I didn't realize there were so few BeBoxen made. I wonder if I kept mine what it would be worth to a collector?
Well, I sold mine for almost $800 like a decade ago and they are only getting harder to find. I wish I had kept mine.
'Be' is nice, end of story
31–40 of 187 posts
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#32this was nicely written.
it's amusing to see the name of the blog, a popular column in pc magazine in the '90s bore the same name. i forget who wrote it, but it was one of the really well known computer journalists of the time, if i recall correctly.
a notable absence is mention of the cpu utilization lights. to show off all that work they did to build a truly multiprocessor system, they had two strips of leds that ran up the front bezel of the system, indicating realtime utilization of the cpus.
i remember playing with beos many years ago. i think they may have shipped an intel version after shutting down the hardware.
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#33BeFS 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. So, our two-processor PowerPC BeBox has no provision for an L2 cache."
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually the system load on each 603e. Source: dual BeBox/133 on my desk
Still have one? I am jelly. Is there a working version of Haiku for them yet?
Sadly no, but still get a lot of wear out of R5. I have it on this BeBox and on a 6500/275 that I'm trying to figure out sound issues on.
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#35this was nicely written. it's amusing to see the name of the blog, a popular column in pc magazine in the '90s bore the same name. i forget who wrote it, but it was one of the really well known computer journalists of the time, if i recall correctly. a notable absence is mention of the cpu utilization lights. to show off all that work they did to build a truly multiprocessor system, they had two strips of leds that r…
They did.
The initial CPU target for BeOS was the AT&T H0BB1T DSP. The alpha copies were called Shark. I actually have system images for the hobbit builds still floating around somewhere. I never did get my hands on a prototype hobbit bebox, sadly. I almost bought one off a guy in France but the deal fell apart.
Be produced a regular PowerPC version that could be installed on Macs (I think it may have required PCI macs?) and then an x86 version that was 32bit only and had a lot of ... quirks. But I used it for over a decade.
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still have one? I am jelly. Is there a working version of Haiku for them yet?
Sadly no, but still get a lot of wear out of R5. I have it on this BeBox and on a 6500/275 that I'm trying to figure out sound issues on.
I wonder if they will ever target such an old ISA.
What are your sound problems? I only briefly used BeOS on an actual mac and it, amazingly enough, worked without a hitch.
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#37BeFS 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.…
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.
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#38New-ish video of actual BeBox running in HD video quality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkM9WbB8cWM I didn't know it had functional LED light meter in front of the case. very cool. Obligatory demo from the 90s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsVydyC8ZGQ
it can play MULTIPLE VIDEOS AT THE SAME TIME (!)
Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#39Re: 'Be' is nice, end of story
#40> From there, things only got worse for Be. The company lingered around until 2001 when it sold its copyrights to Palm for $11 million USD. In 2002, Be brought litigation against Microsoft for anticompetitive practices, but the suit was settled out of court for $23.25 million. After purchasing BeOS, Palm promptly discontinued the OS. Palm itself later had some problems, split, and sold. The rights to BeOS are now in…
Apple had a much bigger market. They had problems with mismanagement to be sure but every designer, many authors and photographers, tons of schools, etc. had Macs on their desks. That gave them enough revenue to get a new OS out the door, and the industrial design on the iMac and Titanium PowerBook were enough to keep sales up during the bridge period.
I worked on an internet appliance using BeOS around 2000. The device worked, but was unfortunately slow due to the compromises Sony had to make to hit their price point (most notably running the display in portrait mode without hardware rotation, meaning every paint had to rotate in software!) and the lack of software really contributed - the NetPositive browser was fast and had some nice ideas but you’d run into more sites which would have worked in Netscape or Internet Explorer and didn’t have Flash.
I really liked BeOS: BFS’ database-like capabilities are still unmatched and it was years ahead of the curve on stability (I remember crashing the graphics driver & watching it restart, the open apps repainted, and I kept working) and consistent performance (Windows and macOS still have more UI lag under load despite much faster hardware). The fatal flaws, however, were the lack of permissions and immature networking. It was also harder to port Unix software, which mattered a lot at the time since that meant a ton of technical workers could use a Mac with OS X but not a BeOS system. I’m not sure what the assessment was for running Classic Mac apps either but suspect that already hard task would have been harder with a more limited OS. Even at the time I thought Apple made the right call, much as it meant I couldn’t unload some Be shares I’d picked up at a profit.