NeXT NeXTstation Turbo

Specifications

loopy

I fell in love with this machine as soon as I saw it around 2002 or 2003 after my friend got it. They weren't terribly plentiful back then, especially in Australia, so obtaining one for myself was proving to be difficult. It didn't help that I wasn't earning decent cash at my retail job, so getting one on eBay always resulted in me getting outbid. I compensated by instead running NeXTstep on the Sun SPARC and HP PA-RISC hardware that I already had, and pretty much resigned to the idea that NeXT hardware will always be out of reach.

So November 2025 rolls around and my friend takes a trip to Australia after having lived in Canada for over 20 years, and part of the trip is devoted to sorting out and culling a good chunk of his computer collection in storage. He ended up giving me the NeXTstation Turbo that I first fell in love with. The hard drive was working on and off but I was able to rip an image with a ZuluSCSI drive emulator. After that, it booted up without any issues and I was able to log in to my old account.

This computer is an absolute joy to use, which isn't surprising considering Mac OS X was based upon its operating system. The display can do with a bit of adjusting but it's good enough for now. It has many modern features but obviously does everything slower. I can't overstate how awesome this thing is.