2x BeBoxes!

[james_w]

They're not Macs... but closely related. My latest conquest over here in the UK was picking up these two dual 133mhz 603e BeBoxes. Both need some TLC but they boot

The guy who sold them to me also has the even more rare AT&T Hobbit based original BeBox. They had to redesign the architecture around PPC when AT&T decided to stop making Hobbit CPUs. I couldn't get that off him too sadly!



If anyone has 3 spare 'blobs' that go on the top of the side 'columns' on the front of the case I would love them! Otherwise I guess I better figure out how on earth to get some 3D printed

 

[jessenator]

Wow. Finding 2 let alone 1 is quite a feat! Congrats. Being from across the pond, were there more of these sold over your way than in the states?

 

[ScutBoy]

Nice! I have a dual-66. Don't think I'll ever find a dual-133 to "complete the set"

The little column toppers on mine had both broken off. I used a bit of glue to put mine back on. Have no idea where a guy would ever find more...

Have fun!

 

[cheesestraws]

I may be being wildly envious slightly to the south of you...

 

[james_w]

Wow. Finding 2 let alone 1 is quite a feat! Congrats. Being from across the pond, were there more of these sold over your way than in the states?

I don't have a clue - although there seem to be 'plenty' (if you can say about such a scarce thing) of them in Europe as far as I can tell from mentions in forums...

 

[jessenator]

I'll be honest, in its time I didn't hear that much of it over here, other than it was a possible contender for an Apple purchase.  The only thing I was aware of physically(?) was a Kaleidoscope control panel BeOS theme, which I liked more than any of the others.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Congrats on finding not just one, but TWO BeBoxes!  I've only seen a handful out in the wild and the fact that you managed to pick up two of the dual-133 model is quite a feat.  You definitely see the Mac influence on BeOS, right down to using the same shortcuts.

 

[olePigeon]

Do the blinkenlights work?

 

[james_w]

The blinkenlights work... see video here:


)

:

 

[Byrd]

Love the Blinkenlights ... good for five minutes.  Question is, can you turn them off?

 

[register]

A version of BeOS is available to run on Apple PPC hardware like the beige G3. I remember that I fetched a promotional CD with a bootable BeOS in about 1998. It took ages to boot but was usable. Because it was my office computer I did not install BeOS on the harddisk drive of that computer and have no further experience regarding BeOS.

 

[Fizzbinn]

I still have my boxed version of BeOS 3.1 from 1998 (and the 4.5 upgrade from 99). I recall it being really snappy to use on my PowerMac 6500 I had at the time, I think I had it set up as dual boot? Not sure if this software is readily available on the net somewhere but I can make copy if anybody is interested.

 

[james_w]

Love the Blinkenlights ... good for five minutes.  Question is, can you turn them off?

Yeah, not sure. I hear there's a hack to use them as VU metres for the sound output... but I've not found it yet

 

[james_w]

A version of BeOS is available to run on Apple PPC hardware like the beige G3. I remember that I fetched a promotional CD with a bootable BeOS in about 1998. It took ages to boot but was usable. Because it was my office computer I did not install BeOS on the harddisk drive of that computer and have no further experience regarding BeOS.

It was my impression that they never got Be OS working on G3, but I could be wrong! I have it on a Umax 604e-based clone too (a Super Pulsar)

 

[Franklinstein]

Neat score. I've seen one or two of those for sale but they're always really expensive. I'm not into them enough to pay that price, but I'm not the only one who felt that way:

In the early '90s, former Apple CEO Jean-Louis Gassee set up Be, Inc to build and ostensibly market workstations with a new, modern OS. His end goal was to sell BeOS to Apple as a replacement for the aging Mac OS, which partially explains why BeOS was based on Apple's leftovers (first Hobbit, developed from CRISP by AT&T at Apple's request, then PPC, a combined effort of Apple, IBM, and Motorola). However, in his usual arrogant way, Gassee demanded an outrageous sum for Be, Inc, a startup which had yet to ship a finished product and thus had no proven value or customer base to leverage, so Apple walked away and bought NeXT instead. Apparently Gassee didn't have a viable Plan B(e), so sure was he of his position in trying to sell to Apple, and Be went out of business a few years later, first after dropping its hardware division (they never officially shipped anything that wasn't a developer system) and then not long after porting BeOS to x86 everything was sold to Palm, Inc in 2001 (for $11M, far less than the $300M Gassee demanded from Apple, and Apple's counter of $125M, 5 years prior). BeOS development was officially discontinued and some of its components were hacked into a variety of PalmSource/ACCESS projects.

BeOS was decent, and the hardware had some neat tricks, but it's nothing more than an interesting historical footnote now, though there are still a few BeOS enthusiasts out there.

 

[james_w]

BeOS was decent, and the hardware had some neat tricks, but it's nothing more than an interesting historical footnote now, though there are still a few BeOS enthusiasts out there.

Agreed, I'm one of them