Through the late 1990s, BeOS managed to create a niche of followers, but the company failed to remain viable. Also released a stripped-down, but free, copy of BeOS R5 known as BeOS Personal Edition (BeOS PE).
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 1
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 2
- Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 7
- Jul 05, 2012 Re: Is there any way to install BeOS in VMware VirtualBox et Post by Kernel86 » Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:20 am BeOS R5 and R4.5 at least work fine in VMware Workstation vers 5-7.
- 個人的仮想環境 virtualbox約55種 vmware約10種 virtualpc約10種 (以上すべてのべ数)を構築しておりますが、 それらOSについてのインストール備忘録です。.
- This patch adds BeOS and Haiku to the Other guest OS list, and selects the correct NIC. Both require the use of the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop NIC due to missing driver for the default one. VBOXOSTYPEHaiku is defined as a subtype for VBOXOSTYPEBeOS though technically it is a reimplementation, so maybe 0xD0000 would fit better.
- BeOS 5.0 Personal Edition screen shots. BeOS is a powerful OS designed primarily for Multimedia desktop use. Originally BeOS was designed for a custom computer system known as the BeBox that had special multimedia input/output features, and was later ported to the Macintosh, and finally ported to the PC.
BeOS R5 is the final version of BeOS from Be Inc. It was released in March 2000, and came in two varieties: Professional and Personal.
R5 was the 4th major release of BeOS for a public audience, and the 6th since it left developer-only stages. It changed only slightly from the previous release, BeOS R4.5, and was even seeded to developers as 'R4.6'. Improved POSIX compliance, particularly in the area of networking, was provided. The OS in general was moved towards the new modular media kit over the former audio-only sound subsystem. For end-users, new logos and some new icons were the only major differences.
R5 was the first release of BeOS for x86 to have a freely downloadable version which could be fully installed on a user's hard drive; previous versions had a free Live CD download, which could not be installed. R5 was also to be the last version to support the PowerPC architecture which BeOS had originated on, including the company's own BeBox hardware. According to Be's marketing, it was the first OS to ship with legalMP3 encoding and decoding support.
Versions[edit]
Personal Edition[edit]
Personal Edition, a 48MB download, was the most commonly used version of R5. Stripped of developer tools (though these were later made available as a separate download), mp3 and Indeo encoders, and RealPlayer, it was installed into a 500MB 'hardfile' through Windows or Linux, and could be booted either directly from Windows 9x or DOS, or using a boot floppy. Once booted, it could be installed to a real hard drive or partition, and the Be Bootloader could be installed to allow dual-booting. This bootloader uses only the MBR of the hard disk, and will continue to function even if the BeOS is uninstalled.
Professional Edition[edit]
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 1
Professional Edition was only available commercially, and for the first time in BeOS's history, could not be purchased from the company unless you were a developer. Instead, a number of regional resellers sold it - Gobe Software in the United States, Apacabar and Koch Media in Europe, and Hitachi in Asia. These resellers were responsible for all packaging of the OS, from localisation to CD labelling and packaging. As a result, some variations exist between packaged R5 Professional discs, with some being slipstream updated to the newest patches, and most notably, the inclusion of commercial printer drivers with Gobe releases, and French translations of the user documentation on Apacabar. Wagner 404 plus manual.
The CD shipped with an ISO9660/HFS hybrid partition, containing documentation, GPL licensed source code, the Personal Edition installer (with the aim of you circulating the installer to friends), a copy of Partition Magic for Windows, and the Mac OS boot-loading code for the PowerPC version. Two separate BFS partitions existed, one for x86, one for PowerPC, and the x86 one is directly bootable from CD.
In addition to all the features of Personal Edition, Professional Edition includes the full developers tools, including a rebranded CodeWarrior, RealPlayer G2, Fraunhofer MP3 encoders, and support for both encoding Indeo video, and playback/encoding of Indeo Real Time. Additional media on the CD varied by supplier, but always included some sample multimedia files, including two songs composed by Be staff ('5038' and 'virtual (void)') as well as a video of Be staff pushing computer monitors off the roof of their building in Menlo Park.
![Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HmB5KN9smss/hqdefault.jpg)
Updates[edit]
Three updates for R5 were released during 2000.
R5.01[edit]
R5.01 was mainly a stability fix for R5 Professional, fixing some deadlocks in drivers and critical servers. However, additional POSIX support was again added for networking, although the update neglected to include the newer headers to use some of these functions - they were only available in an updated Developer Tools for Personal Edition download.
R5.02[edit]
Lifeboat solas manual. R5.02 (marked as R5.01 on personal) contained all of R5.01's updates, as well as some enhanced drivers, and more stability fixes.
R5.03[edit]
R5.03 was solely a security fix, and fixed a remote-access bug in the system's ftpd. The update, however, made a change to the core C library to do this, and in doing so, updated the version of glibc it was based on, again providing slightly more POSIX compatibility.
Succession[edit]
Following the failure of BeIA, Be's Internet Appliance venture, the company ceased operations, and R5 was the last official release. A widely leaked version of BeOS that had been seeded to developers, codenamed Dano, carried many new features, and a build ID indicating it was BeOS R5.1.0.
Another extremely widely leaked update is a new, fully POSIX compliant, kernel-land networking stack, known internally in Be as BONE. While officially alpha, this brings higher stability to R5, as well as opening up the application base available. The updater for BONE Alpha 7 increases the system version number to R5.04.
ZETA was accepted by some BeOS users as a successor to R5, however legal issues surrounding how Magnussoft obtain Be Inc's source code later lead to the discontinuation of the product. However, at least during its protracted release candidate stage, it was dogged with problems that left some people using R5, and in some cases, looking to Haiku for the future of their OS.
Haiku OS, now on its beta release, is now the last surviving successor to BeOS. Although deemed by the developers as beta software, the stability, compatibility with BeOS binaries and feature-completeness make Haiku OS a viable option today. Haiku has even improved on BeOS, and includes features never implemented into BeOS, including: wifi support; the layout kit; a unique package manager; and support for x64 processors and modern hardware.
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BeOS_R5&oldid=963607643'
Here are my notes on how to install version 5.0.3 Pro of BeOS in a virtualmachine (VM) using Oracle's VirtualBox, version 4.2.8 (update20150828: got it working in 4.3.30). After much fiddling around with settingsand drivers, I got almost everything working really well, except sound which ischoppy.
Installing BeOS in VirtualBox
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 2
Install VirtualBox on your computer, as in the previous story about installing Haiku.
Beos Personal Edition Virtualbox 7
Then make a new virtual machine in the VirtualBox VM Manager, starting withthe Other/Other template. Adjust the settings for these items (this was thehard part to figure out):
- Set up the new virtual machine with VT-x (general hardware virtual machine support) turned off. You can turn it on after installation for better speed. But leave 'Nested Paging' turned off, it makes BeOS unbootable on some Intel Core CPUs, though it works on more recent ones.
- Set the VM to 768MB memory (avoid the over 1GB of RAM BeOS bug).
- Just 1 CPU (unfortunately the VM will crash with an access to the $A000 video memory area if you have 2 virtual CPUs), so you can't get all the multitasking goodness of BeOS. Also turn the multi-CPU related IO APIC off (if it is on, then BeOS networking doesn't work).
- 32MB of video is fine, since it just runs in VESA mode, and only 16 bit at that. The highest resolution I can get is 1280x1024x16. The other possible resolutions are the ones listed in the BeOS safe mode boot menu (hit space bar while booting to get it).
- BeOS needs an IDE controller, not a SATA one, to attach the virtual hard disk storage to. The PIIX3 variety of IDE is way faster (factor of 10 or more) than the newer emulated ones. Unfortunately Windows 2000 needs the PIIX4 one (or may need a fresh install to force it to use PIIX3), which BeOS can use but only very slowly. Linux can use either.
- For the network, use the Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC) in the VM. It will need later installation of a BeOS driver, but it does work well.
- If using VirtualBox NAT mode, BeOS DHCP doesn't work so you need to manually specify IP addresses etc, use a bootable Linux CD to find out which numbers get assigned. Mine were Address 10.0.2.15, Mask 255.255.255.0, Gateway 10.0.2.2, DNS is your usual one. For better performance (and no mysterious dropped connections every few minutes, making BeShare unuseable), instead of NAT use Bridged mode, which will give the virtual machine its own presence and IP address on the network. Note that the VirtualBox Windows installer has an option to install the Bridged Mode Network feature, hope you had it selected when you installed VirtualBox.
- Sounds - use Soundblaster 16 (SB16) emulation in VirtualBox.
- The emulated CD doesn't handle CDs with multiple tracks/sessions like the real BeOS R5 Pro CD has. So use some other OS copy the partitions off the BeOS CD, and make a fake hard drive with the data dd'd into separate partitions. Then make a BeOS boot virtual floppy disk (I had a real one, the Personal Edition may have a way of making one). Boot from the floppy, hit the space bar to get the boot menu, and use it to select the fake CD main partition for booting, then install BeOS on a different virtual drive than the fake CD. Alternatively, you may have better luck using a 'Personal Edition' of BeOS, which comes in one file that you put onto a FAT32 formatted disk.
Now install BeOS into the virtual computer. Use BeOS's Drive Setup toformat a virtual disk partition with 2048 bytes per block. Woven label design software, free download. 4K blocks triggerbugs and 1K is slow. There's also a maximum of 60GB volume size with plainBeOS R5 due to a bug in mkbfs, use the Bone version of 'mkbfs' to format largerpartitions. Rome total war spartan mods. Finally, there's a whole disk maximum of 128GB due to the way BeOSruns the IDE controller (the SCSI one can go to 2TB, but the VirtualBox SCSIemulation doesn't work well enough to be useable).
Then install a few more things. It's best if you prepare by downloadingthem all to an MSDOS FAT32 disk partition that the virtual machine can see(boot up Knoppix inthe virtual machine using a virtual DVD .iso file, that will let you downloadfiles and copy them to a virtual FAT32 partition, then reboot without thevirtual Knoppix DVD in the virtual DVD disc drive to get BeOS going, and useBeOS to install the files).
- Video - use a VESA safe mode from the boot menu. Can make it automatic by adding the line 'mode 1024 768 16' (adjust resolution numbers to your needs) to the file /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/vesa. Maximum is 1280x1024x16.
- Fix the BeOS cache bug by editing /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/kernel to include the line 'disk_cache_size 16384'.
- Install the R5.0.3 update. BeOS5-5.0.0Pro-to-5.0.3-Update3-Pro-x86.zip
- Install the FAT file system improvement. FAT_filesystem_add-on_2001-12-11.zip
- Process Controller. Always useful. ProcessController3.1.pkg.bin
- CPU Fix - time calculations on high speed CPUs are wrong due to a bad calculation, making all timing operations wrong. It affects things like double clicking on Tracker columns. Install this patch to fix it, and also adjust mouse settings until the timing feels right. cpu_fix_1.4.pkg.zip
- Updated time zone data from Linux TZ files, since the BeOS ones have the wrong date for daylight savings time. They're stored in /boot/beos/etc/timezones
- Install the BeOS R5 Intel Pro 1000 driver by Marcus Overhagen from ipro1000_0.4.zip (available in many places, but apparently not BeBits now). Use BeOS Network Preferences to set a static address, which is more reliable than DHCP (which only works in Bridged mode, and depends on your home network DHCP server being BeOS compatible).
- If using an ADSL modem to connect to the Internet, where the MTU is less than the standard 1500 bytes, you may have dropped connections when web browsing. This patch reduces the MTU to make data transfer more reliable. ADSL-Upload-fix.pkg.zip
- Sounds - Install the SoundBlaster 16 driver for BeOS, with default IRQ, DMA and other ports. It's a bit choppy in sound quality due to VirtualBox bugs (other people have complained about this elsewhere). Also it causes a crash on shutdown. So I usually turn off sound in the BeOS Media Preferences (set in and out to 'None'). The alternative would be to fix VirtualBox. AC97 sound almost works; you hear a bit of the first sample, but then it crashes BeOS. You may also wish to experiment with turning on VT-d and using a BeOS compatible real sound card. sb16-1.2-x86.pkg
- Replace Tracker with OpenTracker for many desktop improvements. OpenTracker-5.3.0-x86.zip
- Replace the mail system with Mail Daemon Replacement 2.3.0. 3.0.3 also works (and has SSL encryption), but the install seems to be missing a few files. mail_daemon_v2.3.0_x86.zip
There are still a few bugs that may cause problems. One is that the mousesometimes locks up and gets stuck in the top left corner. Restart the mediaserver to fix it. The keyboard still works so if you can Alt-Fn and Ctrl-tabto a Terminal window, you can type in '/system/servers/input_server -q' to getit working again, or use VNC to remotely move the mouse. The other problem isthat sometimes the Tracker application (which runs those desktop windows fullof file icons) gets stuck at 100% CPU. To fix that, use ProcessController toquit application 'Tracker' and then use ProcessController's menu option to'Launch Tracker'. After one quit and relaunch, Tracker seems to work properlythe rest of the time.
And that should be enough to get you started with a virtual BeOS system.After that there are many other things to try, have a look at BeBits for things like BeShare, BePDF,SeaMonkey/Firefox, VLC and so on. Besides chat, BeShare also lets you find yetmore BeOS related files.
Copyright © 2013 by Alexander G. M. Smith.