January 2001

Monday 8th January 2001

First up, Happy New Year to you all.

There have been quite a few exciting developments whilst I have been away.

I-BUG, the international Be Users Group is again active. Yay! There's a really interesting article suggesting that Be should create a new BeBox machine based on Sony's Playstation 2 platform (yes you read that correctly!) It's an idea which I whole heartedly support. This is the latest in a series of such articles on various sites. Perhaps there is something brewing here and we may one day see a BeBox2 being created ...

One of the most high profile pieces of news is that of Sony's new evilla device, using Be's BeIA. There has been substantial interest surrounding the device, which bodes well for the future of BeIA.

Lastly, make sure you don't miss part one of a recent interview with JLG on BeGroovy. It's really refreshing to see JLG talking with the BeOS faithful again :-) Can't wait for part two to be put up on the site.

Tuesday 23rd January 2001

Well, I've just returned from a fabulous trip to Tasmania. I won't bore you with such peripheral details of it, but suffice to say it was a really excellent holiday.

The world of Be seems to me to be coming alive again at the moment; there are a lot of new announcements being made, which is a welcome change. :-) Before you do anything else, you should mosy on over to BeGroovy and check out the second part of the interview with JLG. (Of course if you still haven't read the first part of the interview, you should read that first). Unfortunately, the news does not look all that promising for the future of the BeOS (well, that's how I read it, anyway). JLG refuses to confirm anything about its future, and all the recent announcements that I talked about above have been about the BeIA, rather than the BeOS. Read it yourself, and let me know what you think.

Tascam has also announced that it will be working with BeIA as the platform for future Teac branded audio products. See the press release about it at BeGroovy for more info.

In BeBox related news, there seem to be a few people around who are keen to create a new incarnation of the original BeBox (but with Intel based hardware - urgh). One case which was mentioned on the BeGroovy Forums as a potential "BeBox II" case is shown here without lights, and here with blinkenlights added. There also seem to be quite a few ongoing projects to produce serial driven LCD or LED displays. Pretty cool, but to me at least, still not a patch on those wonderful BeBox blinkenlights.

Tuesday 30th January 2001

Wow! I have been mighty busy over the last week, updating the entire BeBox Zone site. Hopefully you can notice the huge changes that have been made! There's now consistent footers and headers for each page, and some new sections exist. Quite obviously, the front page of the site has been made (hopefully) more user friendly with its easy to navigate menu of sections and an all singing, all dancing new BeBox Zone Image.

The new sections of the site include:

• A FAQs section containing a variety of Frequently Asked Questions about BeBoxes from Be's website. Many of these FAQs have, however, long since disappeared again from Be's site.
• An Articles section containing media articles about the BeBox. This section will continue to expand as I make time to format more articles to add here.

Most other sections of the site have had significant additions and changes made (including much more information added to the technical info and technical specification sections.

In other news, a user named "Duffahtolla" on the BeGroovy forums noted the existance of a Japanese site (in japanese) about a USB, Drive-Bay Pulsebox (ala BeBox blinkenlights). You can run the site through a Babelfish translation to get a rough idea of what the site is about.

I have copied images of both the drive bay lights and a machine running BeOS with the drive bay lights, so you can get an exact idea of what we're talking about here. Note also the Be labels this guy has on his computer. Cool, huh?

Another BeGroovy reader, Zanoni, has, however, been in contact with the site's author, and has offered to translate the site into fluent English. He suggests this will take him "a week or so". Fingers crossed that he can create this translation, as it would give people another option for emulating BeBox blinkenlights on their inferior Intel BeOS machines ;-)

In much more downbeat news (although, given the source, I don't know if it is entirely serious), BeDope announced its final news story today. Checkout BeDope's story about its acquisition of AOL Time Warner, and draw your own conclusions. I sincerely hope that this is NOT the end of BeDope, but if it is, thanks for all the confusion and laughs you have brought to the Be Community over the many years.

As a possible farewell to BeDope, I quote an entry from their Haiku competition of 2000:

Best Haiku Ode To The BeBox:
  No more Blinkenlites.
  The geekport is history.
  Farewell, yon BeBox. 
    - Tom Spindler 

Finally, please, send me some feedback on what you think about the changes to the site.

February 2001

Saturday 3rd February 2001

My big question for today is:

"What has happened to the BeEurope website?"

I tried to visit it today, and the host www.beeurope.com no longer resolves to any IP at all. The most recent update appears to have been on 31st January 2001. Is this part of Be's cost cutting (to only maintain one website?) Looking at NSI's whois information for the beeurope.com domain, it seems it is up for renewal in less than 2 weeks. Given that the website has suddenly disappeared, I wonder if the domain will be renewed? I'd be suprised if it wasn't, as it still has valid MX records, so that email addresses @beeurope.com would still be working.

BeForever has had word from Mike Popovic (Be Inc. employee, and the author of BeDope himself), that the closing of BeDope is, in fact, serious.

Below, I include (care of BeForever), Mike's own explanation for ending BeDope:

But Seriously Folks...

Judging by some emails I've received and some postings on various websites, it seems my last Be Dope story has created a bit of confusion. Excellent. What better way to bring Be Dope to a close than with confusion and chaos - basically the two elements that formed the core of Be Dope for three years.

But I'm writing to say that Be Dope is in fact ceasing publication as of 29 January, 2001 - no hoax, lies, scams, early April Fool's Day jokes - I swear. And no, we didn't really acquire AOL Time Warner.

Why, then? There are a variety of reasons, none sinister or even particularly interesting to the average reader. There is no outside force shutting us down. It's simply a combination of a few factors.

This is not a radical new thought or a rash decision. Be Dope was started on a whim, and I never imagined it would go on for three months, nevermind three years. At least a half a dozen times I've thought to myself "Ah, now I think it's time to lay the site to rest," but opted to continue on for one reason or another - usually because I was just having so much fun.

For example, I was going to close up shop last April 1st, by basically repeating a variation of the previous year's April Fool's "shutdown" prank. I imagined everyone would have commented how lame it was that I was repeating the same joke. But then a few weeks later when I didn't return, they'd say "Oh, now I get it..."

I held off that time because the free BeOS 5 download was hitting the scene, and how could I miss out on all that fun? And many times before and since I've decided to keep on writing. Scaling back on the publication schedule helped out a lot, eased the pressure and just made it more enjoyable for me to work on the site.

Still, it's my personal belief that it's better to end something while it's still in top (or at least pretty good) form, rather than let it drag out forever until it degenerates into a shell of its former self. I always cringe when, for example, I flip by some television show that really should have bowed out gracefully several years earlier. Be Dope has been turning out stories for three years now, and that's something like 17 years in web time.

Or maybe it's my short attention span. Who knows?

In any case, late last year I felt like I should wind things down once and for all. Then, with the announcement of the e Villa coinciding nicely with the three year anniversary of Be Dope, I saw the opportunity to go out with a blast of new stories on fresh material. So here we are, at the end.

In my opinion, it's been a fun and successful three years. Lots of people had a good time, and Be Dope even introduced a few people to BeOS. There are about 430 stories posted in the archive (of which I wrote about 425) for your reading pleasure. The Quotable Jean-Louis Gassée and Icon Tarot remain popular features with visitors of all types.

So what's going to happen to the Be Dope site and its various parts? Well, I'll keep the domain active and all the stories, interviews, etc. up there for the foreseeable future. I'll (slowly) go through and do some code cleanup - tweaking a few broken links, images, spelling errors, etc. And eventually, I'll convert the last of the older stories to the single-page format, for your linking convenience.

Someone expressed regret that they did not order a Be Dope tshirt. Don't worry, I'll leave that available at cafepress.com.

The Quotable JLG, Icon Tarot and Haiku generator will remain active and receive updates as needed - either by myself or more likely by another Be-related website.

Plus, someone has expressed interest in translating Be Dope stories into Japanese. As these stories become available, I'll create a special archive page for them and drop a line to the news sites so you'll know it's available.

What's Next?

Good question. Originally, I was considering starting a web comic of some sort. I can draw halfway decently, and steal /adapt artwork with extreme proficiency. However, looking over the web I've discovered there are plenty of web comics out there, and a surprising percentage of them are both hilarious and well-drawn.

I do have another idea that's in the early development stage that seems promising. It will let me write, draw and be creative/humorous and is wide open as far as topics and styles are concerned.

Is it BeOS-related? Well, not really. Will I use BeOS to create it? As much as possible, naturally. Will I slip in BeOS in-jokes that only BeOS diehards will get? Knowing me, probably. I'll drop a note to the news sites when I have something to show a few months down the line, in case anyone is interested.

Then again, if you have some project going that you think I'd be perfect for, I'm always open to new ideas. Also, I have a book I'm finishing up (any publishers feel free to email me).

Of course, I'll still be inspired from time to time with a perfect idea for a "Be Dope-style" story. If such an idea gets a hold of me and won't let go, I'll write it up and submit it to the humor site segfault.org. This has always been the destination for my non-BeOS related stories in the past (which you can read here).

Another project I worked on recently was a bit of interactive fiction called Guess the Verb! As some folks might have picked up from my constant Infocom references, I enjoy this sort of thing :) I had a lot of fun with Guess the Verb! and will probably collaborate on future works of interactive fiction. In fact, I've been promoted from beta tester to "Vice-President in charge of Pig Exposure" for a game in development by the name of Degeneracy.

Thoughts on BeOS

Just to clear this up, I'm not ending Be Dope because I'm tired of/disenfranchised with/abandoning BeOS. I still use BeOS everyday, and use other operating systems only when absolutely necessary (and then with great trepidatoin). I'll use BeOS as much as possible in my new projects.

And as some people know I've worked at Be, Inc for a while now. and I'm keeping my day job. So there you have it :)
(This is a good time to note that all statements contained in this posting are solely the thoughts and ramblings of Mike Popovic, not his employer or anyone else).

In Closing...

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have visited, inspired, supported, encouraged and otherwise supported me in my efforts these past few years. I couldn't have done it without you.

If you have any comments or questions, you may email me (editor [at] bedope [dot] com), or simply add a comment to this story if you're reading it on a comment-enabled website. I'll keep an eye on the threads and reply as best I can.

Rave on,
Mike Popovic

Farewell BeDope.

Wednesday 7th February 2001

Well, BeEurope's website is back on the air again, so I assume it was but a temporary glitch. My post on BeGroovy's forum produced no response (despite 30-odd people reading it), so I can only assume that either people don't care, or the problem was quite transient.

I've started a new job this week, so bear with me, as I probably won't have a heap of time to dedicate to this site over the next week or so.

Friday 16th February 2001

Well, I've had quite a bit of email in this last week from various people with lots of suggestions, information and input. Thanks to everyone who has done so! It's great to hear from so many Be-minded people :-)

As mentioned in my last post, I have been flat out recently starting a new job, so the site has been a bit static of late. Things should start moving again about now. I have a wealth of ideas to implement. Many of those, I will float for comments and suggestions here, in due course. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for improvements, additional information or features, please tell me all about them.

I have managed to make some updates - there are a swag of new articles in the Articles Section of the site. These have all been reformatted and locally stored for everyone's convenience.

In Be news this week, Tim Vernum has created a FAQ for the BeDevTalk/BeCodeTalk mailing lists. Most useful!

Other exciting news that could make your BeBox even more like a UNIX machine (without installing linux) is that Nathan Whitehorn, the author of PPPoE and CHAP clients, has developed a multiuser implementation for BeOS. Thankfully (and this is becoming increasingly uncommon), he has released both x86 AND PPC binaries (for we BeBox owners). Even better, is that he has released the source as well :-). For all the info, read Nathan's explanation at BeNews.

Sunday 24th February 2001

I finally got my Inside BeOS magazine bundle this weekend! Seems there were more than a few problems with some of the overseas orders. The first issue is, of course, in German, but I can read the majority of the information in it. I'm still getting through them, but I'd strongly recommend you support the Be community and get your own copies from BeBits.

I have added quite a few more articles this week, so check them out (particularly those from Scott Hacker's BeHive of 1996/1997). Similarly, I have added some additional information about the Infrared ports on the BeBox to the technical info section.

I intend to focus on expanding the images section of the BeBox Zone in the near future as I have a large number of images which I have not yet published on the site. If you have any pictures of your own, or someone else's BeBox to contribute, please send me a copy, so I can put them up on the BeBox Zone, with due credit to you. :-)

Wednesday 28th February 2001

I've been watching an ebay auction of a BeBox with keen interest over the last couple of days or so. (I wanted to actually bring the auction to people's attention here *before* the auction finished, but unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to. The auction has now ended, and the final price realised by the BeBox was US $1,425.10 (approx. AU $2,710.60)! For those interested, the BeBox was described as follows:

For sale - an original BeBox, complete with operating system, Infrared receiver, and neato cool beta CDs.

• Dual PowerPC 603 133 MHz processors.
• 64 megabytes of RAM.
• 1gb SCSI hard drive
• 2x (maybe even 4x, I actually forget) SCSI tray-loading CDROM.
• More I/O ports than you can shake a stick at, including 3 infrared, 4 midi, 4 serial, audio, keyboard, mouse, and the famous Geekport.
• Infrared receiver the connects to the infrared ports (HP brand). I haven't tested its operation, but it's brand new.
• Whizzy CPU meter lights - two of them!
• Includes BeOS release 4.5 installed.
• Collectors item: Five old CDs from the BeOS beta programs. There's nothing here that hasn't been released, but the CDs look quite cool.
• Cosmetically, the system is in great shape. There are small light-blue scratches on the top, which are not serious and easily ignored or repaired.

That seems like quite a good return for a box that was last available (excluding the secondhand market) sometime soon after January 1997! I'm not sure of any other computer that is holding its value like a BeBox at the moment.

In other interesting news, I have added some more images to the Images section, so I suggest you take a peek.

March 2001

Thursday 1st March 2001

There's been an interesting thread of discussion on the BeGroovy Forums today, about people's reaction to an Intel based BeBox. Deej, one of the regular posters on BeGroovy, suggested that he wanted to buy some parts in bulk, to build and distribute his own 'BeOSBoxes' (I don't use the word BeBox, as he does, because it still wouldn't *be* an actual BeBox). This would be right down to adding geeklights to simulate the blinkenlights of the BeBox. All the detail, and the discussion that ensued, can be found at the above link to the discussion thread at BeGroovy. The case proposed for Deej's box is pictured here.

There was quite a bit of discussion (as usual) about a PPC based BeOS box versus an x86 (Intel, AMD, it's all the same architecture really ...). A user called frizbe pointed out the recent launch of the Amiga One site, which has details about a single CPU (no MP systems seem likely from this project) PPC G3 and G4 based systems. A picture of the motherboard, and another showing details of the board were released on the website today (Australian EST).

Of course the IBM PowerPC Open Platform (POP - aka OpenPPC in the linux world) was also mentioned. It remains to be seen if this will be a viable option, in my opinion, though many have already written it off as dead (due to lack of activity). I really hope that somebody makes something of all the information that IBM has made available. Deej (the original poster at BeGroovy) has stated:

First off, we all must face it... PPC and BeOS is dead. And I sure as hell don't have the money to compete with Sony for Be's time to do it. Nor am I a business, have loads of cash to put into this, or otherwise able to develop a PPC system that BeOS will run on with the current line of PPC chips. I'm sure nobody wants to buy old PPCs in a fancy new box.

Now, I'll say again that I don't personally agree with the statement that "PPC and BeOS is dead", (and I hope that it never comes true, although I reluctantly admit that it does seem entirely possible). Regardless, Deej (and all of the other posters in the thread) are not going to be the ones who pick up the Open PPC reference platform ball which IBM has carefully labelled and left available for people to run with. What is really needed is a company or corporation to realise the desire for an open architecture, multi processor PPC machine. Pios had the right idea all those years ago. When will we see another company follow their lead?

Monday 5th March 2001

Following on from the story above, Beowulfs_Ghost, another user on the BeGroovy Forums, has begun a thread titled New PPC BeBox. If you follow the link to the thread, you'll see that there has been some discussion about reviving the idea of an open PPC platform (as discussed in the previous journal entry).

Beowulfs_Ghost also points out that Silicon Fruit have designed a PPC board and had intentions of having BeOS ported to run on it. Unfortunately, the article dates from December 1999, and like all the PowerPC projects located to date, the RioRed project seems to have quietly disappeared without achieving its stated aims.

So what IS the future of BeOS on the PowerPC platform (of any description)? It seems, as I mentioned above, that unless a company with the resources to develop an open architecture board comes to the party, that the PowerPC platform will not thrive as a BeOS platform (nor probably as a Linux or BSD platform either). Note, that I did not say it will die.

Anyway, I guess you've read enough about all this speculation within these last two journal entries (and if not, you can follow some of the links provided!). I have made some further additions to the BeBox Zone in recent days, including some updates to the BeBox Names Section, some alterations and additions to the Links Section and some additions to the Images Section. Lots for you to go and check out right now!

Also, for those of you interested in purchasing your own BeBox, there is one currently up for auction at EBay.

Saturday 10th March 2001

I've added two new pictures of a Hobbit BeBox to the Images Section of the site, after a Hobbit BeBox appear for sale at Ebay!! I am absolutely amazed! I am waiting to hear back from the seller about some details of its origin and history. It seems, now that I do the rounds of Be News sites, that both BeNews, and BeGroovy's Forum have picked up on the Hobbit BeBox auction, so it's becoming big news in the Be community!

There has been a lot more discussion at BeGroovy about the possibilities of creating a new PowerPC based BeBox. Some of the suggestions and information have been renewed some of my optimism that we might one day rekindle the BeOS PowerPC platform. It doesn't seem like that will happen immediately though ...

Tuesday 20th March 2001

Interesting developments. Shintaro, a BeGroovy user, has posted some very interesting information to the BeGroovy forums; pictures of a case that has an obvious PowerPC BeBox heritage. Take a look at the case, and judge for yourself. It's even got the blinkenlights!

The company selling the case is called P10, and is located in Akihabara, which according to Shintaro is the largest "electronics town" in the world. The case was apparently designed by a bunch of BeOS users in Japan, and first shown at BeCon 3, a Japanese BeOS expo. It has been given the name U061, and is listed as an "Ultima Series" case. Interestingly enough, when translated with babelfish, there is a statement "Strictly Confidential Data" next to the case image.

If it wasn't for some slight differences I can notice (the bottom of a BeBox is not completely flat like the top of this case), I'd swear that it was simply a painted BeBox upside down!! The dimensions appear almost identical (3 5.25 inch drive bays, 1 3.5 inch drive bay), and the two columns with embedded blinkenlights are indistinguishable from the real BeBox's.

I wonder what Be thinks about this case?

Interesting also is that this case is just another small part of the large collection of Be related information on the web which is only available in Japanese. Japan has long had a large BeOS user base, and there are numerous japanese web sites with BeBox and BeOS information. Whilst altavista's babelfish goes some of the way towards unlocking some of this information, it strikes me that a lot of this information probably goes unnoticed and is not appreciated by most English speaking Be enthusiasts. No, I don't have a magic solution to the problem, I'm just rambling some thoughts out about this issue which has bugged me for a while now.

For all you Be history buffs, the Hobbit BeBox which was for sale at Ebay did not sell - the final offer was (US)$335 which was below the reserve price set. As far as I know, it still hasn't changed hands. I checked out the shipping costs if I wanted to have it shipped to Australia, and it's not something I can really afford to do (ignoring the fact that the seller was only willing to ship to the United States anyway ...). I really hope it'll end up somewhere appropriate (as in some sort of computer museum).

In terms of site updates, you should notice a few extra images in the Images Section, some additions to the Logicboard Revsion Guide, and a new image of Be's original BeBox Hardware Specification.

April 2001

Thursday 5th April 2001

These are sad times for Be it seems. Many of you may know by now that Be has recently announced the "elimination" of 27 positions, and, much more tragically in my eyes, the closure of its European Offices in Paris. Long live Be Europe. Within hours of making the announcement (or perhaps even before) the BeEurope website was redirecting to Be's main American site. Unfortunately, it appears the BeEurope site is lost for good, as even Google's cache does not seem to cache the old images of the BeEurope site.

I have also been reading through Be's "Form 10-K" Annual Report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Of course, it has to be a conservative document (being written for financial types who will hold things against a company if they promise the world and fail to deliver), but even taking that into account, it paints a gloomy picture for both the future of BeOS and the future of Be. Some choice quotes:

"We have incurred significant net losses and we may never achieve profitability."

"We expect to incur significant additional losses and continued negative cash flow from operations in 2001 and beyond ..."

We believe existing cash and cash equivalents will not be sufficient to meet operating and capital requirements at our currently anticipated level of operations beyond the end of the second quarter of 2001."

All in all, it seems the days of Be Inc. may be numbered. I sincerely hope this is not true.

Sunday 8th April 2001

Interesting news: Doug Miller of Microsoft offers praise about the BeOS in a recent Slashdot interview. Whilst commenting on Apple's new OS X, Doug offers the following opinion about the BeOS:

"BeOS is a great operating system technically, but hasn't offered the features to obtain the broad ISV support you need to catch on in the mainstream market."

Of course, in context, the comment is somewhat of a backhanded compliment, but it still serves to hopefully raise BeOS in the minds of many who read the Slashdot article.

Friday 13th April 2001

You might remember when I wrote about the AmigaOne project last month. I have just been reading about some updates on the AmigaOne site. It seems things are progressing nicely. There are now some more pictures of the AmigaOne board available to see, and some more FAQs have been added. Importantly, there is also new info for prospective dealers who wish to resell the board. Hopefully something interesting (and useful) for BeOS PPC might spin out of this project.

In other news this week, there has been quite a flurry of activity on the BeGroovy Forums this week about starting a BUG in Australia for Australian BeOS users. A handful of BeOS users have come out of the woodwork to pledge their support for such a group, which is great. We've even settled on a name: BeOutback.

We hope to start off with a website listing all active BeOS users in Oz. Once things get going I hope we could expand the site to offer a bit more information and news, and maybe even out own face to face meetings (and who wouldn't want to attend a BeOutback Developer Conference?!)

On a completely different note, some of you may have read something about the recent realisation that Be has registered the domains openbeos.[com,net,org]. This, naturally, sparked much speculation about whether Be was intending to open source BeOS. My 2.2 cents (inc. GST) on the issue is that it would seem silly of Be not to register the domains, even if it is only to prevent others from creating seemingly 'official' sites concerning open source BeOS. Also, given the amount of licensed code in the BeOS, I doubt it would even be legally possible.

On the other hand, in an interview with ZDNet (18th January 2000) JLG is quoted as saying:

"If it works for Linux, it should work for us."

This was in reference to making BeOS free (as in beer).

The bottom line is that, like most things with Be Inc. at present, we will probably have to just wait and see what happens.

Finally, a bit of idle nostalgia: Who remembers the catchphrase "Unfit for Consumption by Normal Humans" which accompanyed the release of the BeBox in 1995? What's happened to such fun and fearless comments from Be? I miss the 'random', geeky comments that used to flow out of Be. Humph! I guess that's what we get for Be going public. Hrm ...

Thursday 19th April 2001

BeOutback has a preliminary website up. Things are progressing reasonably well. If you're interested, checkout the BeOutback Thread on the BeGroovy forums.

There's a rather opinionated article/interview with Jean Louis Gassée which recently went up at SiliconValley.com. All of BeGroovy, BeNews and newbe.org managed to notice this fact, so there's probably nothing new about this mentioning this article to you. I thought it interesting for a couple of reasons though.

The first reason was one that JLG expressed a belief that I wholeheartedly believe in; that "I work with truly class people". Go Team Be go!

The second was that, despite JLG saying "We have good technology and a good team", Dan Gillmor in his article asks a perhaps rhetorical question "Is that enough anymore?" I'd love to think so, but who knows? The answer to that question is one that is plaguing the Be Community at present; that, and the silly open source question. Roll on closed source BeOS R6/PPC.

Friday 20th April 2001

BE IS FOR SALE!!

Check out the press release on the Be website. I much prefer the sound of a 'strategic investment' than "the sale of all or substantially all of the business or assets of the Company". What future lies for our dear Be Inc?

On a brighter note, there is some revenue flowing through from BeIA. Check out the other press release from Be Inc. Two press releases in a day is pretty big news in itself!

May 2001

Tuesday 1st May 2001

Rushed off my feet lately.

I have, however, found time to update a few bits of the site: checkout some updates to the BeBox Names section, for details on some new (and old) BeBoxen, and also have a look at the Name the Be OS competition from late 1995 (in the History section) to see what the BeOS might have been named!

On a positive note, check out this very positive article by Jason Christie about the future of Be and the BeOS. In it, Christie higlights differences between the oftern compared plights of Commodore Inc and Be Inc, which I think are fairly valid. Christie is one of the few who sees "only blue skies ahead for the BeOS and its growing community". Finally, some positive publicity! Go Be go!

Wednesday 2nd May 2001

I have just discovered an interesting site. Take a look at the bplan site. This company seems to be developing Multiprocessing PowerPC G3/G4 mainboards with ATX formfactor size. Prototype systems were completed in February 2001, and just a few days ago, bplan announced that they have successfully got LinuxPPC booting on their hardware. As an open system which is under active development (unlike most of the PPC hardware projects I've seen), surely this bodes well for a possible BeOS/PPC hardware platform?

Not only have they got LinuxPPC booting, but there are definite plans to support MorphOS. MorphOS aims to provide an environment to run most amiga applications without relying on old amiga custom chips. Now, if bplan can support LinuxPPC and MorphOS, they are obviously open to having a multi OS platform, so what's stopping us getting BeOS/PPC on the list of supported OSs too?

I am eagerly awaiting a reply from bplan to my BeOS queries.

Thursday 17th May 2001

A quick round-up of recent news on the BeBox/Be Inc front that I consider important to BeBox owners and enthusiasts.

I still haven't heard anything back from bplan, and there is no further news available on their website.

Be Inc has recently released another Quarterly Report. It's not all bad news, with Be extending the life of their existing cash reserves to "beyond the 3rd quarter of 2001". This contrasts with expectations of not being able to fund things beyond June 2001 expressed in their annual report. (Of course, they did sack almost a quarter of their workforce :-( ).

Not much news on the BeBox front, nor has much happened with the BeBox Zone in recent days. I am trying to work on getting a forum happening here on the site to allow BeBox owners to swap ideas, knowledge and questions, as I do get sent quite a few BeBox related queries on a regular basis (and I don't always know all the answers!). If anyone has any great suggestions for software to use for a forum, let me know please.

June 2001

Wednesday June 6th 2001

First up, apologies for the lack of activity here in the past couple of weeks - I have been pretty busy with real life work of late.

Exciting news tonight - Jason (aka Shintaro) provided a link to a bug report for R6 beta of BeOS! Take a look at the bug report for yourself. Hopefully this confirms that R6 is on the horizon (and not just a pipe dream of we die hard BeOS fans).

On the BeBox Zone front, I have been working on obtaining some database hosting for the forum that I hope to implement on the site. Also, I have been working on some additional features for the site which I will hopefully announce in the near future (hopefully within the next week, all going well). Stay tuned for details! :-)

Sunday June 17th 2001

A new version of BeInformed, the BeBox Zone News Section, has been launched tonight. The new look page offers news from BeNews, BeBits and BeOS Central (currently unavailable), as well as newly formatted share information. Links to Google's online usenet archive for the comp.sys.be.* hierarchy of newsgroups have also been made available.

In other news, rumour and speculation continues to surface regarding the possibilities of a BeOS R6 release in the near future. Leaked screen shots, and comments by sources close to Be Inc have served only to fuel the burning desire of BeOS users for a new R6 release with new BONE and OpenGL functionality.

Tuesday June 19th 2001

I should also have made mention (in case you haven't read the news elsewhere), that the BeOS R6 bug referred to in the journal entry on 6th June was not genuine. The bug has been assigned a Be Status of "inappropriate" with an additional quote of "funny" added.

So much for R6. Any further information gratefully received :-).

Monday June 25th 2001

For all you people interested in obtaining a BeBox, one has been listed today at Ebay. Take a look at the details at ebay. The BeBox is a 133MHz model, with 16Mb memory, and 730Mb hard drive. It comes with BeOS R3 installed and disks for BeOS R4. It's only just been listed today (my time), and currently has had no bids made. The starting price is (US)$500. The BeBox is located in Boston, MA, in the USA. These chances don't come up often, so if you're interested, get in quickly.

July 2001

Saturday 7 July 2001

For those interested in buying a BeBox (and missed out on the recent auction on eBay), there are another 2 for auction, also on eBay. The previous BeBox sold for (US)$1275.

The first new BeBox auction can be found here. Currently, this 133MHz BeBox is at (US)$425 with 2 and a bit days left of the auction.

The second BeBox auction is for a BeBox located in Menlo Park, California (what an amazing coincidence I hear you remark!). This box has an opening bid price of (US)$500, and is yet to receive any bids. There are almost 3 days left of the auction for this 133MHz BeBox as I write this.

So, if you're one of the many people who has emailed me searching for a BeBox, checkout these auctions.

In other news, sadly it seems that YaBel has ceased to operate. Brett is offering the domain (as well as a backup of all the scripts and content used on YaBel) for sale. The demise of YaBel means that currently there are no longer banner ads in the footers of the BeBox Zone pages (as the BeOS Banner Network was run by Brett at YaBel). Farewell YaBel, and thanks for the great contribution.

Update ...

A while ago, I also joined up with the BeOS Banner Network hosted at bearchives.com. As I was more than happy with the YaBel banners, I didn't ever do anything with my membership. In light of the unhappy demise of YaBel, I have now included the 'other' BeOS Banner Network banners in the BeBox Zone. (Confusing that they both have/had the same name it seems ... ). Thankfully now, it seems the both BeUnited and NeoProgrammer's Collective (amongst others) have taken up membership, so at least you should continue to see only BeOS related ads.

And an oops ... I forgot to include the link to the second BeBox auction at eBay. Check out the auction here.

Monday 16 July 2001

Obelix is working! Hurrah! I have successfully installed BeOS R5 Pro on him, after buying a new 8xCDROM for him. I had some issues with the old ISA network card in him, but once I found the correct settings, we were in business. As well as sporting a new CDROM, Obelix now also has 80Mb RAM.

Obelix does feel substantially slower running R5 Pro than he did running R3.1 (as I recall), but then it's a fair while since then I guess, so my memory may be deceiving me. I haven't yet installed the 5.0.3 update yet, so maybe that will have some affect on things.

So now I can start to pickup the pieces of some very old software project ideas (as time permits). :-) Another thing I have just noticed is that it is 2 years today since I first put up the placeholder 'The BeBox Zone is Coming Soon' page. Wow! Time has surely flown. I'll have to start thinking about some sort of archive to showcase early versions of the site ;-)

In other interesting news, there has been yet another BeBox for auction at eBay. Check out the auction details for more information. This BeBox (sold for US$430) is one of the few I have seen which is coloured the same as Obelix, with dark grey bezel and drive bay covers. Once again, the question of how colours relate to BeBox models is raised in my mind, and once again I don't have a complete answer. If anyone has any ideas or insight, be sure to let me know.

Finally, there is a rev 5 BeBox for sale on Ebay right now. Bear in mind that this machine won't run any recent versions of BeOS, so would be for collectors only (even more so than a rev.6 or 133MHz BeBox). If you're interested, it's currently listed at US$200, and details can be found here.

Tuesday 17 July 2001

After quite some effort (and a large number of implementation issues) there is now a search engine available for users of the BeBox Zone (you!). (This is some of functionality that I hinted at in the journal entry for 6th June 2001. You can use the search engine to quickly find specific information hosted here on the BeBox Zone.

You can access the search engine from the menu bar found at the bottom of all pages in the BeBox Zone. (If you need further encouragement to checkout the search engine, I'll put a link to it right here, so there's no excuse not to try it out :-)

If you have any problems with or suggestions for improving the search facility, please let me know.

August 2001

Sunday 5th August 2001

A few delays since the last update here, and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. Firstly, as most would have to know, Be has layed off another third of their staff (including engineering staff). No longer is there a marketing or sales department at Be Inc (although, from a BeOS perspective, one could argue that one hasn't been seen for many a moon in any case ...).

Another BeBox is for sale on Ebay, this time from France (any connection with BeEurope I wonder?). No bids as yet (initial bid price is approx (US)$950), with 4 days left in the auction. Anyone who's interested better have a look at the details quickly (especially those of you in Europe :-)

BeGroovy had a news story a few days ago about another company attempting to create and sell a CHRP PPC platform. In this case, the company is called Merlancia Industries, and you can read something of their proposed system here.

Deej at BeGroovy seems to think that having Dave Haynie (of Amiga fame) as the company's CTO might bode well for these guys succeeding where many before them have failed; I'm not so convinced (and sorry for sounding negative). Dave Haynie was also (if my memory serves me correctly) heavily involved in PiOS (which at the time had me convinced that they would make their own PowerPC based successor to the BeBox). Unfortunately, PiOS never did, and (I say this with deep regret and a strong desire to be proven wrong) I strongly suspect that Merlancia Industries will also fail to carry the PowerPC ball which could save BeOS on the PowerPC platform.

It seems to be appearing less and less likely that Be Inc will ever release another version of BeOS to the public (this despite rumours on BeRadio recently that there's a master CD of R6 at Be's office, just waiting for duplication and distribution). That's not to say there won't be further work on the BeOS - it is possible that whoever buys Be Inc may continue work on it. However much I'd love this to happen, I think we'd have to conceded that this seems unlikely.

A lot has been said about QNX in comparison to BeOS in recent times (that I have noticed anyway). I first played with QNX's 1.44Mb system on a disk a number of years ago, and was quite impressed at the time. Tonight, I had the opportunity to play with the latest QNX version (in fact, I am using QNX as I type this journal entry). Now, let me say right now (to quell the speculation), that despite my negative tone towards BeOS above, and now the mention of QNX, that I am in no way abandoning my love of BeOS and moving on to QNX. It is simply that the opportunity presented itself to play with QNX again, and I was interested enough to try. Some things that again impressed me about QNX were as follows:

• To install, I whacked the CD in the drive, hit enter about 3 times and rebooted. Presto! There's my working installation of QNX.
• The whole install took about 3 minutes.
• Audio, video, mouse etc. all worked out of the box. Network configuration simply required plugging in the right names and numbers
• It feels very responsive on a Celeron 366 (hard to say more/less responsive than BeOS, since I currently only run BeOS on Obelix (my dual 66MHz BeBox), so it's hardly a fair comparison).

Interestingly, (apart from the install time, and these days, the responsiveness does not feel quite like it used to ...), I think all of the above could be said about BeOS on my venerable Obelix.

So why have I started talking about QNX on a BeBox and BeOS related site? Well, the way I see it, BeOS, whilst it has lost ground through stagnation in the last year or so, is certainly not far behind the pace of QNX. Surely this bodes well for whoever buys Be to continue development of BeOS?! And doesn't this directly contradict what I wrote earlier in this entry? Yes. And what does that mean? Unfortunately, that we just have to ride this out and wait for the dust to settle before we'll have any real idea about the future of our great and ground-breaking OS. May the force be with Be.

Monday 6th August 2001

Before you read any further, sign the Save BeOS Petition

A while ago, Nick Fischer, a BeBox owner wrote describing problems he has been having with his BeBox. (I'm still trying to get a discussion forum going on the site, so people can simply post their questions, rather than mail me, and wait for me to get around to replying ;-). Nick is using his BeBox to control a robot through the GeekPort (cool, huh!), but has had to cover the metal floor below his BeBox's mainboard with gaffa tape! You can read all about his problems here. Please let us know if you have any ideas, comments or suggestions about his problems.

Sunday 12th August 2001

The wait is over! Finally, I have completed the first incarnation of the BeBox Forums! BeBox owners, users and enthusiasts can now discuss any BeBox related topics on their own discussion boards.

No longer must BeBox owners wait while I find the time to answer their queries - instead, we can all now contribute to solving each others BeBox problems, and pooling our collective BeBox knowledge.

Please support the BeBox Forums by contributing where you can, whether that be by asking questions, answering problems, or suggesting ideas for new GeekPort projects.

Thursday 16th August 2001

What is happening with BeOS sites at the moment? Is there a conspiracy against them? BeNews has been down for a number of days now, BeGroovy (including its news and forum sites) is currently down, and BeOS Central has been missing in action for a number of weeks now, after a brief reappearance.

Of course, we still have BeForever, BeFAQs, and others, but there does seem to be an awful lot of upheavel in the world of BeOS news sites. Perhaps everyone is busy playing with a pre-release of R6, and has no time to attend to broken servers?! (ok,ok, just wishful thinking!). I'll be intrigued to hear what's behind all this when things settle down again.

Friday 17th August 2001

Well, I'm not sure when or if things will ever 'settle down' again. As most will already know, Be Inc. has been sold to Palm Inc. for (US)$11 million. Judging from the few press releases and news stories floating around (there seems to have been quite a large amount of press coverage of the sale), the future of BeOS, and even BeIA, looks far from bright.

This news is NOT good news. It does NOT provide us with much hope about the continutation of BeOS, nor it's favoured BeIA cousin. One thing I guess it does do, is provide hopefully continuing employment for most Be Inc. engineers, which is certainly deserved. There has been very favourable comment made in the media (from a number of sources) about the calibre of engineers that Be leaves as a legacy, and which Palm is eager to make use of.

Given that BeGroovy is down, if you'd like to say something about the sale, feel free to pop over to the BeBox Forums and post something.

I knew this was coming, but it doesn't make things any happier :-(

September 2001

Monday 17th September 2001

A long break since the last journal entry, but there has been a reasonable amount of activity on the BeBox Forums in the meantime.

It seems the demise of Be has has afforded press coverage of Be Inc, even relatively mainstream media. Here in Australia, the Bulletin magazine had the following to say:

Be gone
Palm, developer of the eponymous Palm personal digital assistant, has purchased operating system developer Be for $US12m ($22.8m) in shares. Palm recently announced it would split its software and hardware businesses, in part because it is both a supplier and a competitor to Palm OS licensees such as HandSpring and Sony. The acquisition of the beleaguered Be, founded by Apple alumnus Jean Louis Gassée, is intended to bolster the strength of the new software business unit. Be's well-regarded BeOS runs on both Intel and PowerPC hardware but a lack of applications and support from PC vendors effectively torpedoed the company's chances of competing against behemoths such as Microsoft and Apple. BeOS 5 can still be downloaded from Be's web site for free. www.be.com

On the topic of Palm, I'm certainly no closer to knowing what will happen to BeOS under its new Palm ownership. One thing that does concern me, however, is the very obvious fragmentation of the BeOS community in trying to revive the BeOS and encourage further development. Already, we have seen the existance of at least 3 separate petitions to Palm to keep BeOS alive. Now, we are seeing various splinter groups attempting to take control of the BeOS community. Open source BeOS say some. License us the code to continue developing and selling BeOS, say others. Follow us as we create a new BeOS compatible OS, say yet another section of the former BeOS community. How anyone expects something worthwhile to come out of such a divided approach is beyond me.

Until someone manages to unite the BeOS community (or a large subsection of it) behind a single approach to keeping the BeOS alive, I fear our favourite OS is doomed. And, if you subscribe to the opinions of Mike Popovic (former editor of BeDope), then maybe that is the best thing for our OS - to let it "die with dignity".

I must say that we've been through the 'open source' discussion a number of times now, and it is not something that I personally agree with in the case of BeOS.

As for a compatible OS, I don't see that as a practical possibility in the short or even medium term - just consider how long it took Be Inc to develop BeOS to its current state. By the time an ad hoc, hobbyist group of programmers managed to reach the same state, there would be little but historical interest in their work. Also, I'm one who believes that BeOS is more than just compatibility with BeOS applications (after all, FreeBSD, even with linux binary compatibility is still FreeBSD, not Linux).

I think perhaps the direction with most promise is for Palm to license the BeOS code to an interested third party to continue development and sales. Of course, I don't believe that is very likely, as Palm is obviously hoping to leverage from the IP it has bought, rather than distribute the knowledge to outside organisations.

So should we let BeOS die with dignity? Perhaps we should, but not yet! We have to at least try to revive our favourite floundering little OS. But we shouldn't each try to individually swim out to him and drag him back to the safety of further development. Nor should we arrange small swim teams to do so. The only way we will save him will be to act together, act decisively, and act soon.

November 2001

Monday 12th November 2001

First up, apologies for the long pause between journal updates. On the bright side, I have been posting information in the BeBox Forums in the meantime, so it's not like the site has been dead. There have also been numerous small updates and additions to the site since my last journal entry.

If you head on over to the BeBox Forums, you'll see that there have been some slight changes to the topics and forums available. Please complain if you don't like how things are, or comment if you do :-).

The big news for today is that BeNews is (sort of) back! Great to see even a glimmer of life from them. We still don't have the old BeNews content back online, but there is now a news summary page, and new discussion forums available. I have to wonder, however, how many users they have lost during their extensive downtime of late ....

There is all sorts of news about Palm and Be, but I'm not going to enter into that here. Go checkout some of the BeOS news sites if you're interested (try BeGroovy, BeForever, BeNews etc).

The interesting piece of BeBox trivia of late is that Brian Wagner is selling his BeBox. Brian Wagner was the author of Mr Thermistor (an application which used the GeekPort to measure temperature - see the Mr Thermistor pages for more information). Mr Thermistor received an Honourable Mention in the 1997 BeOS Masters Awards. Anyway, I thought this was worth noting as, given its history, this BeBox holds quite substantial interest for a serious collector.

Thursday 15th November 2001

Well, it's complete and official now; Palm has completed its acquisition of Be Inc. What exactly this means for Be, BeOS and the BeIA is still not clear, but hopefully with (finally!) some definite direction and removal of the cloud of uncertainty, we can start working towards saving BeOS.

I await with eager anticipation to see how things pan out. Go BeUnited, Go!

Monday 26th November 2001

Very sad news. The BeBits store has closed citing lack of sales, a high percentage of chargebacks (fraudulent or otherwise cancelled transactions). This has just been confirmed in an email from BeBits.

Thankfully, "As long as everybody keeps clicking those banner ads, the rest of the site will keep running for quite a while". So, do your bit, head over to BeBits and click some banner ads.

 Questions? Comments? Contact Andrew Lampert (webmaster at bebox dot nu).

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