crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) (05/29/91)
A salesman at the MacUniverse store (in Tarzana CA, 818-609-7012) told me that a company is working on a display board for NeXT computers (a NeXTbus board?), and that Macintosh compatibility might be added (e.g. using the Macintosh chipset that was described as the cover story in a recent issue of MacWorld). Does anyone more more about this, such as the usual availability, price, and technical information such as the degree of Macintosh compatibility expected and graphics capabilities expected? The salesman didn't know the name of the company working on it. I haven't asked any NeXT representatives or NeXTConnection about it yet. Naturally, 3rd party display boards are interesting. From looking at the arrangement of files in /usr/lib/NextStep/Displays and given the nice specification of NeXTbus (including the $350 development kit that includes a prototype board) it seems like graphics adapter cards for NeXT are very "doable" (beyond the large-screen interfaces sold by Extron Electronics 800-633-9876 which look very good by the way). I just with RasterOps would make a simple, slow 24-bits/pixel 640x480 graphics card for NeXT and sell it for around the $400 that the ColorBoard 264 for Macintosh can be purchased. (I guess a NeXTbus to Macintosh NuBus converter board and a lot of software would be pretty good. I wonder if two Macintosh NuBus cards would fit in a single NeXTbus-to-Macintosh-NuBus adapter card.) Then of course, there is a need for a NeXT with NeXTbus slots for a low price. NeXTcube systems were made quite unattractive last fall, when their price stayed about the same while the optical disk drive was unbundled and NeXTstations were introduced. Gary