The BeOSJournal caught up with Vassilis Perantzakis recently in BeShare, who spoke about his work on BeOS Max Edition, his outlook on Be Inc.’s decision to “focus shift”, and what he thinks is in store for future distributions of OpenBeOS, including YellowTab’s Zeta. Additionally, the new french news site BeOptimistic.net features an interview of Guillaume Maillard, leader of the BlueEyedOS project. This interview is in french, but an english translation is also available. Other new BeOS-related news sites involve ZetaNews and IsComputerOn.
Interviews with V. Perantzakis of BeOS Max & G. Maillard of B.E.O.S.
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Just out of curiosity, since I haven’t seen it discussed anywhere recently.
Q: Does OpenBeos actually have *thier own* kernel yet?
Q: Or is it still just Open APIs running over the old BEOS kernel?
Q: Did they finally incorporate Travis-G’s kernel?
Q: Is OpenBEOS fully free from the old BE kernel?
Thanks for any info….
OpenBeOS was never based on the BeOS kernel, except if you mean that they do develop some of their apps/systems on top of a regular BeOS 5.
In any case, OpenBeOS uses Travis’ NewOS kernel: http://newos.sf.net
” OpenBeOS was never based on the BeOS kernel, except if you mean that they do develop some of their apps/systems on top of a regular BeOS 5.”
I guess my real question should be:
Does the current build actually *USE* Travis-G’s kernel
or do I still require the old BEOS kernel to make it run?
There has always been a lot of information on the OpenBEOS site regarding how the newos kernel *would* one-day be used. But it has *NEVER* been clear what kernel comes with the build.
The last time I looked (~10 months ago or more….) there where no code updates in the CVS that actually made the newos kernel work with the upward API layers. At that time the kernel was the *least* worked on item in the CVS. Everything that was being worked on was mostly high level stuff that was easily defined from the original Be headers. The idea was to make the high level stuff *binary compatible* with the originakl BEOS kernel and then make the newos kernel work with that.
Looking at (browsing) the CVS under kernel/boot I see that Axel Dorfler has put a lot of code in there.
Looking at the CVS under kernel/arch/x86 I see that some work has been done for SMP but there appear to be things missing.
My BEOS distribution loads a kernel image at boot. This
is what I was wondering about. Where is the *completed*
kernel image? Or is that it?
I went to babel fish translation at AltaVista to read from French to English of BlueEyedOS interview.. Here’s funny stuff that I never have knew about BeFree..
Did the incident relative to a potential escape of code arrive to a happy conclusion ? Can you point out the conditions of this incident to us ?
I would say “waste of time rather” that “incident”, P.L. Fiorini was presented in the form of a developer wanting to work on the project and to make the bearing under FreeBSD. It thus received all the accesses to our CVS, did not never write a line of code and created BeFree. For the moment it left only one version “light” of Kernel Kit with code really very near ours. Now, it gives up FreeBSD to pass to Linux and DirectFB for XFree… It is just 2 years old of delay on B.E.OS and a big brother on whom to copy, I wonder how it justifies today to dissociate our project.
Hehe, not so nice of P.L. Fiorini..
Does it really matter? Using a BeOS system and replacing the subsystems is a smart way to make sure that the OBEOS parts are binary compatible with the originals. It also makes development easier than a bottom-up approach would be…
What Guillaume is doing is just treacherous.
When the first BeFree release was near to the release I joined B.E.OS. to help another BeOS project.
In the first mail I sent to the B.E.O.S. mailing list (which is not readable by anyone) I’ve told that I was also working on BeFree so Guillaume and others knew about my project.
After that I didn’t want to help B.E.O.S. because after I released BeFree 0.1.0 in the http://www.blueeyedos.com news I saw that they was defaming me, this is why I never wrote any B.E.O.S. code.
So a new design has been choose (read the BeFree mailing list, which is read/write because the BeFree development is transparent), in fact when I switched to kernel-space for technical reasons FreeBSD was supported as the first release.
Then I dropped FreeBSD support because Linux has a largest user base and I had some problems about how to implement threads in the FreeBSD code (now I use libpthread so there are no problems).
I thought this story was finished, anyway in private email Guillaume told me that he didn’t say that I copied his code.
Probably we all have troubles with english
bsdrocks, please before say something wrong send me an email before…..
and seeing such drama and so little results I know why I stay away from those projects
bsdrocks, please before say something wrong send me an email before…..
Guillaume Maillard wrote that sentences, so you should talk with him. 😉
Anyway, I think you should take the look at the DragonFly BSD project too. I think, it might be perfect for what you want to do with the thread/message. Of course, it’s not done but you can check there.. http://www.dragonflybsd.org
” Does it really matter? Using a BeOS system and replacing the subsystems is a smart way to make sure that the OBEOS parts are binary compatible with the originals. It also makes development easier than a bottom-up approach would be…”
No, it doesn’t matter. I was just curious whether it had been cone yet or not. Apparently it hasn’t since nobody seems to be able to tell me, with absolute certainty, that it has.
As for it being easier than a bottom up approach, to make the APIs binary compatible instead of making a BEOS code-able kernel first. You’re off your nut and on crack.
If they had made the kernel first and not worried about binary compatibility they’d be on BEOS version 7.0 64 bit by now. The whole ‘binary compatibility with version 5.0’ thing is what has been holding back the development of the OS.
If one were to make some money, wouldn’t it be better to build a BeOS “clone” based on FreeBSD 5.2-5.3 then build up from there? I know there is a thrill about “making your own operting system”, however, it would solve alot of grief by basing it on something that has a very liberal license so that further down the track, it can be turned into commercial product. Not necessarily multi-billion profits but the ability to pay the bills and have a handful of fulltime developers working on it.
“If one were to make some money, wouldn’t it be better to build a BeOS “clone” based on FreeBSD 5.2-5.3 then build up from there?”
The whole point of BEOS was that the kernel technology and media capabilities blew everything else out of the water.
Why start with an old crippled unix style system when you can make a healthy media oriented kernel from scratch?
The point of BEOS was that it was the absolute leading edge at using the available technology. Besides the BEOS media server technology gets handicapped by a BSD based kernel, which is all about serving old style network schlok.
It takes a 1500 MHz processor under BSD to do media that
a 133 MHz processor could do under BEOS. That’s the difference. Brute force vs operating system Finesse and quality.
Incidentally the OS doesn’t matter anymore. The days of
*making money* specifically from selling OSes are gone.
Hence the success of linux in the enterprise and serving
the web.
The next big battle is *who controls the middleware*.
ie: the protocols that allow wifi and seamless
integration. Nobody is going to give a rat about the OS
they use unless its incapable of those things. The whole
‘OS wars’ thing is a diversion for people who don’t really know where the real battlefield is.
Let the flamers rise…..
I miss running Be. Cannot wait for Zeta!!
It takes a 1500 MHz processor under BSD to do media that
a 133 MHz processor could do under BEOS. That’s the difference. Brute force vs operating system Finesse and quality.
I bought BeOS (Yes, it is BeOS NOT BEOS) R4 and R5. If you were completely honest you would know what the performance would be like.
On a 75Mhz Pentium playing mp3s was pratically impossible, Pentium 75 overclocked to 90Mhz (which is what I did) allows you to play mp3s but skips when loading applications, so please, don’t give me the crap of, “oh, I can do xyz under a 133Mhz processor”.
FreeBSD is a VERY efficient operating system at the kernel level and with a good graphic display interface along the lines of what BeOS had, then you could produce a VERY good operating system in a reasonable amount of time.
Microsoft has cancelled the “other” BeOS convention:
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/
Bring on teh Zeta!
What Guillaume is doing is just treacherous.
I just exposed the facts, you never wrote a line for B.E.OS, you know have the source code of it, BeFree switched from FreeBSD to Linnux and from DirectFB to a ‘rendering independent’ solution (GGI).
As I said to Pier recently, there is no war and will never be, the only feeling I have is that you are wasting your time by recreating something that already started 2 years ago.
I thought this story was finished, anyway in private email Guillaume told me that he didn’t say that I copied his code.
From the translation of the interview: “He is just two years late compared to B.E.OS and benefits from a big brother whose ideas he can copy”
it’s ‘Babel fish’ fault
(or the lamp fault, I never remember)
Regards,
Guillaume
BeOS’s media capabilities were quite lacking, actually. How annoying is it to have to watch certain videos and not be able to skip through it due to the loss of audio synch probalem? Also BeOS supports a sparse number of media formats, especially the most popular ones by Real, Microsoft and Apple (RealPlayer, Windows Media Files, and Quicktime movies).
Now, it’s low latency, and SMP support are the impressive things, and it is this you are probably talking about when you say “media capabilities” really, i.e. playing multiple video and audio files at the same time without a noticeable degrade in system performance.
It’s brilliant file-system. Queries that return hundreds, thousands of files in seconds. These are the things the made and make BeOS special, and it is these qualities that users will appreciate BeOS for.
Just my opinion, anyway!
Also BeOS supports a sparse number of media formats, especially the most popular ones…
I meant “especially lacking the most popular ones…”
quoted, Guilliaume to Pierre: “I just exposed the facts, you never wrote a line for B.E.OS, you know have the source code of it, BeFree switched from FreeBSD to Linnux and from DirectFB to a ‘rendering independent’ solution (GGI).
As I said to Pier recently, there is no war and will never be, the only feeling I have is that you are wasting your time by recreating something that already started 2 years ago. “
and all of you waste your time on failing at recreating an OS which died more than 2 years ago. See the irony?
and all of you waste your time on failing at recreating an OS which died more than 2 years ago. See the irony?
You suppose that we are failing at recreating it… I’m not convinced of that!
OpenBeOS, B.E.OS, BeFree, etc.. have a common goal, noone failed, it takes time to give a second breath of a dead OS that we want to make survive its philosphy.
Regards,
Guillaume
Does this just seem to me or is the BeOS-Community more alive than ever? With all these news, interviews, previews and reviews,….
I hope it will get even better after the upcoming BeGeistert =)
BTW – BeOS Pro shipped with RealPlayer.
I just want to add that the current set of video players in BeOS seem to be (correct me if I am wrong) based on Linux player sources or are direct ports of Linux apps (or at least the codecs are), so don’t blame the OS for any player problems.
When BeOS was a commercial product on sale in stores, it did play the majority of formats available at the time. It wasn’t until Be stopped putting any effort into BeOS that it fell behind in format support. Plus, there was an explosion of new formats as the media file became the new browser war. Everyone had to have their own format to kill all other formats: the proprietary Sorenson codec, the Windows Media Player format and Divx, all came along when BeOS was not being developed.
It just depends on when you tried BeOS. If it was early on, you would have been happy with the media support. If it was close to the end, you’d be annoyed at the lack of support.
BTW: I don’t have all the bleeding edge BeOS media format support programs installed on my system because I just don’t care. My system has no high speed connection, so it’s not like I have the occasion to watch videos on BeOS that often. That said, I also don’t think the current set of open source player apps are all that great (as mentioned, you can’t rewind or skip ahead and the design isn’t 100% user friendly like the BeOS players, last I tried them; but then you can’t go forward or back with many formats played by Apple’s crappy Quicktime player, or Microsoft’s lousey WMP either, can you??).
So how is this the OS that is at fault?
BeOS was a pile of brilliant potential. The fact that most of the potential was wasted is a matter of circumstance and not specifically bad OS design, IMO. There is some bad design in there, but nothing that would have terminally prevented success had the market been more open and had Be not focused on BeIA.
>>>BeOS was a pile of brilliant potential. The fact that most of the potential was wasted is a matter of circumstance and not specifically bad OS design, IMO. There is some bad design in there, but nothing that would have terminally prevented success had the market been more open and had Be not focused on BeIA.
The “brilliance” of BeOS is nothing except setting all multi-media applications to the highest priority possible.
It was always big design talk and then “band-aid” solutions in the actual implementation.
Also BeOS supports a sparse number of media formats, especially the most popular ones by Real, Microsoft and Apple (RealPlayer, Windows Media Files, and Quicktime movies).
The availability of codecs isn’t exactly the same thing as media capabilities. And those formats (with the exception of newer versions of Real) can be played back on BeOS in vlc.
When will Yellowtab bring Zeta to market? It is about time for
the average user either to upgrade to zeta or switch to Windows.
It was the kernel’s scheduler overall that was/is the good part. It isn’t as simple as just giving media applications high priority; it’s the UI and anything else involved in visual feedback to the user (which media requires). This is how it should be in all desktop (non-server) operating systems. This is why a company like iZ Technology could choose to use BeOS as the core of their RADAR24 multitrack recorder unit. Afterall, the user is the important part, not the mechanics underneath. If you want a server OS, then this doesn’t apply. I don’t care about servers in my work, so that’s why I like the way BeOS works.
>>>This is how it should be in all desktop (non-server) operating systems. This is why a company like iZ Technology could choose to use BeOS as the core of their RADAR24 multitrack recorder unit. Afterall, the user is the important part, not the mechanics underneath.
Radar 24 is designed to be controlled by a standard PC or MAC via SMPTE or MIDI Machine Control. Radar 24 doesn’t even have a desktop or even a GUI. This type of stuff is usually run by vxworks and qnx. IzCorp picked BeOS because vxworks and qnx were more expensive at the time (but prices have come down somewhat after the embedded linux companies arrived on the scene).
BeOS has a clever requirement that, if followed, will not only eliminate priority inflation but also achieve an approximate rate-monotonic schedule: static priorities are explicitly tied to thread latency requirements, with higher priorities corresponding to shorter latencies. For example, programmers are encouraged to schedule threads with a 5-10 ms latency sensitivity at priority 110, and threads with a 0.5-1 ms latency sensitivity at priority 120.
Although static priority schedulers are simple, efficient, and well understood, they fail to isolate applications from one another, and optimal priority assignment requires coordination among application developers. Applications can only be guaranteed to receive a certain amount of CPU time if the worst-case execution times of higher-priority applications are known, and this is generally not possible. Still, the static-priority programming model is reasonably intuitive for both users (if an application is starving, there must be overload at higher priorities) and programmers (higher priority applications run first), and it supports legacy applications.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/diss/doc-wwwch2.html
Ok, well can anyone describe what exactly “media capabilities” are…
The ability to play numerous media files at the same time without a degrade of system performance is not unique to media files… everything the BeOS does has this effect.
Also, I use BeOS daily, so it’s lack of various media codecs does cause a problem, and YES, this does limit the OS’s MEDIA CAPABILITIES as far as I am concerned.
So how is this the OS that is at fault?
Who said anything about it being the OS’s fault? I was just saying that the lack of codecs severely limits the OS’s media capabilities.
In any case, ask any developer, the media kit was always sub-standard.
BeOS has many much more interesting traits. The media potential, in my opinion, was not the best trait.
It seems that we are thinking the same thing
)
No matter how long it will be… no matter what clone you will use.
What is important is that BeOS was the right way to do graphical user interfaces because it was faster and modular and modern operating systems such as BSD and Linux can replace the BeOS kernel with a better hw support.
Just think about CUPS, it rocks and it’s transparent, 2 clicks and you have configured your printer with a largest drivers collection.
“Radar 24 doesn’t even have a desktop or even a GUI.”
Yes it does. It has software that has a graphical user interface. It looks like a multi-track. No desktop though.
“IzCorp picked BeOS because vxworks and qnx were more expensive at the time ”
Unless you work at IZ Corp, i don’t see how you could know this. I suspect there were many reasons for their choice. You keep telling us that there was absolutely nothing worthwhile in Beos. Yet the OS’s commercial successes in audio (there were a few) keep proving you wrong. I guess those guys at IZ Corp are just cheap and incompetent Huh? I guess that accounts for all of Be’s successes. Or maybe…
>>>”IzCorp picked BeOS because vxworks and qnx were more expensive at the time ”
<<<Unless you work at IZ Corp, i don’t see how you could know this.
I know because the president of iz technology have stated it in public that they picked BeOS over QNX because of price.
http://recordingtheworld.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=797604782&f=831…
Radar 24 is a classic embedded product. It doesn’t have a desktop — therefore a embedded OS like qnx with lesser GUI/desktop features is perfect for the job. It is controlled by a PC or a MAC via SMPTE or MIDI Machine Control cable — therefore all the supposedly advantages of the responsiveness of BeOS GUI are useless. All the heavy duty processing is done in AD/DA asic’s, not in the CPU itself — therefore all the advantages of the mediaOS are useless.
“I know because the president of iz technology have stated it in public that they picked BeOS over QNX because of price. ”
That’s not what it said in that forum. It says they are ready to port to QNX if they need to and another thing someone that says president in the forum well that does not means its the president. Maybe it is maybe not. I will reiterate, you don’t choose strictly for price when you are making that kind of product. You satisfy performance requirements first. Beos clearly did that.
“t is controlled by a PC or a MAC via SMPTE or MIDI Machine Control cable — therefore all the supposedly advantages of the responsiveness of BeOS GUI are useless. All the heavy duty processing is done in AD/DA asic’s, not in the CPU itself — therefore all the advantages of the mediaOS are useless”
This is simply wrong. It can be controlled that way but the entire point of the thing is to GET RID of the pain of dealing with a PC or MaC. The point is to have a modular and easy to use recorder that DOES NOT NEED TO INTERFACE WITH A PC OR MAC. The entire sell of the thing is PC recording and digital features without dealing with the nightmare. The thing has a video out for a reason. If you’d read the spec sheet instead of trying to flame the OS then you’d see that its says “view waveform display using any standard XGA display- no external PC needed.”
You are also wrong on the A/D, D/A’s doing processing. converters convert. They don’t do DSP. They might have some DSP’s in there doing processing but so what even if they do. A lot of sound cards have DSP support in the windows arena and windows still can’t perform like Beos or Radar. The OS job in this case is to allocate resources and provide a stable and responsive user experience. It succeeds.
sorry mate but the facts prove you wrong. Why you want to flame beos SOOOOO much is beyond me but its not going to work. Yes it had limitations and so does everything else on god’s earth including windows, OS X, linux, QNX, etc. But it did some things well that other OS’s didn’t still don’t do so well.
>>>That’s not what it said in that forum.
Quote: “We chose BeOS because it was much less expensive to incorporate.”
>>>someone that says president in the forum well that does not means its the president.
It was posted in the company’s forum, not some slashdot forum where everybody claims to be Bill Gates. You don’t think that iz would monitor their own company’s support forum and delete any spoofing of their own president’s identity.
>>>you don’t choose strictly for price when you are making that kind of product. You satisfy performance requirements first. Beos clearly did that.
It doesn’t take a lot to satisfy the performance requirement of radar type devices. BeOS has latency at around 250 microsecond. Sure microsoft windows with millisecond latency is not suited for such job, but QNX/vxworks has latency at around 1-5 microsecond.
>>>It can be controlled that way but the entire point of the thing is to GET RID of the pain of dealing with a PC or MaC.
>>>The thing has a video out for a reason. If you’d read the spec sheet instead of trying to flame the OS then you’d see that its says “view waveform display using any standard XGA display- no external PC needed.”
Instead of helping your argument, it is actually helping mine. It looks like a turnkey solution, it smells like a turnkey solution and therefore it should have a OS that is targetted for a turnkey solution (like qnx).
>>>A lot of sound cards have DSP support in the windows arena and windows still can’t perform like Beos or Radar. The OS job in this case is to allocate resources and provide a stable and responsive user experience. It succeeds.
I am not comparing whether radar 24 should have microsoft windows inside. All I am saying is that an embedded OS like QNX or VxWorks have kernels that are nothing but a traffic cop — that does a better job than BeOS in the radar 24 setting.
qnx/vxworks got smaller footprints than beos, allocates resourses better, offloading the heavy processing to ad/da better (because they are just a simple traffic cop), they are more stable than beos and since radar 24 is not in a desktop computer setting, but in a turnkey solution setting, basically qnx/vxworks realtime schedulers are better suited to give better user responsiveness.
Regardless of what has been said the question that I posed earlier remains to be answered.
Q: Does OpenBeos currently use a modified version of the
newos kernel to operate, or does it continue to require
the old BEOS 5.0 binary kernel to operate? (with the
newos kernel yet to be completed)
“Instead of helping your argument, it is actually helping mine. It looks like a turnkey solution, it smells like a turnkey solution and therefore it should have a OS that is targetted for a turnkey solution (like qnx). ”
wrong again mate. If you look forward. The idea may have been to incorporate plugin’s since VST was ported to Beos. And this does not help your argument. It simply proves that you don’t know what you are writing about. You were incorrect. you were wrong. Let me say that again. You stated, it needs to be controlled through a mac or PC via smpte or midi control. That is not true. You said the responsiveness of beos is not a factor because of that. That was wrong. Changing the subject won’t relieve you of being wrong.
“I am not comparing whether radar 24 should have microsoft windows inside. All I am saying is that an embedded OS like QNX or VxWorks have kernels that are nothing but a traffic cop — that does a better job than BeOS in the radar 24 setting. ”
Beep wrong. You don’t know the intentions of IZ Tech. Did they want to promote their software and converters to standard desktop users as stand alone packages? Did they hope to benefit from VST plug-ins. You don’t know. I don’t know either but i am not going to assume as you have done for IZ.
“Quote: “We chose BeOS because it was much less expensive to incorporate.”
Why was it much less expensive to incorporate? Design time? programming time? Why? You assume that software license fee is the only component there. I don’t think so. Regardless, be stil had to meet the specs to be considered. It did. That it competed with QNX is a compliment in my view.
Sam,
Think about your logic in the future. The fact that BeOs (a desktop os) even competed against an embedded one says a lot about Beos. Not many desktop OS can make the claim of beating out QNX in what at least you call an embedded application which does in fact require rock solid performance and reliability.
You see sam you’ve gone full circle. Step one insult beos, step two applaud QNX. Step 3, which you missed, is the fact that OS that you keep slamming beat out QNX. It could not have done so without solid performance. And that sam disproves all of your arguments. Like i said the flamming just aint gonna work. Thank you. I like nothing more than arguing with people that prove themselves wrong. It makes my work that much easier.
Give beos credit where it was due. There were limitations but there were positives as well.
>>>The idea may have been to incorporate plugin’s since VST was ported to Beos.
But that has nothing to do with whether BeOS is technically better suited for that kind of job. Your argument is like — well, there are more plugin’s in Microsoft Windows, so Windows (as an OS) must be better technically suited for the job.
>>>You don’t know the intentions of IZ Tech. Did they want to promote their software and converters to standard desktop users as stand alone packages? Did they hope to benefit from VST plug-ins. You don’t know. I don’t know either but i am not going to assume as you have done for IZ.
That’s right, I don’t know the true intentions of iz tech. But you just blindly bought whatever JLG was saying about how BeOS was so suited for the job, how BeOS is the best in pro-audio wares, how iz tech is going to use BeOS to beat all those NT-based DAW stations….
You blindly bought the PR stuff, of what could have been. Maybe Iz themselves got caught up to that as well.
>>>Why was it much less expensive to incorporate? Design time? programming time? Why? You assume that software license fee is the only component there. I don’t think so. Regardless, be stil had to meet the specs to be considered. It did. That it competed with QNX is a compliment in my view.
No, that’s your assumption. Be and Sony announced their IA plans earlier than 3Com and QNX announced theirs. It took about 6 months for 3Com after their announcements to launch Audrey. It took about 14 months for Sony to launch eVilla.
QNX has more employees than Be. QNX has more outside 3rd party consultants that can help you design and program your product. In fact, 3Com didn’t even design the Audrey themselves. 3Com hired Sterling Consulting to design and program the Audrey (Sterling programs mainly in medical instrumentation). QNX is faster (and cheaper) in development time when compared with BeOS.
http://www.sterling1.com/project.htm
>>>Think about your logic in the future.
>>>Step 3, which you missed, is the fact that OS that you keep slamming beat out QNX. It could not have done so without solid performance.
>>>And that sam disproves all of your arguments.
That proves that Microsoft Windows is a much better OS than BeOS because they keep beating out BeOS in getting customers. It doesn’t take a lot to beat windows performance.
The world is very complex. Take vxworks-based ReplayTV vs. linux-based Tivo. Tivo spent so much time trying to fixed that mysterious linux bug that crashed the hardware — that they didn’t have the time to spend on programming for the killer apps. The killer apps being commercial skipping and video server (that lets you send recorded shows from your tivo to a computer via ethernet).
SonicBlue used vxworks — shorter development time allowed them to program the killer apps. Ironically, the movie studios sued them into bankruptcy. Tivo is still around because they were stupid to use linux, didn’t have time to do the killer apps and avoided the lawsuits from the hollywood studios.
“But that has nothing to do with whether BeOS is technically better suited for that kind of job. Your argument is like — well, there are more plugin’s in Microsoft Windows, so Windows (as an OS) must be better technically suited for the job. ”
It was clearly well suited for the job. They used it did they not? The performance in the field speaks best. Beos gave them embedded OS like performance using low cost hardware and an opportunity to push the product into other markets as well as the potential support of other developers. there you have it. I assure, that beos met the performance specs. IZ tech would have gone to QNX had it not. Again and again you refuse to accept one simply premise which disputes all your argument……beos is working in radar and well. IZ tech would never have used it had it not been up to task.
“You blindly bought the PR stuff, of what could have been. Maybe Iz themselves got caught up to that as well. ”
No i did not and i doubt they did. I used beos and saw its performance. I have also used IZ tech’s radar and i’ve seen its performance. Both are excellent.
No, that’s your assumption. Be and Sony announced their IA plans earlier than 3Com and QNX announced theirs. It took about 6 months for 3Com after their announcements to launch Audrey. It took about 14 months for Sony to launch eVilla. ”
Radar is not an internet appliance. Sony asked form the OS some difficult tasks (read all about the screen issues in other osnews). sony also worked on content. You are not comparing apples to apples again.
AND THE BOTTOM LINE WHICH YOU REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE IS THIS:
1) Radar works well. It uses beos.
2) beos competed against a rock solid embedded os, QNX, and won.
Think about that last one and stop playing change the subject of the argument games. Address the real issues. How was Beos (which you say sucks) able to provide performance in the same realm as QNX (an embedded os). How was beos able to compete with QNX on cost? AFter all an embedded OS is a lot smaller than beos? Why does Radar have a such a solid user experience? Why did the president (at least the person claiming to be the president) on the IZ board say “we will port to QNX if find something that beos can’t do but we have not found that yet.” he also said they don’t anticipate finding it. Answer the question don’t redirect.
“That proves that Microsoft Windows is a much better OS than BeOS because they keep beating out BeOS in getting customers. It doesn’t take a lot to beat windows performance. ”
Absolutely none of your examples require the kind of solid performance that radar requires and none of them put the same strain on the OS or system as multi-track recording in a professional environment (i believe up to 48 tracks but it might be 24). if consumer devices screw up well oh-well. Down time is NOT ACCEPTABLE in a professional studio that might cost $300-500 per hour and in which you might have studio musicians playing that charge several times that. Pro studios are ones using Radar. The list of pro studios that use that thing is impressive as are the acts that have recorded on it.
You would not get to bid on radar without meeting what amount to challenging performance requirements. Beos didn’t just bid, it won.
>>>I assure, that beos met the performance specs. IZ tech would have gone to QNX had it not.
>>>No i did not and i doubt they did. I used beos and saw its performance. I have also used IZ tech’s radar and i’ve seen its performance. Both are excellent.
>>>How was Beos (which you say sucks) able to provide performance in the same realm as QNX (an embedded os).
>>>IZ tech would never have used it had it not been up to task.
You are assuming that the performance specs are so hard to achieve. The performance specs are too much for windows to handle, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the everest of all performance spec requirements.
>>>Radar is not an internet appliance. Sony asked form the OS some difficult tasks (read all about the screen issues in other osnews). sony also worked on content. You are not comparing apples to apples again.
That was part 1 of the answer. Part 2 of the answer — QNX has more employees, more outside consultants and more tools. I didn’t even give out part 3 of my answer — which is QNX is POSIX certified, no additional training required.
>>>Why does Radar have a such a solid user experience?
Compare to what, flakely windows-based solutions. Similar systems that run qnx or vxworks probably cost 10 times as much.
>>>Why did the president (at least the person claiming to be the president) on the IZ board say “we will port to QNX if find something that beos can’t do but we have not found that yet.” he also said they don’t anticipate finding it. Answer the question don’t redirect.
That’s because all the heavy lifting is done in the ad/da asic’s. They don’t need to wait for OpenBeOS to fix the mediakit. But they do have a problem right now without FireWire support (which iz tech has publicly asked for help in various be-related forums).
Q: Does OpenBeos currently use a modified version of the newos kernel to operate, or does it continue to require the old BEOS 5.0 binary kernel to operate? (with the newos kernel yet to be completed)
The newos kernel was forked a while ago, and has been compiled at one point. I have a download bundled with BeBochs which boots to the “OpenBeOS kernel” and produces a simple CLI with a few bin commands and a test app.
Look, I’ve been to the iZ forums recently, specifically looking up references to BeOS. They have stated that BeOS was the best choice for them because it was responsive.
Here are some comments from the forum that both illustrate their reasons for choosing and also indicate that BeOS isn’t the only OS suited for their purposes:
http://recordingtheworld.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=797604782&f=831…
“BeOS is a “real-time” OS that was developed with multimedia applications in mind from the ground up. Other operating systems can be less than ideal for audio applications due to system interrupts etc. For RADAR we evaluated several operating systems and decided that BeOS had the best performance for our application.”
http://recordingtheworld.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=797604782&f=831…
“We haven’t yet run into any limitations as BeoS in it’s current state is very mature, and already supports much that neither of the other major OS’s do.” More good comments on the same page.
http://recordingtheworld.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=797604782&f=831…
“We continue using BeOS as our OS. But as iZ Pres Barry is fond of saying, BeOS (or any OS) is like a potato peeler for us. Since we do not use the host processing for any audio function or processing the OS does very little in the RADAR scheme of things.”
And of course there is the link that Sam provided:
http://recordingtheworld.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=797604782&f=831…
Yes, the iZ president does say that BeOS was the least costly to work with but this does not mean just the price of the OS. Notice that iZ Technology is already using QNX in one of its other products. The RADAR24 software that runs on BeOS was designed modularly and self contained and is not (to quote the pres of iZ) “married” to the OS.
iZ Technology’s RADAR24 does have a GUI. It may not show you anything to reveal it is running on BeOS, but it does use a graphical display. It is not meant to be used as a slave device by computers. It is intended as a direct replacement of analog multitrack tape systems, adding the convenience of computer-like editing and displays. This is not a dumb terminal that does a little audio processing. It is a total solution. Sadly, I cannot locate any screen shots at the moment, short of the picture found in the RADAR 24 datasheet PDF (tiny).
Can we stop this arguement now? BeOS clearly has more advantages for use in this application than simply price and harping on price as the only reason iZ chose BeOS is not going to help make a case against BeOS. BeOS was clearly chosen for good reasons and iZ does not regret their choice (they are still using it and are still happy about that – the product is stable and works). Yes, QNX can easily replace BeOS for their purposes. It might do so should they encounter the situation where they want to add a feature that is not possible with BeOS (so far, this hasn’t been the case).
Now… in related discussion… I’d love to have one of these RADAR 24s because I am sick of the “computers can do a little of everything but never 100% of anything” situation. I want to see specialized and dedicated hardware and that is what the iZ RADAR 24 is all about. The fact that it runs on BeOS is just a fun factoid.
” That’s because all the heavy lifting is done in the ad/da asic’s. They don’t need to wait for OpenBeOS to fix the mediakit. But they do have a problem right now without FireWire support (which iz tech has publicly asked for help in various be-related forums).”
Can you point me to these? I would like to encourage relations between yellowTAB and iZ since they seem to be potentially ideal cross-supporters.
The firewire issue is serious and a valid point, btw. Pro audio is very quickly adopting firewire for both mLan and other uses.
thank you jace.
>>>Notice that iZ Technology is already using QNX in one of its other products.
No — he was talking about the QNX-based Sony “baby oxford” DMXR100.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may02/articles/dmxr100v2.asp
<<<They don’t need to wait for OpenBeOS to fix the mediakit.
>>>Can you point me to these?
You misunderstood me (that was just a rhetorical comment). If you look at the Sony DMXR100, it has a slow Pentium cpu (at about 200 Mhz) and 16 SHARC DSP’s. You don’t need a QNX “mediakit” when you have 16 SHARC DSP’s. Samething (on a lesser scale than the baby oxford) is happening on the Radar 24. We all know that the BeOS mediakit is broken, but Radar 24 doesn’t use the host CPU to run the mediakit, because they got a bunch of DSP’s doing the real work.
>>>I would like to encourage relations between yellowTAB and iZ since they seem to be potentially ideal cross-supporters.
(1) iZ already supports BeUnited.
(2) With the exception of the lack of firewire support, iZ doesn’t have much complaints about BeOS.
(3) iZ already paid for their BeOS licenses. Supporting yellowtab is like paying the licensing fee twice.
(4) iZ doesn’t need 99% of the stuff that BOTH beunited and yellowtab are planning to improve. There is no need to be able to run the latest P4 cpu in hyperthread. Radar 24 is a slow CPU system with a bunch of DPS’s. iZ doesn’t need 3d support, or even fixing the mediakit. This isn’t like Adamation’s personalStudio where the PC does all the hard work with a broken mediakit (which Adamation has acknowledged).
(5) what iZ really wanted is just pay a few hundred dollars to some volunteer to write them a firewire driver.
The only point in your list there that really has any relevance to this conversation is point 5. Which is why it would be nice to get these two parties to work together. If iZ wants to pay some developers to build more firewire support (which you claim they do), and if yellowTAB wants to improve BeOS’s firewire support (which they do), then working together towards this goal makes sense as it would benefit both parties. Now, where are these posts you are talking about where the iZ people are looking for Firewire assistance?
There are probably other posts from iz, but with benews gone and several of the be-related sites lost data due to hardware problems — I could only found one.
http://forums.begroovy.com/showthread.php?s=5cb923e16e3b9f0d8fcfc38…
Pentiums make for rather expensive DSPs which is why most pro products dump the hard number crunching to real DSPs. That has nothing to do with the OS, its a matter of optimized system design.
Does anyone know what OS is used in the mackie hdr24/96 hard disk recorder or their digital boards (i actually think its a proprietary one in the latter). What about Alesis ADATHD24 or the tascam hard disk recorders. I seem to remember there were rumors about using beos on the tascam stuff. I have no idea what the other stuff uses. I’d assume its all proprietary. Could it be QNX?
Thanks for the link Sam 🙂