August 2000
Monday 14th August 2000
Got my shipment of R5 Pro today! It's all nicely shrink-wrapped, together with a
copy of Scot Hacker's "BeOS Bible" (which I actually forgot I had ordered ...).
I'm a bit put off by the fact that the "Minimum System" requirements on the box
are all Intel based. No mention of PPC anywhere ... this all bodes badly for the
future of BeOS on PPC in my opinion.
Still, Obelix is still with me (and at present still running the trusty old
BeOS R3). R3 is, I think, a bit past its useful life at the moment, as poor
Obelix keeps freezing up whenever I attempt to run the Mandelbrot demo program.
Hrm. Something somewhere has gone awry. I did get my free copy of R4.5 (as a
Bebox owner), but I heard some anecdotes about very poor performance on the
original BeBoxen. In contrast, I have heard a couple of good stories about 66MHz
Beboxes and R5Pro. Actually, that's all I've heard. No bad stories yet, so this
could be the first one ... I'm hopeful though, that a fresh install of R5Pro
might help things along :-)
struggle struggle ...
Cool! Just added another 32Mb to dear Obelix, giving him a whopping 48Mb of RAM!
;-) An attempt to add a 3G ide disk to him, however, has not been so successful,
with BeOS failing to recognise it's existance.
One thing I just thought about is that by installing R5Pro, it's highly likely I
will have to clobber the LinuxPPC installation also currently on Obelix. This is
a legacy from Hugh Blemings (link), who originally installed it. He was amongst
the first to attempt to do so, I believe, and the installation, while not
perfectly complete, had all the essential components and tools. If I can lay my
hands on a cheap and QUIET SCSI disk, I'll attempt to put my LinuxPPC disk to
good use once R5Pro is successfully installed.
Well, I've made some progress, but I can't quite get my BeBox to boot at the
moment. Have wiped R3 and my Linux PPC installations, but R5Pro refuses to boot
at the moment ... Will report when I make further progress.
Wednesday 16th August 2000
Still no luck. I am attempting to install BeOS R4.5 to see if that will happen
either, but it's bailing out with the same "file 'blah' appears to be corrupted.
The system may not work correctly after it is installed ..." etc.
Quite frustrating at the moment. I have emailed Gobe support, but am yet to hear
back from them at this stage ... Will keep this site updated in the meantime.
Hrm ... that'd be a change. I've had this domain name and site 'placeholder' for
over a year now, and just haven't found the time to do anything with it ...
hopefully that might change soon. :-)
Friday 18th August 2000
I just had a reply to the newsgroup message I posted on comp.sys.be.help. I'll
include it below for reference:
From: Ken Curtright <******@_nospam_pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <01HW.B5C0C6420011C6BB014822C0@news.pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: R5Pro on a BeBox
Newsgroups: comp.sys.be.help
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 22:29:22 +0000
Xref: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU comp.sys.be.help:37385
I've had similar experiences with other releases of BeOS on my PowerMac
clone. What I do is run the installer again and check to see what files it
says are corrupt. If the corrupt file is an important one, then I stop and
start the installation process over. If it is one that is not important to
getting the system up and running, like Net Positive, then I will click on
the ignore button. If you click the ignore all button then the installation
will continue to the end without anymore warnings, but you might not be able
to boot at the end.
No, I don't think there is a problem with your cd. No, I don't think there is
a problem with your CD-ROM (although I think a slow CD-ROM might be part of
the problem). I think that Be should include a "I don't think so, why don't
you check the file again" button in their warning dialogue.
Ken
This doesn't fill me with great hope. The bit about the slow cdrom drive being
the cause of my problems is highly plausible in my opinion, and like Ken, I
really can't understand Be's wisdom in deciding not to include a 'Retry' button.
Oh well, at least I'm not alone. I will try the install for the umpteenth time
when I get a chance (hopefully this weekend).
Saturday 19th August 2000
Well, I haven't actually spent any more time attempting to install BeOS 5Pro
onto Obelix, but I have spent sometime developing bits of this site. The BeBox
Zone now uses cascading style sheets, and has some actual content (!). Anyway,
in between my usual paid work and uni work, I'll hopefully find time to keep
rolling out more new content.
Sunday 27th August 2000
I haven't yet found time to attempt a reinstall of BeOS yet, but the reply I posted above was the only feedback I got from comp.sys.be.help. I still haven't heard back from Gobe support, which I feel is pretty poor.
I have found time to add a couple more links (to NetBSD and Plan9 BeBox
ports), and I've been collating images ready for the images page. This site has now also been moved to a webserver with higher bandwidth, so you don't all have to suffer the wait for the pages to load over my modem connection. Speed should not be an issue from here, which is nice. :-)
One last thing, I've added the (noticable) BeOS Ring image to the bottom of the
front page, and filled in all my details to join the ring. There seems to be a
HEAP of waiting sites, however, so I'm a bit doubtful that it's still being
actively managed. Anyway, if it doesn't get cleared in a few weeks, I'll
probably remove the graphic. That's all for now; hopefully I'll be raving about my BeOS R5Pro install the next time I write here.
Tuesday 29th August 2000
Well, this isn't exactly BeBox news, but the comp.sys.be.* newsgroups have been
ablaze with news and comments about the new Pineapple
News NNTP client software for BeOS. I haven't yet taken a look at it (as
lack of an install BeOS makes it somewhat futile :-/ ), but why don't you take
the time to check it out; it's very good by all accounts. Make sure you get the
version with the bug fix for users east of GMT time zone. (There was a bug with
handling GMT+x timezones when posting articles).
Still no BeOS on BeBox, and still no word from Gobe.
Wednesday 30th August 2000
I have received feedback from Kurt von Finck at Gobe Technical Support about my
BeBox BeOS Pro5 installation problem. According to him, he mailed me last
week, but I certainly never received that email. Anyway, it is nice to get some
feedback from Gobe.
Unfortunately, it sounds like it might be an issue with my relatively slow
(double speed) CD ROM drive. Kurt suggested I try the installation with a
faster scsi cdrom installed in my BeBox. I will try and chase one of these up,
so I can confirm or refute whether it is a hardware problem.
Kurt also offered to replace my CD if I thought that would help, so I think
that counts as pretty good customer service. It sounds like I should try some
replacement hardware before I try a replacement CD though.
Thursday 31st August 2000
I am currently working on a heap of content for the BeBox history section. I
was referred to a useful site with
pictures of the old Hobbit BeBox, per a kind email from Ludovic, so thanks for
that info. I hope to have the new content ready over the next day or so, so
check back soon :-)
September 2000
Saturday 2nd September 2000
I have just added a few things to this site:
- Technical Data about the PowerPC
603 chips used by the publicly released BeBox. This info is linked from
the Bebox Technical Info pages of the BeBox
Zone.
- Not quite sure where this belongs on the site, but there is an
interesting story
called "In the Beginning was the Command Line" which is hanging off
Be's Site. I have made a local copy available, in case it ever
disappears from Be's site (I'm trying to avoid having a site full of
broken links). The author, Neil Stephenson, is a science fiction
writer, whose other notable works include Snow Crash, and Zodiac.
- A sneak preview of some of the content
I am writing for the BeBox history section. Be aware, however, that this page
and the pages it links to are works in progress (so may appear garbled if you
happen to look at them whilst I am editing them).
Wednesday 6th September 2000
I've been a bit ill lately, so all these grand BeBox plans have been put on the
back burner for a bit. Despite this, I hope to finish the update of the BeBox
History section very soon.
Feel free to give feedback on what's here (or not here) already. I've had a few comments from people, which has been great, but more feedback is always welcome :-)
Thursday 7th September 2000
I've added a bit more to the BeBox History section of the site. The new
information includes a post from Be to the BeDevTalk mailing list explaining
the delay of the BeBox release in April 1996. Check out the info here
Once I have finished the history section of the site (well, not fully finished,
but once I have content in all the areas I've idenitified), I will start adding
some images from my collection of BeBox and Be photos and artwork.
Thursday 14th September 2000
A new version of Pineapple News (version 0.8.3) has been released. This version
contains network improvements (sounds like its using a sliding window protocol
for receiving headers now, instead of a stop and wait protocol), more
international character support, and a few improvements based on user feedback.
It' s nice to see a project like this in active development :-)
Not much else to report from this past week, I'm afraid. I've been spending
most of my time dealing with a move of offices at work, and a genetic
algorithm/tabu search project from uni...
Sunday 17th September 2000
Well, I've found a bit more time, and added a bit more info to the BeBox History section of the site. Specifically, I
have dug up some old CNET news on
the release of the 133MHz BeBox.
I have also added an archived copy of the BeBox Peripherals FAQ from 1996. This is a
detailed list of components and peripherals that are know to work well with the
original BeBoxen. This list is still relevant to any lucky owners of BeBoxen
(or just as general interest to BeBox buffs :-)
The BeBox History section has also had some new content added over the past day or so, so head on over there and have a peek. :-)
Thursday 21st September 2000
David Orr, who is the author of the BeBox Peripherals FAQ mentioned in the
previous journal entry, has confirmed with me that the FAQ version I have is
the latest version that was produced. I guess this makes my request for anyone
who knew of a later version to contact me no longer relevant. An interesting
piece of trivia: David Orr never owned a BeBox.
I'm toying with the idea of starting a BeBox Names section of the site. At the
moment, it would be really helpful if all of you BeBox owners could mail me if
you ever named your BeBox.
In a final light-hearted bit of news, the people at BeDope have reported a conspiracy theory suggesting
that BeOS Bible author Scot Hacker and Cryptonomicon (see entry for 02/09/2000) author Neil Stephenson are one
and the same person. If you've really got time to kill, you could read the
whole story at the above link.
October 2000
Sunday 1st October 2000
Unfortunately, I have been sick (again!) for the past week. I haven't even
looked at the site in this time, as I just didn't have the energy.
I have decided today, after quite a bit of thought on the issue, to remove my
be webring image and links from the front page of the site. I have still heard
nothing back from the maintainer of the ring, and nothing seems to have been
done to process any of the many sites waiting to be included in the ring. I am
still entertaining the thought of starting another active beos/bebox webring,
but that won't happen in the immediate future due to a few other pressing time
constraints ...
Just prior to getting sick, however, I started work on the images section of
the site. This is probably about a third done at this stage, and now that I'm
beginning to feel a bit more human again, I'll find the time to finish this off
as quickly as possible.
One issue that has come up in doing the images section is that, after
collecting images from all over the place for several years, I no longer have
any idea where most of them came from. I'd like to provide adequate credit to
the sources of all images, so I've started a credits page, but it will be
incomplete. If you know of where any of the images have been sourced from
(originally!), let me know once I get the images pages up :-).
I have added a new link to the Linux for BeBox pages by William
Sowerbutts on my links page. It's not too hard to see where my Be emblazened
Tux came from after having a look at this site. :-) This site was one that had
just slipped my mind when I was creating my links page.
I've added a small amount to the BeBox History discussion page too. Have a look at the discussion page if you haven't already.
Finally, following up from the BeDope conspiracy theory of last entry, it seems
that most people (who have bothered to vote) are willing to believe that Hacker
and Stephenson are indeed one and the same person. (See Poll Results at BeDope). Again, only bother to have a look at this if you're really looking to spend some quality aimless time on the net :-)
Monday 2nd October 2000
The Images section of the site has been launched. Note that it is (like most of
the site) far from complete, but I think there's enough there now to at least
make it worthwhile for people to see.
If you have any bebox images you'd like to show me, send me an email with either an attachment or a link
to your image. Thanks!
Tonight, I have also launched the BeBox Technical
Library, which is a collection of reference material for the BeBox
component electronics, which I have collected in my travels. Please feel free
to advise me on omissions or errors in any of this material, as I haven't yet
found time to read it all myself.
Monday 9th October 2000
Just a brief entry today. I've been doing various site maintenance type work of
late and have added some new images to the images
section of the site.
I have also added a few extra links to the links
section, so head on over and have a browse at what some other people in the Be
community are offering on their sites.
Saturday 14th October 2000
Still no BeOS on Obelix ... almost two months after I received BeOS R5Pro and
started the project. I guess it is likely to not happen until late November at
the earliest (due to exams and a change of jobs). Until then, I will keep this
site updated, but I won't actually be playing with BeOS myself :-(
I've got a small collection of BeBox names so far, so thanks to those of you
who have mailed me :-) I won't put them up on the site until I have a few more
... so keep those names coming please.
Not much more to report for the moment, and I have to get onto my Genetic
Algorithm programming project ... so I'll leave it at that for now ...
Sunday 22nd October 2000
Although there's been nothing written here for a week, there have been a few
changes to the site recently. Firstly, I've joined up with YaBel's BeOS Banner
Trading Project. You'll notice banners on the front page and the links page.
I'm not planning to whack them all over the site, probably only on those two
pages.
Also, the more astute of you may have noticed the counted.com BeOS buttons on
quite a few of the BeBox Zone pages. At the moment, they're not on every page,
but as they are only small, (unlike the banners), it's quite possible they will
end up in the footer of every page. Of course, at the moment (with the minimal
amount of time I have available to develop this site), they've just been added
in a fairly adhoc manner, but I have started work on adding php footers to the
site, to make maintenance just that bit easier. Hopefully, the new site
redesign (which is much more than just adding new footers) will be complete in
the next month or so; I suggest you pop back regularly to keep up with what's
happening. :-).
In the meantime, I will continue to update the site in its current incarnation.
There's a few more new links, and a bit of extra info under the BeBox History
section, so check them out while you're here.
One last piece of interesting information, the new version of Opera (version 3.62 RC1) has support
for plugins (as many of you will know). This is, in itself a first for a BeOS
browser, as I understand it. The General Coffee Company has recently
released an update to their FlashPlayer software for BeOS, which
includes a flash plugin for Opera :-). This is something that I've been waiting
for for *ages*, so it's very good to see finally :-). Make sure you all go out
and pay the minimal fees to register both bits of software to show your support
:-)
Thursday 26th October 2000
Well, in between work for my hectic last week of my final university year, I've
managed to add two new sections to the site. The first is a News section, with the latest news in the world of Be,
BeOS games and BeOS software, automatically updated every hour with the latest
stories.
The second section is the BeBox Testimonials
section. This is linked from the BeBox History section, and contains first hand
accounts from BeBox owners and developers of their thoughts and opinions of the
BeBox/BeOS development environment. At launch time, I have some thoughts from
Jim Moy, but expect more to be added soon.
November 2000
Wednesday 1st November 2000
Well, the exciting news of this week (which you would have noticed if you'd
been reading the news section is that Be have released
an updated version of the BeBook, for R5Pro. A zipped version is available
either from Be's website.
An html readable version is
available in the tech info section.
Saturday 18th November 2000
Well, it's been a while since the last update here; I've been hassled by exam
study gremlins and an injured back of late. Although not much has happened to
the BeBox Zone recently, I do have some big plans now that I should have a bit
more spare time on my hands again. The one change you may notice is that I have
taken the BeOS Banner Trader ad from the front page of the site. I am yet to be
convinced that the Banner Trader network is worthwhile (as I haven't had any of
my ads displayed yet, and have had no response to my queries about it). To make
up for the relative lack of action here at the BeBox Zone, there's been quite a
few exciting things happening in the world of Be over the past few days.
Probably top of my personal list of excitements is the news that BeGroovy is back online. BeGroovy offers a
great range of opinion and news on all sorts of issues of relevance to the Be
community.
As part of the relaunch, BeGroovy has also begun a new comic strip
called The Any Key (which reminds me
a lot of User Friendly at
first glance). The basic plot of the comic, which will be published every
Monday, Wednesday and Friday, will follow a small company attempting to start
from scratch and create the ultimate Operating System, CosmOS.
There have been other excitements, like the release of English versions of the
Inside BeOS magazine, which
was originally released only in German. Both edition 1 and 2 of the mag are
available from BeBits.
Finally, there's been a security analysis (of sorts) written about the BeOS
Networking Environment (BONE) which is currently in restricted beta testing.
Have a look at the paper at the BeOS
Journal site.
Sunday 19th November 2000
Well, since yesterday, there have already been some small changes to the site.
I've added an article explaining the various BeBox motherboard revisions, and
what advances they represented in the development of the BeBox. This article
can be found under the BeBox Mainboard
Information section of the site.
Similarly, I've also added another article by Joe Palmer about the development of the BeBox in terms of the
hardware development. Again, this article is linked from the the Technical
Info section of the site.
Also, it seems I spoke too soon about the BeOS banner trader network. Today, I
have seen my first ad displays on other sites (although I still haven't heard
anything back from Brett at YaBel). Anyway, as a result, the banner trader ad
is back on the bottom of the front page.
Sunday 26th November 2000
An interesting part of the Be website caught my eye as I was browsing through
part of it tonight: publishers of BeOS software can register with the BeOS logo
program and use the BeOS logo on their site/advertising/product packaging or
whatever. I had no idea, however, on just how precise the guidelines for
acceptable use of the logos is!! If you've got a spare minutes, have a look at
the Be Logo
Guidelines for all the details.
There is a similar set of guidelines
for using the Be logo (for BeIA licensees).
December 2000
Monday 4th December 2000
I'm working on an entirely new look for the site at the moment, but it may take
a while to complete, so be patient ;-). Hopefully in the next week or so, I'll
have something prototype-like to offer as a sneak preview to get some feedback
from you all :-)
As many of you may have noticed, BeNews is
down again! Oliver Thylmann wrote into BeForever to offer the following
explanation:
BeNews is currently down and the error is as yet unknown to me. The only thing
I know for sure is that I cannot even log in with ssh to see what is going on
and that the server is still there and not stolen or blown up. Somebody is very
likely to look at it over the weekend.
Hope BeNews comes backup soon. In the meantime, BeBits has moved to supplying
headlines from BeGroovy (and will move towards a system offering users the
choice of BeNews and BeGroovy headlines in their profile.)
Wednesday 6th December 2000
Well, here's a bit of news for the world. Little old me beat BeNews to the
punch about the new Be Branding guidelines! :-) BeNews (now that they're back
up again after their most recent outage), has a story about the exact same part
of the Be site dated November 29th, a full three days after it appeared here on
the BeBox Zone. So remember, you can still read news first here ;-)
The BeBox Zone redesign is chugging along slowly. I've actually spent tonight
redoing my links
pages for my personal website (which has been long neglected ...).
Monday 11th December 2000
I've been away from my computer for the past few days, so apologies to those
people who have sent me email that I haven't replied to yet. I'm *very* grateful
for your feedback and information, and rest assured, I am getting around to
replying as quickly as I can :-)
Tonight, I have added my BeBox Names section
to the site. This contains a very incomplete list of known BeBoxes, detailing
BeBox name, owner, configuration details and a reference for the source of the
information. Please, anyone who has information which can be added to the table,
take a couple of minutes to let me know.
Later on Monday ...
Today's request for help comes from Callum Duncan who has written in and has
some peculiar problems with his BeBox. Take a look
at the details, and let him (and me!) know if you
have any ideas about how to solve them.
Tuesday 19th December 2000
An interesting week in the world of the BeBox Zone. There have been a few
alterations and additions to the BeBox Names
section of the site, mostly thanks to email from several people. Thank you for
your feedback, which has been overwhelmingly positive. :-)
I have been busy working on the site redesign over the past few days; well, as
much as possible in between all the preparations for Christmas, and trying to
tie up loose ends at work before I leave at the end of this week.
I still haven't had any replies from people about Callum's BeBox problems, although I know quite a few
of you have viewed the page which describes them. Please, if you have any
ideas about them, drop
us an email.
Saturday 23rd December 2000
There was an interesting post on comp.sys.be.advocacy recently. Jared Falvo posted his opinion of Be's
position in light of its sliding stock price. While I didn't agree with
everything he wrote, I found one of his comments particularly interesting:
If I were in control of Be...
1) I would continue the BeIA venture (I think it has merit)
2) I would revive BeOS and strive to make it at least as popular as Linux
(no, not by making it FreeSource)
3) I would revive the BeBox as a specific platform (not just as another PC
clone, but as a PowerPC computer like it started out as... with *maybe* a PC
variation)
I guess it's pretty obvious that the comment I found of most interest is the
one about reviving the BeBox. What do you guys out there think about that? A
worthwhile idea? I still believe there could be a place for a PowerPC based
BeBox with a premium level of hardware on it (and BeOS optimised to take
advantage of it). I agree that maybe also an Intel based box could also be
made, but I think people would be less likely to want to pay Be a premium for
such an intel box. A PowerPC based box is a bit different, as people are less
able to build their own PowerPC machine, and so may be willing to pay Be for
one (it works for Apple after all ...)
Jared also made comments about the BeOS and Be's handling of their technology.
Notably, he thinks the BeOS should not have been made available to the general
public at such an early stage in its development. Be, in my opinion, made it
very clear that the OS was pitched at developers in its early days; I don't
believe that it really was pitched at the general public (although technically
I guess it was made available). Anyway, his article is an interesting read.
I'll try and post the whole article up here so you can read it yourself.
So there's some interesting food for thought, even at this festive time of
year. Hope you all have a superb Christmas and New Years.
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