BeOS install

[FoBoT]

ok i just put together a boxen from scratch to load BeOS

well, am i right that the installation boot floppy is "designed" to only install onto a system with some other OS? or does it just not like multi-drive systems? or doesn't it like scsi?

it stops on boot and says something like "too many drives"
i can't boot directly from the cdrom, don't know why

any thoughts?

or yeah, a couple more details
no ide drives
a 4.5gb scsi drive internal, 2 gb scsi external

at this point i am loading red hat 7 onto the 4.5 gb hd in a 850mb partition, to see if that will make the system "more like what the boot floppy wants to see"

:confused:

[Beowulfs_Ghost]

If you hold down the space bar during boot, you will get a menu of options. You can use this to specify what drive you want to boot from.

I can't offer anything more right nw, as my BeOS box is on the fritz (old HD buring out). If this doesn't help, I'll see if I can get you more info tomorrow.

[FoBoT]

ok, i bet it says that somewhere in this book :o

anyway, i got the red hat 7 install done, i am posting from nutscrape
so i will shut er down and see if BeOS will go on as smoooooth as rh just did
thanks

[FoBoT]

it was a bad floppy disk, oops

i hate floppy disks :mad:

[Beowulfs_Ghost]

I've gotten various weird messages from corrupted floppies.

You may want to give BeOS's boot manager a try. Just type 'bootman' in BeOS's terminal.

I've used it with Win9x, Linux, and FreeBSD with no troubles.

If you do install bootman, try typing 'M' instead of enter at the boot menu :p

[rppp01]

Now you guys are gonna make me wanna throw BeOS back on a box to tinker with. But I can't! :mad: Be is focusing on BeIA, and not BeOS. This is going to tank the OS faster than the titanic. I wish they would shove BeOS into the market as a viable desktop OS as I love the interface. And it is so fast. I am rambling, I know, but I wish these nuts from Apple who spin off with great ideas would actually push those ideas and market those product (see: Next, BeOS, am I forgetting an OS here? Oh yes, mac). <sigh> Oh well. Call me when v6 with BONE is released.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Beowulfs_Ghost:
You may want to give BeOS's boot manager a try. Just type 'bootman' in BeOS's terminal.


since i already installed RH7, i will use the bootman

i ran into one more problem last night, it isn't recongizing the "media" of the first scsi drive, it doesn't let me create a partition at all on that drive, i think i am missing a jumper for "auto on" or something although since rh works i am not quite sure

rh is booting with a floppy only, it does the "LI" thing when i try to boot from the hd

[XxMaCaBrExX]

I liked BeOS, but it didn't like my computer. It wouldn't see my NIC no matter what kind I put in there. I had to just stick with QNX. ;)

[FoBoT]

i had the luxury of selecting all my components for this new box from the BeOS list, so i don't have to worry about compatibility, except for my burner, i bought that before i decided to do the BeOS

if the burner doesn't work then i am going to sell all my computers and take up gardening :D

[Beowulfs_Ghost]

Can't help you with the SCSI. I don't have any BeOS/SCSI experience. Will it install on another drive? BeOS isn't very picky about were it is installed.

My BeOS installs are usualy fairly painless. Out of the 7 computers I've attempted to install BeOS on, 6 actualy booted. Out of those 6, 1 wouldn't recognize the sound card (some odd ball ESS chip), and 1 would recognize the NIC (cheap SMC chipset). 1 of them needed a video driver off of bebits (nVidia driver). Only one of these machines was built with BeOS in mind.

The one that didn't boot was the only SCSI box I had availible. But it wasn't a big surprise. It was on old Intergraph workstation (dual P133). The thing had alot of proprietary parts that I knew would cause problems. 2 video cards (one built in, one PCI), I couldn't figure out who made the SCSI adapter (custom GUI BIOS hid most of that), it had a PCMCIA slot, and an unknown sound card (though I heard it was a Sound Blaster of some sort).

But I'm rmbling;
FoBoT, you may want to see about downloading the PE version for Linux, and see if it will boot that way.

btw rppp01;
It looks like Be is starting to change their focus back. Alot of the BeIA stuff is done and ready to ship, so they are doing more stuff with BeOS, (BONE, openGL, etc). A BONE open beta is said to be released soon.

[rppp01]

I hope you are right. I wished Be would realize that the market is for PCs, not IAs. Would it matter if they went head to head with windows? They would probably score more clients that way. And, if they did go back to the desktop, I am sure Sony would offer them as an option on Vaio PCs and laptops.
BeOS has so much potential. I would replace windows completely if Be had its act together. BeOS as a client and linux as the server would be a kick *** solution for many a smaller company. But I don't think BeProductive is winning anyone over, nor is BeOS's lack of other apps out there.
I'll still buy v6 when it comes out, but only because I want the company to succeed, not because I think they will.

[Beowulfs_Ghost]

The thing is, no one is critical of M$, and they have 3 different platforms. Win2k for servers, WinME for home use, and WinCE for embeded devices.

In todays PC climate I doubt Be could survive selling BeOS alone. With the "default" Windows, and the other alternatives, like Linaux and FreeBSd, being free, it would be hard to try to compete. I also think it would be hard to just sell BeIA too. In that market you are competing with WinCE, Linux, and QNX.

But buy selling BeOS and BeIA, they can make ends meat until BeOS reaches a critical mass in the way of apps, drivers, users, and developers.

[FoBoT]

ok
i read some of my BeOS Bible on saturday while out of town
it said that i needed to use a linux partitioning program to create the BeOS partition, before trying to load

that worked!
i ran cfdisk from my RH7 partition and made a BeOS partition with the remaining space.
booted the floppy and it let me initilize and mount the BeOS partition and then install to it.
it is about half done loading beos!! :)

we'll see how well it does with my hardware in about 10 minutes

wish me luck! :D

[ 25 March 2001: Message edited by: FoBoT eats Pie! ]

[FoBoT]

it worked!!
it worked!!
it worked!!
it worked!!
:D
:D

and bootman worked!!

:cool:
i successfully installed BeOS!! :)

now to see if it got all my hardware

[FoBoT]

hi
i am posting from a BeOS box using netpositive ! :D

[Beowulfs_Ghost]

A statement from LNO's BeOS geek;

Cool Beans!
:cool: BeOS :cool:

Some of your problems most likely stem from the fact that Be Inc., being as humble as they are, assume that you will be using BeOS as a secondary OS to Windows. The R5 Pro disk come with all sort of utilities to get BeOS working from with in Windows (even a stripped down Partition Magic).

Can you post the specs for your bebox? I would like to know what you got working, and if anything gave you any problems.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Beowulfs_Ghost:
Some of your problems most likely stem from the fact that Be Inc., being as humble as they are, assume that you will be using BeOS as a secondary OS to Windows.
exactly right, loading to a bare drive and doing a BeOS only install basically isn't "normal" so i had to RTFM about "other configurations", no big deal really, just had to read a little :o

Can you post the specs for your bebox? I would like to know what you got working, and if anything gave you any problems.

so far all hardware is ok, except it has locked up a couple times, i think this is cause of the overclocked, but not overvoltaged cpu, i dropped back to 266mhz this morining and am running the RC5 (www.distributed.net) client all day, will see if it locked up when i get home

it found my new yamaha cdrw fine, although i haven't burned anything yet.
i found a driver for an old scsi-2 dds tape drive that i found and put into the box, it works, but i have to find a program to use it

i will load VNC onto my other desktop tonight and then use the Be boxen to run the VNC viewer to access it, i might be a KVM later depends on how nicely vnc plays

the motherboard is a SUPER P6SLS (http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440LX/p6sls.htm) with a pentium II cpu. i don't know for sure what the cpu is supposed to be, i got it second hand from Compnuts, he said it will overclock, and it did fine up to 300mhz in red hat 7, i had to drop back to 266mhz in BeOS (so far) as previously mentioned

i have a spare 64mb PC 100 memory in it for now, i ordered a 64mb ECC PC 100 for it that should arrive today (maybe, they "accidently" shipped it to somebody else last week , and claim to have reshipped it for delivery today), i will then swap the RAM, will add another 64mb ECC next pay-day ;)

the video is an old matrox millenium 4mb pci card , i ordered a 8mb agp nvidia chipset card, but it is lost in space with that ram order

4.5gb scsi 68pin hd internal
hp scsi tape drive
the scsi controller is built into the mobo (an on-board Adaptec 2940UW Ultra Wide SCSI controller)

the yamaha cdrw 8x/8x/24x is in an external scsi enclosure along with a 2gb scsi-2 hd (for storing .iso's to burn and laying out files ie mastering area)

a best data VC100 video capture card, with a BT8?? chipset, it is recongnized by BeOS, so i have two web cams plugged into that, will use the codycam to run those cams :)

kingston pci ethernet card

ok, this is long enough

now i just need some "spare" time to play with it :(

[ 26 March 2001: Message edited by: FoBoT eats Pie! ]

[Beowulfs_Ghost]

Nice setup you got going there.

About the lock-ups;
Yah, BeOS doesn't play nice with overclocked systems. I've played with BeOS on my parents PII266 96MB. It works pretty good. Having more RAM always helps. Especialy if you are moving aroung and manipulating audio files. But as far a processing power goes, I would run SETI all the time, and never notice any lag in the system. BeOS does a pretty good job of jugling around CPU intensitive tasks, so your system always stays responsive.

Have Fun!