Don't anyone dare to change anything on www.gaffa.org! :-)
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Ulrich Grepel
Jan 4, 2026, 11:29:35 AM (11 days ago) Jan 4
to love-...@googlegroups.com
Happy New Year to everyone!
I got quite a bit nostalgic today. A couple of days ago I decided to
give my good old NeXTstation another go. It did not power up anymore for
a couple of years now and just collected dust on my desk here. It seems
my suspicion was correct in that the internal battery (in modern terms:
the battery backing up the BIOS settings and also powering the
power-on-button on the keyboard) was just plain dead after 34 years of
service. Yes, 34 years now.
Replacing the battery brought up the system.
But what to do with a machine that's about twice as old as the youngest
member on this list (hello Ivana!)?
Well, use it to browse something on the net, irritating anyone looking
at operating systems and browser statistics on their web servers.
Ok, but...
- the browser software (OmniWeb) is not able to speak "https". So any
server redirecting to a secure connection is not reachable
- the browser software is also not speaking JavaScript. Hey, the World
Wide Web was invented on a NeXT computer, but JavaScript was not. So any
web site that requires JavaScript at least won't look correctly, if it
shows anything at all.
So there we go and think of a web site that in itself hasn't changed at
all for the last almost 30 years: http://www.gaffa.org, and YES! It runs!
... or actually crawls. It requires more than a minute or so to show up...
... but it works!
Uli
P.S.: for those interested in some details: a NeXTstation is a computer
that came out in 1991. It used, for that time, a very very sophisticated
graphical user interface called NeXTstep. The company behind this, NeXT,
was founded by a very well known guy in computer history: Steve Jobs. It
was founded after Steve was fired from Apple, he set up NeXT, only to be
bought by Apple in 1996 when they needed an operating system replacing
their aged MacOS. And thus, NeXTstep, or rather OPENSTEP as it was
called by then, evolved into not just the current MacOS X, but also iOS
and all its derivates.
P.P.S.: for those still interested: a NeXTstation uses a Motorola 68040
CPU which, back then, was absolute high end. Hey, it is a 32 bit
processor running at 25 MHz, so it is blazingly fast (or not - see the
minute of compution required to render www.gaffa.org). My NeXTstation
was expanded from originally 8 MB RAM to 32 MB RAM. MB, not GB. It was
also expanded from a 400 MB harddisk to a 4 GB harddisk. GB, not TB. And
it has a 17" black & white CRT screen capable of displaying black,
white, dark grey and light grey - 4 shades of gray. With a resolution of
just 1120x832 pixels. Hey, all that was high end back in 1991!
P.P.P.S.: for those interested even more: after replacing the battery I
had to switch the boot device from ethernet (10 mbit ethernet by the
way...) to the SCSI disk. And had to find out how to do that. And
afterwards I had to download and apply a patch to the operating system
26.5 years after it came out: back in 1999, Apple published a patch that
fixed a year-2000-problem, allowing to set the date beyond 1999... Now
I'm waiting for 2038, which will end the 32 bit Unix time epoch once and
for all...
P.P.P.P.S.: I'm not (easily) able to send out this email using NeXTmail,
since, once more, it doesn't speak the modern variants of SMTP,
requiring a properly encrypted login on most mail servers...
I got quite a bit nostalgic today. A couple of days ago I decided to
give my good old NeXTstation another go. It did not power up anymore for
a couple of years now and just collected dust on my desk here. It seems
my suspicion was correct in that the internal battery (in modern terms:
the battery backing up the BIOS settings and also powering the
power-on-button on the keyboard) was just plain dead after 34 years of
service. Yes, 34 years now.
Replacing the battery brought up the system.
But what to do with a machine that's about twice as old as the youngest
member on this list (hello Ivana!)?
Well, use it to browse something on the net, irritating anyone looking
at operating systems and browser statistics on their web servers.
Ok, but...
- the browser software (OmniWeb) is not able to speak "https". So any
server redirecting to a secure connection is not reachable
- the browser software is also not speaking JavaScript. Hey, the World
Wide Web was invented on a NeXT computer, but JavaScript was not. So any
web site that requires JavaScript at least won't look correctly, if it
shows anything at all.
So there we go and think of a web site that in itself hasn't changed at
all for the last almost 30 years: http://www.gaffa.org, and YES! It runs!
... or actually crawls. It requires more than a minute or so to show up...
... but it works!
Uli
P.S.: for those interested in some details: a NeXTstation is a computer
that came out in 1991. It used, for that time, a very very sophisticated
graphical user interface called NeXTstep. The company behind this, NeXT,
was founded by a very well known guy in computer history: Steve Jobs. It
was founded after Steve was fired from Apple, he set up NeXT, only to be
bought by Apple in 1996 when they needed an operating system replacing
their aged MacOS. And thus, NeXTstep, or rather OPENSTEP as it was
called by then, evolved into not just the current MacOS X, but also iOS
and all its derivates.
P.P.S.: for those still interested: a NeXTstation uses a Motorola 68040
CPU which, back then, was absolute high end. Hey, it is a 32 bit
processor running at 25 MHz, so it is blazingly fast (or not - see the
minute of compution required to render www.gaffa.org). My NeXTstation
was expanded from originally 8 MB RAM to 32 MB RAM. MB, not GB. It was
also expanded from a 400 MB harddisk to a 4 GB harddisk. GB, not TB. And
it has a 17" black & white CRT screen capable of displaying black,
white, dark grey and light grey - 4 shades of gray. With a resolution of
just 1120x832 pixels. Hey, all that was high end back in 1991!
P.P.P.S.: for those interested even more: after replacing the battery I
had to switch the boot device from ethernet (10 mbit ethernet by the
way...) to the SCSI disk. And had to find out how to do that. And
afterwards I had to download and apply a patch to the operating system
26.5 years after it came out: back in 1999, Apple published a patch that
fixed a year-2000-problem, allowing to set the date beyond 1999... Now
I'm waiting for 2038, which will end the 32 bit Unix time epoch once and
for all...
P.P.P.P.S.: I'm not (easily) able to send out this email using NeXTmail,
since, once more, it doesn't speak the modern variants of SMTP,
requiring a properly encrypted login on most mail servers...
Newk
Jan 4, 2026, 3:00:56 PM (10 days ago) Jan 4
to love-...@googlegroups.com
Hi Uli!
I think it’s fantastic you got a NeXt to boot up after all this time. In the “I can’t throw old tech away” department I still have an Apple Newton that started up the last time I tried it a few years ago. My boss back then could never figure out the special alphabet and passed it on to me. 😂
I wish you a very Happy New Year!
Best to all of you! Karen
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jan 4, 2026, at 11:29 AM, 'Ulrich Grepel' via Love-Hounds <love-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Happy New Year to everyone!
>
> I got quite a bit nostalgic today. A couple of days ago I decided to give my good old NeXTstation another go. It did not power up anymore for a <snip>
I think it’s fantastic you got a NeXt to boot up after all this time. In the “I can’t throw old tech away” department I still have an Apple Newton that started up the last time I tried it a few years ago. My boss back then could never figure out the special alphabet and passed it on to me. 😂
I wish you a very Happy New Year!
Best to all of you! Karen
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jan 4, 2026, at 11:29 AM, 'Ulrich Grepel' via Love-Hounds <love-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Happy New Year to everyone!
>
> I got quite a bit nostalgic today. A couple of days ago I decided to give my good old NeXTstation another go. It did not power up anymore for a <snip>
Bryan Dongray
Jan 4, 2026, 7:06:19 PM (10 days ago) Jan 4
to love-...@googlegroups.com
What fun!
The oldest tech I still have, and it still works, is a "VTech Helio palmtop" handheld computer (75MHz, 32vit RISC CPU with 8MB) from 1999.
It was a competitor to "palm pilot", but many people preferred it as it understood actual handwriting (not the hieroglyphics users would need to enter as required by Palm), and was faster than all the other handheld devices of the time.
It has a 160x160 LCD "touchscreen" (you use a stylus), a speaker and microphone. Without a network and it's not a phone, it had a cradle with an RS232 to sync with a PC, such as backup, send/receive email or update/download software.
It has apps, and came with a sketch book, note taker, calendar, contacts, voice recorder/player (could store 20 minutes), calculator, and an email app. However I downloaded some user written apps too: a book reader, a scientific calculator, tetris, minesweeper, solitaire, and a cool mandelbrot pattern drawing app.
It's a bit like a very cut down version of a modern smartphone, without a network or a phone.
It apparently could be upgraded to run Linux instead of it's own OS, which I never did.
I remember I downloaded the text, converted to the EReader format, and installed 5 books of HHGTTG on it having never read them (on paper), also the 4 Bible gospels, since I thought if I'm going to argue with Christians knocking on my door (as they did a lot in Minnesota) I really should read at least these "books" fully and not go by the cherry picking taught to me in school. As I suspected... most Christians do not follow or even attempt to follow or even believe in the majority of the teaching of Christ. Today he'd be a far leftist/progressive Palestinian immigrant, that the modern right wing religious people would want to deport (or drop bombs on) today.
Anyway, the Helio battery life was about a month for 2 AAAs, but the RAM didn't forget if the battery died.
While it still works, I've not actually used it since the late 2000s, about the time I stopped using a flip phone.
I tried it out a few months ago, looked over ancient contacts of people I no longer know or work with, played Tetris for a few minutes, and noticed how it clearly is what Smartphones had to have been originally based on.
As to reading gaffa.org - it had no browser.
FYI: On old vs new computers, at the start of 2025 I upgraded my 2007 old computer home server (a 2 CPU Pentium originally with 256MB RAM, but I'd upgraded to 4.5GB RAM - and running an old Linux last updated in 2015). One of the main problems was the ability to access less and less https sites as sites across the world upgraded to new versions of SSL, not good as one of its tasks was to download sunrise/sunset times to control my house lights, although I did have a workaround using a modern Linux running in a 32-bit VM, and sending https (and SMTP over SSL) requests through it.
After my upgrade, it was stunning to see the performance increase as now I've 12 CPU cores running 12th gen Intel, with 64GB RAM. All my data went from filling 90% of the old harddrive to less than 10% of the new. And the new computer I made sure was 100% silent, no fans (the casing is one massive heatsink) and disk is now SSD instead of HDD (so no spinning/clicking of a hard drive). I didn't even bother with getting speakers, if I want sound I connect to my headphones over bluetooth. Another gain is it uses much less electricity (I measured the old one used 160W, new one 15W idle, 45W when running flat out - which in reality is never).
Ahhh... how technology gets better always amazes me.
When you said your NextStation used a 68040, it reminded me of my first real job in 1984 where the "new" computer (server) we bought had a 68010, which all our terminals was 132x66 screens running over RS232 serial wires. It got upgraded to a 68020 before I left in 1988 and I remember how we were all impressed how much better it was after the CPU upgrade!
I don't remember its memory or disk size, it was probably tiny compared to today, but I do remember the previous computer to this had two 20MB hard drives, one fixed, one removable (used for backups) and an 8 inch floppy it booted from. It had all our software and documents. Nowadays 20M would be used up by a tiny video.
I also remember how the new computer (without a removal drive) came with a tape drive so I had to write the backup software. Also the OS (Xenix) didn't have some features we needed, so I remember writing a lot of OS code (eg like our own version of "init" - if that means anything to anyone).
Maybe you could donate your NextStation to a local museum?
The oldest tech I still have, and it still works, is a "VTech Helio palmtop" handheld computer (75MHz, 32vit RISC CPU with 8MB) from 1999.
It was a competitor to "palm pilot", but many people preferred it as it understood actual handwriting (not the hieroglyphics users would need to enter as required by Palm), and was faster than all the other handheld devices of the time.
It has a 160x160 LCD "touchscreen" (you use a stylus), a speaker and microphone. Without a network and it's not a phone, it had a cradle with an RS232 to sync with a PC, such as backup, send/receive email or update/download software.
It has apps, and came with a sketch book, note taker, calendar, contacts, voice recorder/player (could store 20 minutes), calculator, and an email app. However I downloaded some user written apps too: a book reader, a scientific calculator, tetris, minesweeper, solitaire, and a cool mandelbrot pattern drawing app.
It's a bit like a very cut down version of a modern smartphone, without a network or a phone.
It apparently could be upgraded to run Linux instead of it's own OS, which I never did.
I remember I downloaded the text, converted to the EReader format, and installed 5 books of HHGTTG on it having never read them (on paper), also the 4 Bible gospels, since I thought if I'm going to argue with Christians knocking on my door (as they did a lot in Minnesota) I really should read at least these "books" fully and not go by the cherry picking taught to me in school. As I suspected... most Christians do not follow or even attempt to follow or even believe in the majority of the teaching of Christ. Today he'd be a far leftist/progressive Palestinian immigrant, that the modern right wing religious people would want to deport (or drop bombs on) today.
Anyway, the Helio battery life was about a month for 2 AAAs, but the RAM didn't forget if the battery died.
While it still works, I've not actually used it since the late 2000s, about the time I stopped using a flip phone.
I tried it out a few months ago, looked over ancient contacts of people I no longer know or work with, played Tetris for a few minutes, and noticed how it clearly is what Smartphones had to have been originally based on.
As to reading gaffa.org - it had no browser.
FYI: On old vs new computers, at the start of 2025 I upgraded my 2007 old computer home server (a 2 CPU Pentium originally with 256MB RAM, but I'd upgraded to 4.5GB RAM - and running an old Linux last updated in 2015). One of the main problems was the ability to access less and less https sites as sites across the world upgraded to new versions of SSL, not good as one of its tasks was to download sunrise/sunset times to control my house lights, although I did have a workaround using a modern Linux running in a 32-bit VM, and sending https (and SMTP over SSL) requests through it.
After my upgrade, it was stunning to see the performance increase as now I've 12 CPU cores running 12th gen Intel, with 64GB RAM. All my data went from filling 90% of the old harddrive to less than 10% of the new. And the new computer I made sure was 100% silent, no fans (the casing is one massive heatsink) and disk is now SSD instead of HDD (so no spinning/clicking of a hard drive). I didn't even bother with getting speakers, if I want sound I connect to my headphones over bluetooth. Another gain is it uses much less electricity (I measured the old one used 160W, new one 15W idle, 45W when running flat out - which in reality is never).
Ahhh... how technology gets better always amazes me.
When you said your NextStation used a 68040, it reminded me of my first real job in 1984 where the "new" computer (server) we bought had a 68010, which all our terminals was 132x66 screens running over RS232 serial wires. It got upgraded to a 68020 before I left in 1988 and I remember how we were all impressed how much better it was after the CPU upgrade!
I don't remember its memory or disk size, it was probably tiny compared to today, but I do remember the previous computer to this had two 20MB hard drives, one fixed, one removable (used for backups) and an 8 inch floppy it booted from. It had all our software and documents. Nowadays 20M would be used up by a tiny video.
I also remember how the new computer (without a removal drive) came with a tape drive so I had to write the backup software. Also the OS (Xenix) didn't have some features we needed, so I remember writing a lot of OS code (eg like our own version of "init" - if that means anything to anyone).
Maybe you could donate your NextStation to a local museum?
Bryan Dongray
Ulrich Grepel
Jan 5, 2026, 3:27:38 AM (10 days ago) Jan 5
to love-...@googlegroups.com
About donating my NeXTstation to a local museum: there actually is one right in my (rather small - 18.000 people) home town of Heusenstamm:
https://www-museumsstiftung-de.translate.goog/sammlung_digitale-technologien/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://onlinesammlung-museumsstiftung-de.translate.goog/sammlungsgebiete/computer?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://www.museumsstiftung.de/sammlung_digitale-technologien/
https://onlinesammlung.museumsstiftung.de/sammlungsgebiete/computer
Since they already have the big brother of my NeXTstation in their collection, it might not be THAT interesting for them:
https://onlinesammlung.museumsstiftung.de/detail/collection/445a1dd0-9563-4117-891e-8e1c0d1fac5c
But it'll definitely fit in perfectly! (They don't say if it's in working condition, and mine looks a bit less worn).
I'd have to clean it up first to remove any personal data from it however. Right now I'd prefer keeping it for myself however.
(They even haven an Apple Lisa there...)
The NeXT however isn't the oldest technical (and working) device in our house - we have one of these (from the rather early '60s), and even use it regularly:
It doesn't have anything to do with computers however :-).
The second oldest would be my turntable from ~1981. Used about as often as the NeXT...
Uli
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Graham Dombkins
Jan 5, 2026, 5:13:48 PM (9 days ago) Jan 5
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G’day all,
Happy belated birthday Uli! I always remember that you’re a Christmas day kid. :-)
About donating my NeXTstation to a local museum: there actually is one right in my (rather small - 18.000 people) home town of Heusenstamm:
That's a great idea. I had an original Apple IIe and Amiga 500 (and some very early games machines and consoles) that a local museum was happy to receive some years ago.
Kate question for you all. Just wondering if any here got their hands on “Kate Bush: On Location”? It’s a by Max Cookney. An excellent reference for visitors to the UK to have some fun with a kind of geo-cache hunt for iconic locations associated with Kate.
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Ulrich Grepel
Jan 5, 2026, 5:31:46 PM (9 days ago) Jan 5
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Thanks for the birthday wishes!
Uli
Am 05.01.2026 um 23:13 schrieb 'Graham Dombkins' via Love-Hounds <love-...@googlegroups.com>:
G’day all,
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