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'Be' is nice, end of story

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Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#41

Post by smallstepforman »

helf wrote: post #37
classichasclass wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You remember correctly: the 603 was never intended for multiprocessing. It was amazing it worked as well as it did on the BeBox, but AFAIK it was the only 603-based computer ever to try. The G3, the 603's more-or-less direct follow-on, doesn't support it either. From the BeBox FAQ: "We use the Motorola 105 'Eagle' support chip, which allows for either one processor and an L2 cache or two processors without L2 caches.…

Aha! I am mildly surprised I remembered that correctly as I hadn't thought about it in yeeears. Thanks for the info :) Is there any memoir, book, whatever detailing out decisions on the hardware? Like why did they go with the 603? etc? I really wish there was some deep-dive book on the early history. I can't (well, couldnt. Havent looked in a while) find much info on the original hobbit based system.

The initial BeBox prototypes used AT&T Hobbit processors and DSP’s. When AT&T dropped the Hobbit, they chose PowerPC over a risc system from HP. At that point in time, all these non x86 systems seemed to be gathering industry support. Then WinTel exploded into the market hungry for cheap vanilla systems.

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#42

Post by rektide »

classichasclass wrote: post #33
helf wrote: post #27

BeFS was amazing. I miss BeOS, TBH. I ran a heavily customized BeOS R5.05 install that had upgraded bits from OpenBeOS (later, HaikuOS), ZetaOS etc. I ran it as a daily driver on a Dell GX1 SFF that I swear was designed for BeOS: Max RAM the BeOS kernel supported without hackery was 768MB - The GX maxed out at 768MB; The GX1 had a Rage GPU that BeOS natively supported (Including 3D Acceleration!) which was a very sho…

You remember correctly: the 603 was never intended for multiprocessing. It was amazing it worked as well as it did on the BeBox, but AFAIK it was the only 603-based computer ever to try. The G3, the 603's more-or-less direct follow-on, doesn't support it either. From the BeBox FAQ: "We use the Motorola 105 'Eagle' support chip, which allows for either one processor and an L2 cache or two processors without L2 caches.…

Semi-related, I keep wondering how long we'll keep scaling hardware coherency out. I'd like to some 128 core+ chips that act like 2+ disconnected systems, just with high speed fabric.

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#43

Post by aquova »

tartoran wrote: post #15

Im itching for a simple OS that is user friendly and just simple, something that would instant boot and would be functional offline. Linux is great and all but sometimes it feels too bloated for a simple limited purpose machine..

Perhaps Serenity OS is right for you

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#44

Post by iseanstevens »

It was a really beautiful, functional, svelte & fast OS.

IMHO, Apple made the right decision with Next because of Jobs. I’d sure like to see the results of the alternate timeline!

I still feel like Be could be great for phones/mobile, maybe VR. (Just as it was so foundationally low latency)

(Note I am aware of Haiku, etc. I’m using “Be” to mean something from its linage)

Side note - Jean-Louis Gassée, founder(?) of Be is very insightful. He writes some excellent short form tech world analysis at http://mondaynote.com/

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#45

Post by simula67 »

tartoran wrote: post #15

Im itching for a simple OS that is user friendly and just simple, something that would instant boot and would be functional offline. Linux is great and all but sometimes it feels too bloated for a simple limited purpose machine..

ArchLinux + Xfce would probably fit your bill.

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#46

Post by helf »

Veliladon wrote: post #24

Even now over 20 years later we still haven't had anything near as cool as BeFS. Who needs an email client when the file system can literally index it all and your inbox and email messages are literally files in a folder in a Tracker window that's just displaying email specific metadata for its columns.

BeFS is one of the things I miss the most. My dream is an unholy merger of ZFS and BeFS.

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#47

Post by [deleted] »

helf wrote: post #27

BeFS was amazing. I miss BeOS, TBH. I ran a heavily customized BeOS R5.05 install that had upgraded bits from OpenBeOS (later, HaikuOS), ZetaOS etc. I ran it as a daily driver on a Dell GX1 SFF that I swear was designed for BeOS: Max RAM the BeOS kernel supported without hackery was 768MB - The GX maxed out at 768MB; The GX1 had a Rage GPU that BeOS natively supported (Including 3D Acceleration!) which was a very sho…

[deleted]

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#48

Post by xnx »

Veliladon wrote: post #24

Even now over 20 years later we still haven't had anything near as cool as BeFS. Who needs an email client when the file system can literally index it all and your inbox and email messages are literally files in a folder in a Tracker window that's just displaying email specific metadata for its columns.

I think WinFS was trying to copy some of the good ideas, but it was abandoned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story

#50

Post by sedatk »

I remember trying out BeOS on my PC in the late 90's. I was astonished that it supported my ASUS V3000 AGP video card out of the box. Windows NT couldn't do that; you had to install drivers. Everything worked just right with BeOS. Even its web browser (Netwatch?) was on par with Internet Explorer of the era. I was very impressed to say the least.
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