I have been a big fan of BeOS since the Creative Labs OS Championship Team dumped it on me in 1999. At the time I was working technical support in Dublin and they had some guy looking after support for BeOS who really could not care less. He had never even installed it! I was deputy Linux champion and generally considered interested in OSes so they said “Hey, Stevo! Wanna be a champ? All you need to do is get this OS installed and play with it a bit.” So, needless to say, I did and I was hooked.BeOS in its current form
I was very disappointed when Be decided to discontinue the development of BeOS, selling it to Palm, and I always wished that they could have open-sourced it. But all is not lost. Since the announcement, I decided to re-acquaint myself with BeOS while I await OBOS. There are a few versions floating around that are being maintained by various groups of programers on the net (BeOS Max, Zeta and the developer edition come to mind). These are all based on BeOS R5 Personal Edition, which was the free version of the final release, and various open source tools and apps. The big problem with Personal Edition is that it could only be installed on top of either Linux or Windows. These updated editions usually come as a downloadable ISO file which can be burnt to cd and installed on its own partition. The version I chose, the Developers Edition 1.1 by the BeOSOnline team, is the most advanced of these releases at the time of writing, so I thought I’d base this article on it.
Pre-Installation
I visited the BeOSOnline website, registered and downloaded their 1.1 edition Zip file. I unpacked it and quickly found out that it included two files. Back to the site after 3 failed attempts at burning both files at the same time. The HowTo said that the burn software that I was using, Nero, needs something called a .cue file. This file describes to Nero how to go about burning two images one after the other (thus the file extension). I had never had the…um…pleasure of writing a .cue file before but luckily enough they had one prepared for me. All I needed to do was copy the details off the webpage, paste it into notepad and save it as pain_in_the_ass_deved1-1.cue in the same directory as the two unzipped files (the name, buy the way, is optional). After I opened the .cue file in Nero, I was able to burn the CD without a hitch and got ready for the next step.
Installation
After fixing my partition table that I seem to have fouled up somehow (don’t ask!), I inserted the cd into the drive and rebooted. A definite plus of modern BIOSes is the option to boot from CD. This option allows you to use the CD-ROM as if it were a bootdisk. In the case of the BeOS DevEd CD-ROM, the bootup brings you to an installation screen which lets you choose which partition you wish to use for your installation, which filesystem you want to use and which kernel suits your system best. The kernels come in three flavours: Standard, Pentium 4 and Athlon/AthlonXP. The standard kernel seems to work just fine but the alternative kernels have great support for things like SSE1, 2 and 3DNow! extensions. As I have an Athlon 1200MHrz, I went for the Athlon kernel. I chose a 3G partition, formatted it for BeFS (that’s the BeOS’ journaling filesystem) and returned to the main screen to start installing my new BeOS. The whole thing took about 10 minutes and was rather painless. The only real issue I have with the whole setup is your inability to choose which packages you wish to install, but as the CD amounts to only +-300MB, it’s not really a space concern.
After the package installation, I was asked if I wanted to install the Be boot loader. Now, I’ve seen this boot loader in the past and let me tell you something, it’s ugly. I use LILO (that’s the Linux boot loader) and it comes with some nice pictures you can use to make your boot screen look nice (weeeee!). So I chose not to install it. If you’re running Windows it’s a good idea to install the Be boot loader as it allows you to choose which operating system you would like to load at boot time. If, like me, you are running Linux and know how to configure LILO (or GRUB for that matter), I suggest you stick with it. As the installation was finished, I exited the install screen, rebooted into linux, updated my LILO and was ready to boot into BeOS.
BeOS in all its glory!
One of my favorite things about BeOS is it’s incredibly quick bootup time. In under a minute I was looking at a fully functional desktop 800x600x32 thanks to the BeOS GeForce driver. A quick look in the preferences menu and I found the screen configurator which allowed me to change my settings to 1024x768x32 (I’ve only got a 15″ screen 🙁 ).
I have an adsl connection here at home and this is where I ran into my first problem. There is a package for BeOS called PPPoE which lets you connect to any adsl provider that uses the PPPoE protocol. Of course, I installed it, configured it and dialed up my ISP. I get a connection, but only for about 3 seconds. Major pain in the ass! So I looked through the readme file, changed all the appropriate settings and still no cigar. “Well”, says I, “It’s time for the old tech support forum!” I rebooted into an OS with a decent PPPoE implementation, logged onto BeOSOnline and found an interesting thread in their forum suggesting I use BONE 7a. BONE stands for BeOS Networking Environment and is of fairly dubious legality. It was supposed to be part of the last release of BeOS, just before it got sold to palm but was supposedly never officially released. As Be was selling BeOS, some developer(s) on the project decided to leek BONE onto the net. Good old hacker disregard for authority!
Finding BONE is not easy, but once I downloaded it I was supposedly ready to go. How wrong I was!
I downloaded BONE to my windows partition as I already knew BeOS can mount, read and right to Fat32 partitions. I unpacked the Zip file, opened a terminal and ran the install script. Time to reboot. This is when the shit hit the proverbial fan. Instead of looking at my nice new desktop I was faced with the textual garble that is the kernel debugger! absolutely fabulous
Much hacking later…
I got the feeling BONE deals with the standard better than with the updated Athlon/Pentium4 kernels so I tried again, this time with success. I am now able to connect to my adsl provider without hassle. I understand that the updated kernels are coded by part time programers and I should not expect too much. Still, It’s seems like a lot of hassle to go to just to get my adsl connection working.
The Desktop
Not much has changed from the days of Personal Edition 5. The BeOS desktop is still clean, easy to navigate and most important, fast! It still makes a superb multimedia OS and (in my opinion) the best web developer platform you could ask for. But as far as flexibility goes, there is still a far way to go. If the people at OBOS are not careful, the Web developer seat that should be BeOS’ by default could go to Linux.
Conclusion
There are some nice additions, most notably Mozilla, but at the end of the day I feel that until OBOS reaches release 1.1 or you are not a serious OS hacker, do not touch! having dealt with Be’s previous superb and polished OS, I feel a bit sad that the same is no longer true. Still, at least it lives on.
Editor’s note: Another “distro” of BeOS is BeOS Max Edition.
Sure, you need to run the installer first, but after that, you can use the BeOS Setup program (it’s a Control Panel) and mirror the installation to another partition, after creating one with Disk Setup. That way, you can give it as much space as you want.
Try the dev or the MAX Edition, which include the patches for the P4 and the AthlonXP problems.
no gaudy graphics or fonts is ugly?
Even if it were how long would you have to look at it.
If I could code in assembly I would recreate it in a heartbeat. There is no simpler bootloader to install, configure or use.
I like bootman. It doesn’t always work with XP (works for some people I hear, doesn’t work with my machine though), but it is SIMPLE and up to the point. I like that.
“A definite plus of modern BIOSes is the option to boot from CD. This option allows you to use the CD-ROM as if it were a bootdisk”
Oooooh…
Go BeOS!
😉
I’d love to run BeOS – I think it’s a fantastic OS the few times I’ve managed to run it. The problem is – I have a GeForce4 MX graphics card – unsupported by BeOS. Also, my mouse is USB, and my USB controller (ohci) is also unsupported by BeOS.
Sure, I *could* use the USB->ps/2 adapter for my mouse, and I *could* replace my GeForce4 with my old GeForce 256, but that causes incredible hassles.
First try the MAX edition as it includes many pathes and drivers. Then find any newer drivers you might need over at BeBits. Yes there is no driver for NEWER nVidia cards, but there are drivers for most other MAJOR hardware now. BeOS drivers CAN be written for just about any hardware that specs are AVAILABLE for. There’s Alph/Beta drivers out now for Matrox, ATI Radeon series, SB Audigy and several others are in the works.
-scottmc
http://www.BeDrivers.com
Chuzwuzza, I recently made the same graphic card upgrade as you – from a GeForce 256 to a GeForce4 MX. I was very disappointed that the Unified Nvidia Driver no longer worked. But keep an eye on the upcoming Zeta release. I’ve heard it will have support for the MX cards.
Bootman…
The problem with Bootman is that once it’s installed, there is no GUI tool for editing the entries. Mandrake includes a tool for editing Grub/Lilo, and XOSL is very easy to add/subtract entries.
The appearance of Bootman is on par with Grub or Lilo, but nowhere near the quality of XOSL in Windows.
> The problem with Bootman is that once it’s installed, there is no GUI tool for editing the entries.
What do you mean?? Boot to your BeOS, open a terminal and type: bootman
Voila! A GUI app will spring upon your eyes that let’s you do just that.
> The appearance of Bootman is on par with Grub or Lilo, but nowhere near the quality of XOSL in Windows.
Bootman is not the best boot manager in the world, but it works (except a single situation that I know). And at the end of the day, it does not matter. If you like XOSL or Lilo or grub, use them instead. BeOS will still boot with these boot managers. So, where the problem? You don’t have to use bootman if you don’t like it. BeOS is not dependant on it.
Guys … don’t bother reviewing an OS that hasn’t been updated in a few years. Oh, and if you do, maybe take the time to learn about it first.
1) The AMD and P4 kernel patches are nothing more than changing a few bytes in the binary files so that the CPUs will play with the kernel. That being said, if you have a P4/AMD XP and want to run BONE, you will have to patch the kernel yourself (not hard, but a little intimidating. …and if you can’t follow instructions, don’t bother).
2) ZETA is a new company that has licensed code from Palm and is creating a new version of the OS. It’s not out yet, but it will be soon. Maybe write an article on that.
3) This article seems to be a gripe post because you had problems installing a crippled OS that hasn’t been updated. You said nothing about the new additions to OpenTracker, about the new apps that have and are continuing to evolve (Phoenix, OpenOffice, PostMagic, …), or about the status of OBOS or Zeta.
4) Quote “having dealt with Be’s previous superb and polished OS, I feel a bit sad that the same is no longer true.” — well, sorry to say, but the OS hasn’t changed at all (unfortunately). You call it superb and polished, but then you gripe about it. It’s not the OS that changed – it’s the hardware. If you want to make the situation better, write a letter asking developers to join the OBOS project, write a detailed installation guide for the new distributions (so that people don’t fall into the same traps as you did), or contact OBOS and tell them you want to donate funds (maybe that will speed things up a bit) 🙂
i love beos. i cant wait for open beos.
This is not a review, unless reviewing an OS is down to the ability to go on-line with your particular ISP. There seems to be no meat to the discussion.
What is the GUI like?
Did you notice the extreme responsiveness of the OS?
How about the ease of installing new applications?
Is there a basic underlying technology used/missing that makes the OS better/worse than other OSs that you have used?
OSnews ought to know a review of an OS when they see one, and this just isn’t it.
Anonymous: “2) ZETA is a new company that has licensed code from Palm and is creating a new version of the OS.”
Can anyone confirm this? The YellowTAB website doesnt ever say the succeeded in licencing BEOS code.
Semi-misleading. Not altogether misleading, but still, that statement is not 100% correct.
Sorry, can’t talk more. 😉
I’ve always liked Bootman too. It always looked (looks) cool with the dark background.
I should try out one of these. I am going to try Zeta if it ever comes out. I haven’t yet because I have a 1GHz PIII iPaq desktop and everything works on it for Be. LOL, this article did sort of run out of gas. But, I hope there continue to be Be reviews and articles. It is an OS and this is OS News and it might be ready for last rites, but is not quite dead yet – people still use it.
I wouldn’t mind reading an articles about DR DOS 🙂
I love to see beos keap going, I used it for over a year full time. Last week i got a new computer so my Beos Compliant computer is ready to go.
I relize i’m good to go with my athlon due to patches. My question is has anyone tried any beos version with a new nvidia chipset motherboard. I feel this will be a no go, but maybe someone could prove me wrong I hope. Also would need differant video. But running it on my old celeron is fine. Beos was fast on anything. Also I love Bootman, if only every boot loader was as simple , clean and good as it.
Does anyone know if the OpenBeos folk plan to make a Bootman clone. Preferably one that might even be able to run under any OS. Maybe i will try one of the beos versions on my new computer, going to involve a floppy drive though for a boot disk, that’s going to suck, I finaly left the floppy.
Hold your horses everyone, this is only a review of the 1.1 Developer edition, not a review of stock BeOS R5. I think the author only wanted to show how different the installation process was compared to stock R5PE. He should have mentioned what packages are present, and the difference in layout of files in the developer edition compared to standard PE. When reviewing different distributions of Linux, they only focus on the specifics of each distribution – no one talks about the features of KDE/Gnome/X11/kernel, since these are more or less standard across the board. So give him some slack.
Semi-misleading. Not altogether misleading, but still, that statement is not 100% correct.
Sorry, can’t talk more. 😉
Ohhh
Is that so?? Hehehe well I believe I know what you meant 
Perhaps, “only parts of the BeOS code” are licensed but not all. I remember reading this somewhere, I think it was on the Zeta website itself. These closed-source parts will be replaced with open source parts as they become available. Don’t ask me for the link, I can’t find it anywhere but I am sure like 99% I was reading on the yellowTab web site but hey don’t take my words for granted, may be I dreamed 
since I can’t find the link.
Oh so Be Inc/BeOS is dead?? That explains why it suddenly vanished from my partitions. Weird.
I wonder how many times I’ve heard that it’s dead now. Funny how something dead can be so superior to something “alive”.
So did they ship a working compiler this time?
I’m reinstalling BeOS on my other machine in anticipation of Zeta, OBOS, and all the other BeOS OSs.
But I’d still like to know why Marco Nelissen is suing me.
can be so superior to something “alive”.
If your computing needs are limited to an extreme degree, maybe. For the rest of us that need to get our work done and aren’t willing to compromise simply for religion, BeOS is the past. Most certainly not the present.
Yes there is a nice and easy to setup booter, http://xosl.org
It just rules
The article author has indicated rather blatantly that Zeta is a BeOS distribution that is based on BeOS R5 Personal Edition.
This is not true.
What is true is that the codebase for BeOS R5 Personal Edition and BeOS R5 Pro are 99.9% identical, except for the differences that Be Inc. decided to help foster a reason in purchasing BeOS R5 Pro, namely the SSL version of Net+, the included mp3 encoder, and the Real Player application.
Getting back to Zeta, I can confirm that Yellowtab the company has arranged licences with Palm Inc. for various parts of the OS source, and has -not- based their current beta 3 on BeOS R5 Pro or Personal Edition, but on an odd mixture of what would have been the next BeOS version had Be Inc. still survived to release it.
This version was known internally as DANO, and had quite a number of significant changes to it over BeOS R5 Pro/PE, namely the inclusion of BONE, and a more robust themes system.
Zeta will ship with a version of BONE that is even more greatly enhanced that that which comes with DANO, including the fixing of numerous issues/bugs that caused it to be not so stable in DANO. I have it from a good source that the networking in Zeta is superb, stable, and easy to use.
Sorry to get off topic with this post, but I had to correct the inclusion of Zeta as being grouped with BeOS Max edition.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
http://www.beosjournal.org
But I’d still like to know why Marco Nelissen is suing me.
Marco Nelissen is suing you without telling you why? Interesting.
The only reason this article got published is because it’s on BeOS.
Anything else reviewing and suggesting installation of something of ‘dubious legality’ would have been thrown out.
It is true BONE is a leaked thing, and shouldn’t be suggested, even if Palm doesn’t show interest in suing
However the only legal way to use BONE for average Joe remains Zeta… when it gets out.
Do the Bootman
Do the Bootman
Everybody back
Step side2side
Do the Bootman
Do the Bootman
Its the only one
that I’ll ever try!
Sorry:(
The article was written by a Stevo, ain’t Stevo on Jackass??
That’s a review? I guess these days the only way is to review it ourselves…My mates got that Toshiba Satellite PIII, 512MB, with the GeForce, its amazing!!! I didn’t know there were patches for AthlonXP,P4,GeForce? I’ll definitely give it a try…
Oh just a quick question:
I’m a Computing Science student, and want to do java on BeOS, is it possible with Personal Edition BeOS to develope a JVM? Or at least a decent Flash/Swf editor?
What development tools would I need, considering I would be writing in C/C++/Assembly?
Thanks in advance.
There is a JVM being developed, as we speek. Try looking at pages like:
http://www.beunited.com/
http://www.bedrivers.com/
http://www.bebits.com/
http://www.netips.com/
and maybe this will be interesting tutorial for you: http://www.flipcode.com/tutorials/tut_beos.shtml
p.s. if you want to boot in BeOS using an athlon, you can disable SSE in your BIOS and then boot into BeOS, to change the kernel a bit
how to: this you can find on bebits.com
>>
03. June 2002
1. The Roadmap we are thinking about is:
* BeGeistert on Tour 01. – 0.4 August – We present Beta 1 to you
* BeGeistert 009 19. – 20. Oktober 2002 – We present Beta 2 to you
* November 2002 – The first full version of our BeOS Home- and Developeredition is ready
* January 2003 – The DeluxeEdition is ready
>>
( http://www.yellowtab.com/article.php?id=9 )
I read at the Begroovy forum that there is “no ETA” for a Zeta review,
( http://forums.begroovy.com/showthread.php?s=3af3016993c2642a934b0c2… )
an ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) for a review??? Jesus… How about sharing with us *a new* roadmap?
BeOS can indeed boot on a board with the nforce2 chipset. Head over to http://www.begroovy.com and in the forums, search for “nforce”. There’s a thread there about it.
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
P.S.: Bootman is great, simple and to the point
Just thought I’d go research some of the url’s for people, make it easier to point them in the right direction.
Installing on Athlon XP or MP:
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/InstallingOnAthlonXPorMP
kpatch file:
http://files.bebits.com/pub/mini-be/
System information for those curious:
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/BeosTerminalsysinfo
Have fun.
😉
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
http://www.beosjournal.org
If you are using Win2K or WinXP, just use the ntbootloader, even if you have your hard drive NTFS formatted.
This is the best boot manager and use bootpart (free)
(http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm).
Install BeOS on a second hard drive, and add BeOS to the ntbootloader list. It works perfectly.
No hassle and very secure.
Not like Lilo who crashed the MBR once.
I was never able to get the Be bootloader to boot my Linux partition. It quit with some sort of error about “missing signature” or something. Has anyone else used bootman to load Linux? Both LILO and Grub booted all three OSes on this machine (Win98, BeOS, and Linux) without difficulty. I am currently using Grub and would highly recommend it (at least if Linux is part of your setup).
BootMan seems to be quite dependant on your partitions not having any ambiguities in them – i.e. no funny errors that make some fdisk programs in some OS’s say “Screw you guys, I’m going home” whilst others work fine.
If your tables are kosha you should have no troubles. I’ve used it on a quad boot system (don’t ask why) to boot Slackware, FreeBSD, XP and BeOS of course!
A note on linux : make sure you install the boot code on the root partition NOT in the MBR. If it’s in the MBR and you overwrite it with boot man you can’t really expect to boot it can you?
I have to agree with previous posters that this review was pretty sad. It is more consistent with those old school Linux distro reviews we all grew to hate – you know the ones. “Hey I installed it! This is great! End review.” In fact some of those Linux reviews are still being produced.
But I digress. I love BeOS, and I tried to get other people to use it many times. But the software just isn’t there. Cutting edge OS technology and boot times are not enough to keep most computer users around. I can use Linux or (gasp) WinXP to do everything I need. Simple things like a GOOD and FAST browser, a nice multi-protocol chat client, a good FREE word processor, and maybe a GIMP-like photo editor program are lacking in BeOS (I have used ARtPaint and I don’t like it). Not to mention the hardware requirements – you actually have to DOWNGRADE to get it to work properly. This is a joke! I got a P4/GF4 Ti 4600 last year and I can’t even run BeOS.
Anyway I wish all the best to the OBOS crew, because things are looking somewhat bright for the future of BeOS. Same with Yellowtab and Zeta.
p.s – I like Bootman…its way easier to configure than LiLO was.
In order to make bootman boot Linux, you still need lilo or grub on the Linux partition for loading the kernel.
I can’t wait for Zeta, but I’m afraid that it won’t ship with drivers for my GeForce2go, which doesn’t work with the Unified nVidia driver. Somehow, nVidia did something wrong with the GeForce2go series – it’s also incompatible with their Detonator drivers on Windows.
I’m writing this in an optimized build of Phoenix and it rocks. It’s true that some things are a little annoying (it’s not 1.0 yet) but it’s good and plenty fast. Startup is slow for BeOS though, it takes 6 slow seconds to launch, but then again you are probably not spoiled yet
and got Bone 8.
And yes it got gcc 3.2x
And yes it got an updated mediakit II
And yes it gots the famous mplayer from -ixes…
regards
Please, just like I hate seeing FUD spread about BeOS, don’t begin saying Zeta will solve everything.
Just so ppl have teh correct info:
* GF4 support *may* be included (it’s being looked into)
* We have gcc 3.2 in Zeta, though it’s not really useful yet, as it can only produce exes that don’t make use of C++ (that is really few CLI tools). The famous C++ ABI break. That is going to be investigated, but don’t expect it to be solved for the first release.
* yes it has a fixed media kit, but nothing is perfect
* and yes it has mplayer, which does work quite well as I seen.
If your computing needs are limited to an extreme degree, maybe. For the rest of us that need to get our work done and aren’t willing to compromise simply for religion, BeOS is the past. Most certainly not the present.
But then again, those of us don’t read OSNews either. 😉
I tried this packages install as well. Now before I get too far, I’m not the most knowledgable in terms of boot loaders and all that nonsence. I have a windows install that I don’t want messed with so I leave it alone. Anyway…
BeOS install requires a partition that is the first physical partition of the HD. It can’t even see any extended partitions on a hard drive. This ticked me off as well as confused the hell out of me initially. I had a partition set up for it on my second drive which was not the first partition. Ok. Fine. Reboot, move a whole bunch of stuff around. Reinstall into the first partition. It worked find. Install wasn’t all that spunky but it worked.
I did ask me if I wanted to install the boot loader. I said no. Call me paranoid but I didn’t want to give the windows install any excuse to go tits up. I don’t enjoy installing windows over and over and…
I expected the install to ask me to make an emergency boot disk. Especially since there wasn’t going to be a boot loader to deal with. It didn’t. This is stuffed! So I thought, ok, maybe the install CD would double as a boot disk. It doesn’t. Arg! So right now I have a BeOS partition that I can’t boot too and is basically useless.
Now, lets compare to RH 7.1 Linux install. Setting it on a different partition is not trivial, because you need to use the die hard fdisk instead of the druid, but it’s possible. It’ll complain that since the partition isn’t in the first [whatever] blocks it can’t be autobooted to and a boot disk is required. Fine. Perfect! Just what I wanted. At some point it asks to make a boot disk. Great. The rest of the install goes pretty uneventful. Now I boot from floppy. Doesn’t take much longer than the windows install. Works like a charm. I make a boot CD of the floppy, boots so much more faster.
This doesn’t leave me with a good feeling with BeOS. Not recognizing extended partitions to install to. Not giving the option to make a boot disk even for emergency recovery. At that point I just gave up on it. I’ll look at it again later. Hopefully they will have it cleaned up a bit.
> BeOS install requires a partition that is the first physical partition of the HD. It can’t even see any extended partitions on a hard drive.
NO, BeOS does not require a primary partition. You have partitioned your hard disk with Linux and this is why BeOS doesn’t like it. Here is the explanation, you got into a bug, to a known limitation:
http://www.betips.net/chunga.php?ID=660
Mind you, this mostly happens when you partition your drivers with DiskDruid, or Mandrake. I have used other Linuxes and they didn’t create the problems to BeOS as Mandrake and DiskDruid did.
Someone fix Linux’s fdisk please. That partitioning naming behaviour is still there.
After reading the above troubles with extended partitions and Windows and such junk, I came to think of my old Mac with BeOS release 3.
Are there any PPC versions of the Developer edition or MAX edition? Should spare us of silly partition schemes, and the v3 boot selector is pretty, too.
No, there are no free PPC versions for BeOS 5. The PPC version of BeOS was always commercial.
Some time ago, I was involved with the OBOS development team. The group I was placed in was allegedly in charge of getting graphics and basically making it “pretty”.
Unfortunately, they never could stop bickering amongst themselves, and at that time, a name could not even be agreed upon.
I will happily await the release of OBOS, but until then BeOS is pretty much dead in the water… the R5 version last released by Be could not even support PGP properly. There were all kinds of other problems that never were solved. I was a bit upset after I had spent my hard earned cash on a new OS, but will probably not be buying another any time soon. Linux works fine for most applications… though nothing I have yet discovered just “works”. What I wouldn’t give for one that did!
>the R5 version last released by Be could not even support PGP properly
BeOS is a 1999 product. Be had ready BeOS 5 in December 1999 already (but they released it March 2000).
So, when you expect it to “just work”, you have to expect it to “just work” with 1998 and *early* 1999 hardware.
That’s the reality of it. What was added later to MAX and DEV editions, are just hacks and [buggy] addons/drivers by third parties. OFFICIALLY, BeOS R5 is a 1999 product and you should compare it with products of its time.
If it doesn’t do the job for you *today* because you have more software requirements or new hardware, then I suggest you move on to another OS that has full support by its creator. I have.
Well that would explain it as I did install Linux before BeOS. I had to use fdisk as DiskDruid was ‘protecting’ me from installing on a partition that couldn’t be booted to. A certain finger waving at the screen because of that.
A boot disk would still be appreciated for BeOS though.
A boot disk would still not help BeOS to “see” the partitions. You will need to reshuffle your partitions. Sorry.
As for the bootable disk, you can create it yourself. Download the “BeOS 5 Personal Edition” from BeBits as it linked from the article and inside the archive you will find the floppy image file to create the boot disk.
Anyway, here is another image floppy which should work too:
http://www.bebits.com/bob/11639/IDE_boot_image_v0.5.zip
BTW, I have here a fixed binary of the partition driver on BeOS, which DOES see your shuffled partitions. But I am a special case, as I had the same problem as you do, but all I had to do was to ask my husband to recompile for me the driver without the sanity partition check and give me a fixed binary. But that was back the day my husband was working at Be, I am not sure if I have that binary still somewhere… I suggest you reshuffle your partitions and try BeOS MAX Edition instead, as it has the P4 and AthlonXP patches incorporated.
Oh. And even if I would give it to you, it would still not be good for you, as you would need another BeOS bootable partition and then mount the BeOS partition that can’t see the drives, and then copy the driver there, and then reboot and then….
In other words, it would be easier for you to reshuffle your partitions from the Linux command line to their natural numbering and retry installing BeOS.
Oookaaay… Looks like shuffling it is.
It would be great if you put this file on bebits.
So future releases of Dev/max/other editions can use it.
Boot from the BeOS DEV1.1cd and press ctrl-alt-del to bring up the team monitor. kill all but the input server — need to press ctrl-alt-del twice to do this. Then do it one more time and select “Restart the Desktop”. This will start the Deskbar and Tracker. Now launch a Terminal and type “makebootfloppy” to make a floppy disk to boot BeOS from.
You can also boor from the CD and press the space bar before the BeOS boot screen shows and select to boot from the hard disk.
http://bjimmy.complexero.com/tptb
Just don’t kill the app_server in the process.
Actually, there’s an easier method than seek-and-destroy.
Once booted from any BeOS install CD, you can press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-T and this brings up a terminal window.
type the following:
/system/Deskbar &
/system/Tracker
At that point, you have a running BeOS, and can even go online if you have a supported network card, but this is besides the point.
Good luck!
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
http://www.beosjournal.org
I installed BeOS Max edition V2.1 but I am not able to play
MP3 songs. Can you please tell me if I need to install anything extra?
Thanks!