Anyone remember the "Be" Operating System (BeOS) ??

I have a funny story about thermal paste and CPUs..

I was upgrading from one processor to another and needed to separate the processor and clean it up for a new installation, so to speak...

The thing finally came loose with so much force that the CPU flew out of my hand like a ninja shuriken and firmly embedded itself in the wall!

It was in there a good half-length of the entire package. I pried it from the drywall and spent the next god-knows-how-many long early A.M. hours with tweezers trying to bend at least half of all CPU pins back into a reasonable fashion. Once it managed to fit back in to the socket, everything seemed kosher and I sold it for $100!

Absolutely! I use it almost every day now! (It was kind of the reason for the thread :)

I've been following that project for almost its entire conception, and have been quite impressed with everything to date...its almost been 20 years!!!

That project has come a long way, and I'm not even using "good" hardware for any of it...just a few I3 and I5 Dell machines that I literally saved from going into a dumpster (at work.)


I've compiled numerous source packages without much issue, and wow, the fact that DOSBox is so flawless on here, I can't find a better / cheap / free entry back into that world of retro computing if I even tried.


The project is really impressive now...minus "modern" hardware driver support... I never thought I'd be able to browse GLP and play YouTube embeds with Haiku on real hardware... Usually virtualization is the easiest and most compatible method of entry here...

I installed it as an experiment when I was 16-17 I think. Was very cool, stable and easy to use. Awesome graphical interface.

But in the end there was no software to speak of, and I couldn't play quake. So I went back to windows.

I think I have OS/2 install disks somewhere!

Absolutely! I use it almost every day now! (It was kind of the reason for the thread :)

I've been following that project for almost its entire conception, and have been quite impressed with everything to date...its almost been 20 years!!!

That project has come a long way, and I'm not even using "good" hardware for any of it...just a few I3 and I5 Dell machines that I literally saved from going into a dumpster (at work.)


I've compiled numerous source packages without much issue, and wow, the fact that DOSBox is so flawless on here, I can't find a better / cheap / free entry back into that world of retro computing if I even tried.


The project is really impressive now...minus "modern" hardware driver support... I never thought I'd be able to browse GLP and play YouTube embeds with Haiku on real hardware... Usually virtualization is the easiest and most compatible method of entry here...

Really! I looked Be over very closely at that time, but wasn't sure it was secure enough to withstand some challenges I was having then. but I may give it another try.

maybe i'll give it another try. i installed haiku four years ago but it did not have the option to change the desktop resolution on my laptop.

This was back around the time of the late '90s as desktop computers were rarely exceeding 200MHz and multiple processors were mostly only found in servers (unless you had $1200 to spend on a single processor!) Multiple-core architectures were still a somewhat distant wet dream for engineers; yet one company stepped up to the plate to realize the coming times.. But this market was not hardware nor was it really "software."


Apple was in the market to find something to replace the ailing Classic MacOS; looking for something fresh going forward into the new decade (post Y2K madness) and Microsoft was literally scared shitless of this operating system and its possible potential. (This is obviously where the real conspiracy begins in this tale...)


Linux was finally no longer a college project / assignment and was starting to gain rapid traction as a server OS, yet with hopes and dreams of delivering an end-user desktop experience devoid of the "standard" and accepted (read: expected) litany of commercial licensing and closed-source nonsense that was ever so present and forced down consumers' throats; much to the chagrin of us all...


It was here that Be realized the need, the market, and the value of a true "media" operating system, literally as the internet itself was unfolding...and in rapid succession at that. This need for a capable operating system was also met with a strict requirement for performance, elegance, and stability among all other things...

The only relevant OS is TempleOS.

I built SI's. They pre-dated the internet. I set up Apple's first (unofficial) website on one.

Actually, it was CP/M that Gates bought and turned into DOS (if I recall.)

it was IBM's answer to Microsoft Windows

this thread made me miss netscape

Gates did not buy CP/M. He had the creator of CP/M killed and stole it.

You'll have to rewind a couple decades (if you were even born yet) to appreciate this tech demo of the BeOS on ..almost.. cutting-edge hardware of the time.


[link to youtu.be (secure)]


Having two processors on-the-cheap back then was not something easily attainable. There was a slotted Pentium II riser card that could be soldered/jumped to "restore" hidden symmetric multi-processor functionality which was deliberately sabotaged by Intel (for cost) on consumer-grade chips. I used to run dual 333MHz [overclocked] processors back when everyone else only had a single 166-233 MHz proc... BeOS would have been a godsend on that setup...

Obviously this was never confirmed as he is still on the loose. Where does this rumor come from he had that guy killed?

The only relevant OS is TempleOS.

This is where they were ahead of the game.

Linux was struggling to go modular in the kernel, GNU pthreads was just emerging, and BSD was experiencing GIANT kernel spinlock Hell...

Microsoft was just developing DirectX (and stifling competition) and still reveling over their included Weezer video with Windows 95...




[link to youtu.be (secure)]

edit: HO LEE FUKK. It mentions Kenosha, Wisconsin!

Nutscrape and Internet Exploder...

:toolbars:

Have OS/2 disks also. True multitasking when Win 95 came out.

Like WordPerfect and Lotus, and Stacker, Gates just stole other people's ideas.

Actually, it was CP/M that Gates bought and turned into DOS (if I recall.)

I happened upon the last minute estate sale of one of the Macintosh consultants/repair people in the area. Back in the day he must have made a ton of money servicing graphics/printing clients.

Literally the entire house and garage was full of old Mac's, from the beginning to the early 2000's. I guess he had cleaned out his office when he retired and moved it all to his residence. Must have been around 100 that I could see, and who knows how many more were buried. It's too bad, a lot of stuff was completely turned into trash from sitting in the Florida heat in his garage for almost 2 decades.

I got a Quadra 700 and 950 working, the ones that don't have leaking capacitor issues because they used tantalums instead of surface mount electrolytics. I couldn't believe how slow they seemed now, even though I used these class of machines back then and they were fast! How did I ever browse the internet on a Mac IIsi? lol.

I have almost a shoebox full of AMD 586 and Intel 486 processors. I need a few more and then I can use them as wall tiles behind my stove.

I wrote about that one years ago. Terry Davis died not long ago...

Couldn't they be useful for turning into a cluster?