Launching the BeOS on Hitachi Flora Prius Systems (1999) | Hacker News Reader

Launching the BeOS on Hitachi Flora Prius Systems (1999)

testou.free.fr

59 pointsdoener22 comments

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.

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.

That's the state of antitrust in the US: openly State publicly anti-competitive language and documents...

Zero chance of any enforcement.

It's kind of hilarious seeing hacker news report on what the EU does. "Can you believe these ridiculous requirements" says Hacker News.

Yes. Yes I can believe that

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.

> 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.

Be, or rather the remnants of Be, settled their anti-trust case with Microsoft for $23.3 million in 2003.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131109045719/http://www.intern...

And from BeOS Haiku lives on.

If you haven't you should check it out.

https://haiku-os.org

It without all the X and Wayland mess it's a good alternative for an operating system.

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.

0: https://bebits.irixnet.org/beos/docs/DR8/UserDoc/DR8UsersGui... "The pin-out for the logic probe interface is available upon request from Be, Inc. Be can supply a card and analyzer set-up libraries that connect the CPU bus to an HP 1660A."

1: http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/de...

It’s been a while but are you talking about the “Geekport”

https://www.beunited.org/bebook/

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...

I see. I have a BeBox if you want to work on it.

Hitachi's press release where Preinstalled BeOS was announced:

https://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/E/1998/981111B.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40712847

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.

Good times.

Imo they had already lost at this point.

Sad, I used BeOS full time for a few glorious months right after the Intel pivot. Reminded me of my Amiga days.

May I ask what your tasks were you did with BeOS. Just curios.

Coding mostly, which is what I mainly use computers for; it offers pretty nice C++ APIs for building apps.

But I also used GoBe Productive, which is by far the nicest office suite I've tried.

And playing music, back then it was the only OS that could play an MP3 without skipping while you used the computer for something else.

I played around with BeOS a little about 25 years ago. It did perhaps the best job of remaining responsive under high load of any OS I've used.

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.

Me too.. and I used it at work while at Lucent too.

Launching from Windows is funny. Reminds me of GRUB4DOS and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software) even if the particulars differ.

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.

You absolutely could dual boot them. I did it at the time.

I reviewed BeOS 5 at the time:

archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PCW%20200007%20July%20Created%20From%20PCW%20Cover%20CD%20%28No%20Cover%29/page/n50/mode/1up

Via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzosnPSETzk

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