while searching for something entirely different, i came across this old
message that i probly should have answered then -

Waaay back in February of this year, Nathanael Lierly answered matt debergalis
as follows about color and mono monitors with cubes and the dimension board:

	As Far as I could ever figure out..that is the only way to have it
	work, even on the NeXT side of things..I have all my cubes setup with
	the two monitors both working..but could never get just the color w/no
	mono...

	Nathanael Lierly (AKA. Cephas, Keken, THEOBAUD, Thundarr)
	UNIX Systems Administrator - FreeBSD, mach, various 

On 17 Feb 1999, matt debergalis wrote:

> is anyone familiar w/ how to properly configure a cube w/ a dimension
> board?  darrin and i spent some time setting this up last nite, but the
> results were suboptimal.
> 
> the only working configuration we found was to plug a mono monitor into
> the processor board and plug a keyboard into that.  then, we plugged a
> color monitor into the dimension.  this worked, but leaves a dark mono
> monitor that's not doing anything, which seems wrong.
> 
> just hooking a color soundbox to the dimension using the next y-cable
> and having nothing plugged into the processor board didn't work.  also,
> running a straight-mono cable from the processor board to a soundbox,
> plugging a keyboard into that, and plugging the color monitor into the
> dimension didn't work.
> 
> it really doesn't make much sense that you need a dead mono monitor to
> have this setup working.  anyone know if there's a better way?
> 
> thanks... matt

the point of this message is that i have a next cube with a nextdimension
board, one color monitor and no mono monitor, and it runs just fine, though a
bit too hot - i run nextstep 3.2 with the foundation user patches (so i can
run ppp)

if it would be of any use to anyone left on the list, i can check out what is
connected to what and how, and report that here - but somebody will need to
tell me what to look for (i have only taken the cube apart a few times to
remove and replace the backplate with the fan, since it accumulates large
clumps of rugdust every few months in our house)

i also have another cube, not operational, that i want to make work - i have
keyboard and printer for it (i know that they work because i tried them on the
working machine), but no monitor or cables (i originally bought that second
one to perform some experiments that might help out on this list, but it
didn't quite work that way yet)

any interest?

more later,
cal

Dr. Christopher Landauer
Aerospace Integration Science Center
The Aerospace Corporation, Mail Stop M6/214
P.O.Box 92957
Los Angeles, California 90009-2957, USA
e-mail: cal@aero.org
Phone: +1 (310) 336-1361