This article is not complete without the reminder that this entire dance of instructions was required because MS would not allow a Windows OEM licensor to ship ANY customer-facing computer that would offer the option to boot BeOS via a pre-loaded bootloader or similar.
> Be outlines its tortured history of trying to get its operating system included on machines from major computer makers, most notably Compaq Computer and Hitachi.
> Be said that in September 1998, Hitachi verbally committed to loading the BeOS alongside Windows on a line of PCs. Be had planned to offer software that would easily let computer owners choose between the two operating systems, but said it was notified by Hitachi in November 1998 that Microsoft's licensing deal with Hitachi effectively prevented such an approach.
> Although Hitachi eventually sold some PCs with the BeOS loaded on the hard drive, Be said the operating system had to be started from a floppy disk, and the machines bore no indication that they even came with the operating system.
> it was notified by Hitachi in November 1998 that Microsoft's licensing deal with Hitachi effectively prevented such an approach.
For those too young to remember, this is what the anti-trust case against Microsoft was actually about. Internet Explorer, while important, was just a small part of the Microsoft's monopolistic practice of absolutely fucking over developers, other OSes (including Linux) and consumer choice. It's mildly infuriating now to hear about the bad old Microsoft not being allowed to give end users the best browser available, knowing that was just the tip of the iceberg.
If there was a competitive league for justifying anticompetitive contracts, HN would be guaranteed a finalist team to compete with whoever Oracle decides to put in the ring.
This is an utterly random question, and I'm sure there's a better place to ask it, but does anyone reading this happen to have/know the logic analyzer pinout [0] on the BeBox mainboard? I got a weird rackmount BeBox (an LCS LD-CS1, the controller for their LD-88 audio mixer [1]) and have been rebuilding the blinkenlight board, but I'd love to drop an Agilent on there at some point.
The Nike store on 57th street in Manhattan was powered by a BeBox. I forget if it ever actually worked. The original developer was replaced by Kandu and I remember them thinking it was trouble. Kandu was famous for hating anything more complex than MS-DOS. We worked on a project where they claimed to have rewritten most of DOS.
The Geekport is reasonably well-documented -- this is a direct logic analyzer port on the bus on the mainboard (in the form factor of a CPU socket -- upper right of the photo on this page): http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/pr...
Pretty cool. I remember how I had written question to local IT newspaper asking how to install BeOS if you have HDD LBA addressing workaround installed. This was way too complex question for them to know.
Still, I think I played with BeOs 5 somehow. I was in high school at the time, and already was familiar with Linux (Ukrainian black cat Linux). I think my curiosity made my career in IT progress much faster. I even was compiling Linux kernel once, which was considered a top achievement at the time.
I played quite a bit with that free intel version they came out with back in 98? 99? Shame that my internal modem wasn't working and I couldn't get on the internet with it.
I have this weird memory of running either a file explorer or whole operating system side by side with windows 95. But the madness, the real craziness that makes me doubt my memory is that it was branded the same as my monitor.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/be-stings-microsoft-with-lawsu...
> Be outlines its tortured history of trying to get its operating system included on machines from major computer makers, most notably Compaq Computer and Hitachi.
> Be said that in September 1998, Hitachi verbally committed to loading the BeOS alongside Windows on a line of PCs. Be had planned to offer software that would easily let computer owners choose between the two operating systems, but said it was notified by Hitachi in November 1998 that Microsoft's licensing deal with Hitachi effectively prevented such an approach.
> Although Hitachi eventually sold some PCs with the BeOS loaded on the hard drive, Be said the operating system had to be started from a floppy disk, and the machines bore no indication that they even came with the operating system.