I just came back from the CeBIT, the anual fair in the Messehalle in Hannover Germany. It is one of the biggest computer and communications technology fairs in the world and certainly the biggest in Europe. Here’s my mini report (which also includes information about YellowTAB’s Zeta).
At the fair all big (and small) vendors of hardware, software and operating systems were present. Linux had a third of hall 6 at its disposal but unfortunately the vendors didn’t do much with it. Red Hat was present with a small booth showing its enterprise version of Linux for AMD 64-bit. There was SuSe; and also a company selling an embedded linux starterpack, which was very interesting. It had a book (unfortunately only in german) along with all required hardware (AMD 486-clone, small motherboard, ethernet controller, rom-flasher, etc.)
Strangely, Microsoft was largely absent. They had a large section of one of the halls for their partners of various sorts, and a smallish (though large compared to any of the linux booths) display, in cooperation with Phillips, of their new range of smartdisplays. These are displays you can unhook from their monitor-stand upon which they promptly turn into Windows CE-based wireless tablet PCs with a remote desktop session running to your home PC. Running very nicely at 11 Mbps, but still a bit pricey at $1200.
For me, the most interesting booth was tucked away in a small part of Hall 11 (D05). Companies like Phillips, Sony, HP etc. had hired sections about 100m in length with a width of perhaps 50m. In Hall 11 I went to see a booth totaling maybe 3 meters in each direction. There, YellowTab was displaying its upcoming Zeta OS. I managed to talk to one of the developers of Zeta for a while and ask him some questions. Firstly let me enlighten you about some of the misconceptions and confusion about the licensing scheme they have for the code. They had licensed the code from Be ‘before’ Palm bought them out and at that point had gotten a license to use the code indefinitely. Yes, this means unless YellowTAB also makes a ‘focus shift’ they are here to stay and are not just building a hybrid R5/Dano version but a new and complete OS. Furthermore the demo they showed me looked very far along and stable and they told me they would be releasing within probably four to six weeks. Read more about Zeta at CeBIT, on BeOSJournal.org.
That was good, and the BeOS Journal link was even better
Four to six weeks till Zeta!
It is actually the biggest in the world, not merely one of the biggest.
This variation of the BeOS looks promising. I’d like to know more about it than their web-site tells, but it seems to have some serious potential as an alternative OS to Windows.
There is a nice Zeta divx movie from cebit on:
http://www.beosonline.com/?page=news_detail&nr=2092
There is a 5 gig weblimit on that server so if anyone could host the movie on his or her server.
I’m very excited about zeta, I don’t know how I will manage to wait for 6 weeks!
thanks to yT (and also other intiatives)for letting the dream live on!
http://beos.spb.ru/fyysik/BeOS-Zeta-Presentation-CeBIT2003.avi
(66.45 MB)
I just watched the video, very nice stuff. Even on this low quality video you can see how FAST BeOS is in multimedia and desktop operation/user responsiveness stuff (however it is slow on back-end operations, like compilation times). It has NO match on this. In fact, any machine above 1 GHz is already… overkill for BeOS/Zeta. People who use Unix, OSX or even XP should have a look at the video.
> It is one of the biggest computer and communications technology fairs in the
> world and certainly the biggest in Europe.
It is the biggest in in the world:
~ 7000 exhibitors from 65 Countries (2001 there were ~ 8000 exhibitors)
600000 to 700000 visitors.
Even though the problem with memory is not addressed yet it does indeed look promising.
My main concern is the applications availability. I use Windows XP because of Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash. I hope developers have a good look at Beos (Zeta) and start develop applications so we have an alternative OS.
Wow, what a good read! I promised myself I would not get over excited about any BeOS manifestation (or promise of one), but this is getting too hard to resist!
Before I ask my question, this:
For Photoshop there are two nice alternatives coming along:
Pixel32 (http://pixel32.box.sk/)
Refraction (http://www.xentronix.com)
A dreamweaverlike or flashlike application does not really exist. Maybe you could run these in bochs if you need them.
Now my Question: In this video I saw Bernd switching from Zeta to MacOS, how did he do that, does it run in an emulator? Coz I thought bebochs only runned X86 operating systems. Or was it just a theme?
>>Now my Question: In this video I saw Bernd switching from Zeta to MacOS, how did he do that, does it run in an emulator? Coz I thought bebochs only runned X86 operating systems. Or was it just a theme?<<
I haven’t seen the video yet (slow connection), but there’s a theme called Baqua for BeOS 5.1 and above. Screenshot: http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pebaqua.png
They are actually running MacOS in another desktop window. Perhaps Basilisk II (a 68k emulator) is being used or maybe they’re even running it on PPC hardware using Sheepshaver, but I doubt that because of his comments about the expense of Mac hardware. It could be something completely new!
They’re actually running MacOS (8/8.1?) on another desktop window. It’s probably Basilisk II or some variation of it.
>>Now my Question: In this video I saw Bernd switching from Zeta to MacOS, how did he do that, does it run in an emulator? Coz I thought bebochs only runned X86 operating systems. Or was it just a theme?<<
Its probably Basillisk II or what its called.
I tried it once, its faster then Bebochs.
You can browse on the Web with InternetExplorer in BeOS… sweet.
You did a great work over there Bernd, and crew.
I cant wait until I see it up and running.
With my WLAN card =).. at last.
/Konrad
…but it’s happening anyway. It is nice to know that the licensing deal with Be happened before the Palm buyout. I hope that this indeed means YellowTab can maintain the momentum and continue upgrades. The question I still have never had answered is:
What sources are licensed??? All of it? Parts? What???
Cheers!
> What sources are licensed??? All of it? Parts? What???
What else ? you want the names and figures ?
(don’t have them anyway
)
I can’t wacht that video on my IBM X20. PLZ help..))
I think it’s all…or most
You need the LATEST DivX player and codec in order to see that video. If you are on Windows get it from divx.com.
Can someone take some stills from the vid please and upload ’em somewhere?
Well, I finally got to download and watch the 67Mb video, and wow, there actually is an x86 based MacOS emulator. Zeta was showcased on a Athlon XP2400+ system, and it flew like nothing I’ve seen before (actually, it seemed faster than my home Athlon XP2400+ R5 based system). The video editing was nicely done, I love the titles shown during the video. Nicely done.
I’m confused. If the MacOS emulator uses Basilisk II (http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/B2Main.html) then its only an emulator for the 680×0 chipset, since it uses UAE as the virtual machine emulator. The video showcased something that looked like MacOS 8.1 or 8.5, and that’s PPC as far as I know. You can download an older version of MacOS 7.5.3 from Apples website (http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Up…). Can anyone shed some more light on the emulator shipping with Zeta?
There used to be a nice (more or less) emulator alternative at http://www.microcode-solutions.com, wich constists of a powerpc pci card plugged into a x86 system in combination with an emulator, providing powerPC ’emulation’
However, the site hasn’t been updated a few months, and i’m not sure if it ever will due to possible legal features.
“i saw Bernd kissing Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe last night…..”….
well Christmas is coming early to Australia yet again, thank you Zeta…although it’s still hot down here and there’s NO chance of snow…just like every Christmas down under 😉
just formatted my spare 40GB waiting for Zeta…..the other 40GB is already running BeOS BONE…..once i am happy with Zeta, i shall run it exclusively.
l83r, ch33rs
peter
…but this story makes me happy.
some substance, at last!
I have run Mac OS 8.1 with Basilisk II on BeOS and it works quite well.
Me too. I have MacOS 8.1 running on BasilliskII on my Windows XP partition. Apple had a 68k version of MacOS8.1
Microsoft has one of the largest booths I’ve seen on CeBIT. It takes a large part of hall 3. I guess it is several hundreds square meter big. They have also a very large booth in hall 4, together with partners.
The LinuxPark in hall 6 takes about one quarter of the hall and crams dozens of vendors in there. All the big players are there: IBM, HP, SuSE (which has a own booth in hall 3), RedHat. Samsung is showing its Exchange alternative (formely HP’S OpenMail). You can also find some non-commercial booth: NetBSD was there, OpenSSH. There is a forum with different presentations every hour. Jon maddog Hall held 2 keynotes there. There was a guy from HP, who presented the HP Linux Services Portfolio and dammit, he used an Apple 12″ PowerBook and Keynote for his rather dull speech, but the slides were definetely cool.
Where can i download 68k version of MacOS8.1 and where can i download emulator to run it for windoze, i have Basillisk II already. Help please. Thanks anyway!
Download Basillisk II for Windows from the same place you got it for BeOS. From the basilisk home page.
As for MacOS 8.1, you will need two things: first, the MacOS ROM, and a CD of MacOS 8.1 (120 MB). Unfortunately, you can’t just download that, because it is proprierty and commercial. I suggest you try to find it on eBay…
Excuse my ignorance, but what is the “MacOS ROM” is this not an actual physical piece of hardware like nintendo game roms or the ROM chip that sits on the mother board?
Yes it is a peice of hardware in an actual classic mac, but for the purposes of the emulator a “rom Image” a rom image is to a rom as an iso is to a cd only its usable by the emulator
))
Regards
Thanks. I went around trying to find where it get the actual image file. I have used Mame so what you describe is what I thought. I see they actually sell MAC ROM ISA cards for your PC! Weird, then you have to use a utility to create a ROM image. Seems stupid why not just send the person the image file with the hardware if legally necessary.
I will have to see if its possible to get it online somewhere.
Thanks