NeXTdimension

NeXTdimension (ND) was an accelerated 32-bit color board manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1991Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful ..., By Owen W. Linzmayer, Page 215, ...1990 August: NeXTdimension introduced...1991 April: NeXTdimension ships minus compression chip... that gave the NeXTcube color capabilities with planned Display PostScript support. The NeXTbus, a NuBus-like implementation card was a full size card for the NeXTcube, filling one of four slots, another one being filled with the main board itself. The NeXTdimension featured input and output, RGB output, an 64-bit RISC processor at 33 MHz for Postscript acceleration, 256KB RAM main memory and 4MB for a resolution of 1120*832 at 24-bit color plus 8-bit alpha channel.New Machines from NeXT, 1990, U-M Computing News, Volume 5, Page 9, ...NeXTdimension board provides 32-bit color, and includes an Intel i860 graphics accelerator chip. A custom chip from C-Cube Microsystems supports realtime image compression and decompression... An onboard CL550 chip for video compression was announced, but never shipped. A handful of engineering prototypes for the MJPEG daughterboard exist, but none actually function.
A stripped down was used as the operating system for the card. Due to the supporting processor, 32-bit color on the NeXTdimension was faster than 2-bit greyscale Display PostScript on the NeXTcube. Display PostScript never actually ran on the board so the never did much more than move blocks of color data around. The Motorola 68040 did the crunching and the board, while fast for its time, never lived up to the hype. Since the main board always included the greyscale video logic, each NeXTdimension allowed the simultaneous use of an additional monitor. List price for a NeXTdimension sold as an add-on to the NeXTcube was $US 3,995.
==References==
==External links ==
*NeXTdimension Color Board at The Best of NeXT Computers
*NeXTdimension at ChannelU (archived 2000-04-09)
**NeXTdimension specifications (archived 2000-01-19)
*NeXTdimension at Low End Mac
*NeXTdimension at NeXTComputers.org
*NeXTdimension owners mailing list
*NeXTdimension at the NeXT Wiki
* at Wikipedia
Category:NeXT hardware