel perfectionist, talented world class crew of lead engineers and developers from the Apple Macintosh project and the cream of the crop recruiting produced the Monochrome NeXT Cube Computer which originally boasted an advanced Optical drive as the oot drive with no floppy drive much to the dismay of those that owned one and heck hard drives were optional at a staggering $9,995 price tag in 1989 most folks had justifiable sticker shock. Yes, Cubes were really incredible systems for the time and even today they are very usable however only 400 were manufactured and sold in 1989 because of price , keeping demand at bay , projections were for 40,000.

In fact no one questions the fact that all of NeXT technology was and still is literally years ahead of its time, and yes for the time it was a lot of computer for the money but a lot of money for the computer for most folks only a dream. Some of NeXT’s most sophisticated features and technology have yet to be seen in modern hardware and some of the old school NeXT software features only now appear in software from the evil empire MS as “new” stuff.Well Fortunately prices have dropped significantly and these NeXT workstations have held their value , only to go up and maintain usability over all this time, as evidenced by the lack of people looking for 286’s running dos from 1989.

NeXT’s are still incredibly usable even today although not super quick , they can now be had for under $2000 even under $500 for some models, like owning an old Ferrari , that someone forgot about, well we still care.

At the heart of NeXT technology is the operating system, in fact NeXT was very first computer company to distribute software on CD-ROM with NeXTSTEP release 3.0 and had Sony put together a 1X CD Drive this under much critical skepticism CD-ROM’s , “what a joke” they will never catch on as floppy drives worked much better they echoed.

So if you need seamless, smooth integration and unparalleled stability even today 30 years later of NEXTSTEP 3.3 running on NeXT hardware and enjoy the incredible fun of using NeXT 3rd party applications and perhaps some of you would like to endeavor to invent your own applications like Time Berners Lee did, it is easy to do on a NeXT; well you’ve found the right place , BHI.

We can also upgrade you to the latest version of the operating system Openstep 4.2 called the most respected software on the planet by Byte Magazine , we know it as AKA NeXTSTEP and or help you get your old NeXT working again with Openstep 4.2 for Mach or NeXTSTEP 3.3 and Y2K patches , Apple will call it OS X. Even if you just appreciatethe museum fine quality workmanship of NeXT magnesium encased hardware and keep in mind we are putting together a NeXT museum display to show the future what making the best computer was all about a long time ago, I’ll bet it starts right up 100 years from now and they’ll read this and laugh and that ought to humor us all , who knows may be a lot of them will still be running.

May be they will send someone back as long as it is not the terminator, yikes. Check out the offers below and feel free to place an order today via phone 303-741-9998, e-mail: bhi1@ix.netcom.com or fill out the form at the bottom of the page for a quote, the form is optional, just makes it easier for everyone, we do ship globally. As an added bonus NeXT Computers are Guaranteed NOT to run Windows by design!

Please note most of the above text was originally written in 2000 ; as for 2020 we are going to put together a cool NeXT museum display and will post photo’s on the site soon ! I’m working on a nice working exhibit for customers in Germany and successfully installed Kanji and Korean for another customer in South Korea.

Price and availability subject to change.

To get a QUOTE, please FILL in Quantity that you seek ! (We will quote you the lowest price on the site):

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Monday, 07-Sep-2020 03:08:23 CDT