Great definition, because it was mostly luck that I fell in with id, 3DRealms, and the rest of the FPS crowd. John knew I was into NeXT stuff (my father worked for Steve Jobs as head of Developer Relations at NeXT, so I hung out there pretty much every waking moment when I was a kid) and so when id no longer needed the gear, he offered them to me.
We'd known each other a few years (and I'd been trusted with other id secrets including early software), so I don't think there was a trust issue and he felt fine with my promise that I wouldn't pass along anything I found on the disks. I still haven't, and I wouldn't without his permission. It has been a long time, so if there is anything of archival value that he'd be fine releasing, I'll leave that up to him.
I've kept them safe & sound all these years, but haven't done anything really useful with them. They really belong in a museum, or in a collector's hands, who will cherish them more than I would. I'd like to auction some/all of them off with the proceeds going to Child's Play, but if the Computer History Museum wants one or something, that'd be awesome too. Mostly, I don't want them to still gather dust at my house - they should be helping someone if they can.
I'm positive Romero (we still stay fairly close) would like this stuff, but it was Carmack I made the promise too, so I wouldn't give the data to Romero without Carmack's ok.
Happy to answer any other questions if people have them. They're pretty unique pieces of hardware, especially considering what NeXTStep has turned into (Mac OS X and iOS - you can still find NeXT strings in them) and what they built (DOOM and Quake) and what other famous NeXTs have done (created the web).
Also happy to take suggestions on good homes for them, if you have any.
We're a non-profit videogame museum in downtown Oakland.
Additionally, on the data: If Carmack is amenable, the data could be entrusted to Stanford. Stanford's curator is on our board, and they are able to do something similar to Mark Twain's agreement with UC Berkeley: hold his papers in a locked room for 100 years. Something similar could be worked out between the three of us. Please email me at alex at themade dot org.
I've still got a NeXTStation Turbo Color and a NeXT Laser Printer as well; they both still work, although the disk in the Turbo Color is no longer bootable. So I'd love to take one of the systems off your hands, and it'd be really helpful if you've got a bootable drive so I could get mine running again. I used to own a Cube but sold that to another NeXT lover years ago. Would love to add another system to my collection.
I used to make similar mistakes years ago, for a long time thinking it was "Eye Dee Software", so I'm posting this to enlighten others, rather than being a grammar commie.
No, it is a lowercase shortening of the acronym for Ideas From the Deep, which is what they called themselves before id. Ideas From the Deep becomes IFD becomes ID.
"Taking its name from Freud's primal, instinct-driven face of the human psyche, id Software is, by general acknowledgement, the coolest game shop in the world."
I've been calling them eye dee software since the first wolfenstein came out. I forget when I learned it rhymed with lid, but I just can't make myself say it that way.
In it, he mentioned that he was getting rid of the last of id's NeXT hardware that year. Seemed to me like pretty late to be doing that, but hey, I can also see not wanting to let go of them.
His old writings were definitely an interesting time capsule. He writes about Windows NT being, ironically, the best platform to write OpenGL at the time. He writes about Apple's Rhapsody (first impressions: he liked the NeXTiness but was skeptical of Carbon/Classic; then later, he writes that he's more satisfied with it after a deeper look). He writes in passing about trips to Apple and talking up OpenGL to Steve Jobs.
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. Had forgotten he'd .plan'd about that. "Onethumb gets all of our old black NeXT hardware" (note my nick still, to this day, here on HN).
I loved the NeXT. It was one of the first Unix based machines that I ever used and have fond memories about hearing "this web thing" and Viola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW)
I'm bummed that Apple didn't bring the shelf over with the Finder.
If someone asks you to wipe data that is not yours, you need to do it otherwise no one will trust you. This guy is oblivious:
"Carmack had me promise more than a decade ago that I'd wipe the drives if I ever passed them along, and I'd hate to lose any priceless data that's on them."
Presumably, if Carmack didn't want him to have the data, he would have deleted it before giving/selling him the gear 10+ years ago.
What he's asking here is: "I have these old NeXT boxes I want to get rid of. I promised I wouldn't give the data to anyone else, so I want to copy it somewhere safe before wiping the disks"
...no. What Carmack said is "I don't want this data going any further than you". So he's archiving the data himself before passing the machines on. No trust violated.
Here's the problem with your logic. What possible purpose would "archiving" it have other than eventual distribution to others? If the guy lives up to his promise no one will ever see or use it, ever, so there is none.
A) I want to peek inside myself without having to boot them up. NeXTStep isn't really the most efficient way for me to poke around.
B) I don't know if John might change his mind or not, but I want to be prepared in case he does. I'm a history buff, and I believe this stuff is useful.
C) I don't know for how much longer these machines & disks might stay working.
Agreed that if John says "never", then once I die, the data needs to die as well. But hopefully I still have some years left on me. :)
I think I made it pretty clear. One person gave another person some hardware and asked him to wipe the data off of it, which he doesn't plan to do. The hardware is over a decade old and should be recycled. What part are you confused about?
One could argue that Carmack's request was relevant more than a decade ago, and maybe it would be fine with Carmack if the person who inherited the drives released the data in 20 or 50 years (for historical purposes).
Great definition, because it was mostly luck that I fell in with id, 3DRealms, and the rest of the FPS crowd. John knew I was into NeXT stuff (my father worked for Steve Jobs as head of Developer Relations at NeXT, so I hung out there pretty much every waking moment when I was a kid) and so when id no longer needed the gear, he offered them to me.
We'd known each other a few years (and I'd been trusted with other id secrets including early software), so I don't think there was a trust issue and he felt fine with my promise that I wouldn't pass along anything I found on the disks. I still haven't, and I wouldn't without his permission. It has been a long time, so if there is anything of archival value that he'd be fine releasing, I'll leave that up to him.
I've kept them safe & sound all these years, but haven't done anything really useful with them. They really belong in a museum, or in a collector's hands, who will cherish them more than I would. I'd like to auction some/all of them off with the proceeds going to Child's Play, but if the Computer History Museum wants one or something, that'd be awesome too. Mostly, I don't want them to still gather dust at my house - they should be helping someone if they can.
I'm positive Romero (we still stay fairly close) would like this stuff, but it was Carmack I made the promise too, so I wouldn't give the data to Romero without Carmack's ok.
Happy to answer any other questions if people have them. They're pretty unique pieces of hardware, especially considering what NeXTStep has turned into (Mac OS X and iOS - you can still find NeXT strings in them) and what they built (DOOM and Quake) and what other famous NeXTs have done (created the web).
Also happy to take suggestions on good homes for them, if you have any.