Installing BeOS on a TAM. Oh no.

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Oh no. I'm doing BeOS again. This time on a TAM.
What could go wrong?
LINKS:
🍎 Previous TAM Video: • Holy Crap, Look at thi...
🍎 Preinstalled BeOS images from that kind person who told me it's actually possible: macintoshgarden.org/apps/beos...
🍎 Tinker Different thread: tinkerdifferent.com/threads/b...
(Amazon links are affiliated links)
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#Macintosh #PowerPC #BeOS

[@macintalkshow]

I just visited the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, MT last week (highly recommended to everyone, btw). They had a complete TAM on display. I'd never actually seen one in person. I couldn't help but think, "...Action Retro's has nicer speaker fabric."

[@infamousacidrain]

Can confirm this is what installing BeOS back in the day was like. Ended up going to Linux because I couldn’t get it all working.

[@memsom]

But was that on PC? Mac it was simple. What kills now is the install media is failing.

[@kaitlyn__L]

When 90s/early-00s Linux is the bastion of ease and reliability by comparison…

[@memsom]

@@kaitlyn__L the Intel install was a problem because PCs had so many hardware variations. Be was a small company and they only supported a subset of common hardware configuration. The BeBox it just installed on. The Mac, as long as it was listed in the PowerPC ready list, and you had an appropriate version of MacOS to bootstrap with, it just installed and ran. The only issue I ever had was my graphics card being in the wrong slot on my 9500. MacOS would boot fine, but BeOS would hang.

[@memsom]

@@kaitlyn__L and no, from personal experience, Linux (Yellow Dog specifically) was an absolute ball ache to install and get to a GUI in comparison.

[@infamousacidrain]

@@kaitlyn__L it certainly had BeOS beat on compatibility, even in the earlier Linux times.

[@athstreamsandmore]

I used BeOS Pro 5 on my AMD units. The OS was fantastic and had a great following. I loved GoBE productive suite and the book by Scot Hacker called "The BeOS Bible". It was a great book for this OS. Luckily, this OS is still in development past the DANO build stage under the name Haiku. It runs on Intel and they are getting ARM Support going. Albeit really slow in development, it works great.

[@greenaum]

Oooh, be nice if they could get an ARM version running on tablets and set-top boxes, the sort of stuff that presently runs Android. Would be nice to loosen Google's grip just a little bit, and to have an OS that's nice and smooth and attractive to look at and use. I haven't used it, though I've heard about it since it was first proposed. I might have to sort out some sort of VM for this computer, it's got all the stuff on board to do that, after all, all modern PC CPUs do hypervising. Or I might just stick with DOSBOX and old games.

[@BryanIrvine]

@@greenaum The ARM version has been stalled for years. They do have a risc-v version running though.

[@BryanIrvine]

"Still in development" not quite, BeOS died 20 years ago. Haiku is a complete ground-up rebuild. Like ReactOS vs. Windows. Haiku does have a 32-bit gcc2 version that will run (most) native BeOS applications, though.

[@DanielMReck]

12:47 "Time to call in the big guns!" .......and disappointment that he isn't pulling out an ancient MacBook to send an email to the BeOS customer support address in the error message.

[@RichsRandomRetroReviews]

I have no idea why, but BeOS holds a special place in my heart. A number of years back I built a 100% compatible dual PII machine just so I could run it (after having issues with various hardware back in the day). I then decided to build another one a few years back with the help of a friend. I did a couple of videos on it you might find interesting. It's BeOS for x86 mind - kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpaWh5qggr6chLM. Also it's Jean Louis Gas-ay. Not Gas-ey-yay. I did an interview with him a few years ago to ask some questions regarding Be and BeOS. It was a great insight.

[@nickwallette6201]

I did a demo for a friend: Using the OS's native CD audio file system driver to read a "wave" file from an audio CD, encode it in real time to MP3, read that MP3 file with one MP3 player (I think it was CL-Amp) and stream it via HTTP to "the other" MP3 player (I don't remember which that one was, or maybe I got the two in the wrong order?) It was the most ridiculous way to play an audio CD, but the fact that BeOS could do it at all ... was just striking. BeOS was so graceful and light on its feet. It felt like you were using a next-generation (or two) computer. It broke my heart when BeOS got relegated to "Internet Appliances," and then sold to Palm for spare parts.

[@draggonhedd]

I love BeOS. Bebox is on my must-have list. Back in high school I had an AMD k6 system running BeOS as a secondary computer for when friends visited (we were computer geeks but nobody could afford a laptop) and I was astonished at how fast and snappy it was in the era of the first athlon 64s. I really wish it had gained a bigger foothold.

[@memsom]

Glad the image worked out for you man, it was a PITA to make it as getting gigabytes of data over base10 Nic is no fun. Glad imaging the SDcard worked out for you. Shame you didn’t delve in to the Cool Installers folder as iirc it had Gobe Productive. The CDDA link is also cool, it will mount the CD audio cd’s and directly grab the tracks (though in WAV or AU format iirc)

[@Valthonis]

I used to run BeOS on my old Abit BP6 with dual Celerons. It ran amazingly well.

[@dhardison]

Same. Abit bp6 with BeOS was screaming fast for the day

[@JK-mo2ov]

I love how clean it looks on the front then you show the back and it looks like C-3PO while Chewy has him in parts on his back

[@billyjhamlin]

You should've uploaded a 40 hour long video that just looped for a great "we're not stopping until it works" gag.

[@linuxization4205]

finally BeOS at peace.

[@NicholasMucci]

Hey man, thanks for the shout out! I’m really glad you got it working. :)

[@pianokeyjoe]

BeOS 4.5 did NOT have SATA drivers or modern chipset drivers when it came out in 2000. BeOS 5.03 pro also did NOT have Sata drivers but it did have drivers for more modern P3 systems and I know nothing about Macs with it. The I tried installing BeOS 4.5 in my intel P3 system and it did NOT work. I then did the 5.03 pro and it is still installed and working today. I did a CDROM install of BeOS 5.03 pro. I can play mp3 music with it. Sadly I only got BeOS 4.5 to install back in 2K on a super socket 7 system with a ATI AGP 8mb video card and a soundblaster 32.

[@aswxwing]

Once again awesome content, Really enjoyed your BeOS adventures.

[@BrianJones-wk8cx]

TAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMM! Great work outta you, appreciate all of the shenanigans, SD card or not.

[@tomwagner9980]

Had to get up this morning and watch this first thing, even before coffee. Gives me inspiration to mess with my old macs today.

[@waydegutman7339]

Very interesting project you went through there. I encountered BeOS demo in a Las Vegas computer convention in the late 1990s, it was impressive.

[@10MARC]

Clever! I remember being excited about BeOS after Amiga went Belly Up on the 90's. A lot of us were excited about it as it had a lot of features from AmigaOS that we were used to. Funnily enough, AmigaOS is still being developed and sold and BE bit it!

[@OneKnifeYeHand]

BeOS is also kinda still being developed, but yeah, AmigaOS never died while BeOS only got resurrected!

[@quinton1862]

Fantastic! So much fun seeing these videos

[@DavidRavenMoon]

My Power Computing, PowerCenter 132 came with a copy of BeOS. I was always amazed how it booted from right inside macOS and just pushed it aside! It booted in the flash of an eye too. (Of course you also had the boot loader option.) Was a lot of fun to mess around with, but not yet very useful. These days I run Haiku in VMWare on my iMac. 😃

[@TaijanDean]

Awesome! The earliest I've been to an Action Retro video.

[@user-sk7ru3du9k]

My goat, i can't wait action with NEXT action retro, of course

[@treyparker8303]

PLEASE GIVE IT A BREAK! actually keep doing this is funny and entertaining. Great job again! Keep doing your shenanigans! I was the first view, got here 58 seconds after this was released.

[@wojiaobill]

to Be or not to Be, that is not a question

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Never knew About the BeOS great info very neat to see that run on the Tam Sean

[@fractalMD]

I must say, that is a mighty fine tshirt you have on for the outro.

[@youdontneedtoseehisidentif4939]

[ _watches Action Retro struggle and repeatedly fail to just_ *install* _the operating system_ ] Y’know, I really can’t figure out why BeOS wasn’t more successful 🤔

[@Toonrick12]

It's possible that it's more of Apple's fault. The Mac ecosystem was not friendly with any other OS than Mac OS until the Intel change-over. Even A/UX wasn't happy on certain Macs.

[@belstar1128]

Yea this and os/2 seem to have had some big issues. I think the biggest hurdle alternative operating systems have is that installing them is hard. That is why windows and mac os are so popular they come pre installed. Even Linux is very intimidating to non technical people because a lot can go wrong during installation.

[@memsom]

He failed mainly because MacOS 9 will not boot BeOS because the Be boot loader stopped being updated after MacOS 8.5. The image he used looks like my custom image I pointed him to. It uses a modified DiskUtils image to boot minimal MacOS and then launch the BeOS boot loader. The MacOS boot image is like, 2mb.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Other commenters here talking about going out of their way to make sure to build a system with compatible hardware, it sounds like BeOS was pickier than making a fully-functional Hackintosh!

[@another3997]

@@kaitlyn__L You can't really blame BeOS for being picky. Be Inc couldn't write drivers for every hardware combination out there, whether it be on PC or Apple. Writing and testing drivers is a big job. Apple certainly wouldn't help much, they didn't want competition for their own OS on their own hardware.

[@retroron]

My kind of OS fun. Keep em coming 🤓👍

[@Mainyehc]

How can this machine become any more cursed? Also on that note, I’m still waiting for the XPostFacto iteration of this saga 😂

[@stgigamovement]

And LeopardAssist plus that Snow Leopard PPC beta

[@PotatoFi]

It's always fun to see the RaSCSI case on the channel!

[@stevew8513]

Hey, at least you got BeOS working. I bought a copy in the '90s to install on my (allegedly) supported UMAX C500 and I never even saw the BeOS logo. I installed a new partitioned HD just for it, too, and all it ever did was freeze my computer solid.

[@stephanemignot100]

There is some BeOS 5 stuff for the TAM on the Garden.

[@TurboSanger]

I have been on the internet for 20 plus years, I've watched thousands of videos, this is my first comment on a video. Hi Shaun, I really like what you do! I would love to see the ultimate Tam Frankenstein...Tamkenstein. I would love you to put an operating system maybe mac OS X whatever flavor. I would love to see a huge Mac monitor hovering over the Tam that is twenty years newer than the TAM. Maybe it could be PCI graphics driven..or the Action Retro way you have already done. I would like to see Maximum Mac everything, g5 if possible S.S.D. etc, either way I'm along for the ride. Hand gestures and crazy computer shenanigans....OWN it!

[@TurboSanger]

P.s. I just did my first subscription ever to yours.

[@nevyn]

”The Core and Foundation” of macOS… I appreciate you 😂

[@RajelAran]

OOOOOOOH YES. Gosh that's great. MacOS8.6 with BeOS5 was exactly my last working config back in the day, running on a Mac clone! It was zippy as heck on that 603!

[@BonkedByAScout]

I wonder if you could tie the reset line on the 603e low and tie the line on the expansion card high to force the onboard one into reset and force the G4 into operation.

[@MrAlan1828]

I still have my original BeOS 5 Pro purchased waaaay back , need to take it out again now

[@GarthBeagle]

Hah! That video cable ended up being really helpful, not just a gimmick 😃

[@Djformula]

BeOS what a lovely world, I always admire that OS ❤

[@ultra98000]

That TAM ks absolutely gorgeous

[@MikeFromDownUnder]

Love this❗❤

[@ExpZach]

My dad used to work at Be, he was the founder of BeNews.

[@smartperson1]

Are you also wondering: what happens if you rearrange the extensions, and have the sonnettech L2 extension load before the BeOS chooser extension?

[@richfiles]

I remember the BeOS hype back in the day. I was the big nerd of my class, and I remember one of the items I buried in the class time capsule was a copy of Mac World or Mac Addict or some such magazine predicting that BeOS would be the next generation of Mac OS... Hehe... Honestly, I just want my first robot back. Hopefully we can find the darn capsule for the 30th reunion...

[@gentuxable]

On Intel BeOS worked on most machines with no problem. At the time 1999 or so there was a magazine that had BeOS 5 as a live media on their cover CD. We tried it on a few machines and there was only one system with a Riva TNT or so that didn't boot but all the others booted just fine.

[@martinlebl631]

Yes, BeOS 5 was much better than earlier version, but by then it was over for BeOS.

[@rootbeer666]

If a giraffe wants to run BeOS on a Mac, this guy has it covered.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

Any BeOS experts here? What would be the best sort of pc hardware to use to try this out?

[@3rdalbum]

Doesn't the classic Mac OS need to be within the first 10 gigs of the hard disk, or something like that?

[@VeryWarmBear1]

Can lift the drivers for data and G4 from Haiku?

[@SullySadface]

Well, at least you have that chonky startup chime >Basically winamp >bottom right corner >basically

[@stevenjlovelace]

Where did you get that T-shirt? I made a very similar mashup (though to be fair, it's a pretty obvious idea), only mine was black.

[@mojoxerspootykat594]

This was a great video! I loved using BeOS 4.0 when it was new to rip CDs and make mp3s. It was much faster and easier than using Windows 9X at the time. Does anyone know if BeOS will run on the Early Intel Macs, like the MacPro 1,1 or MacMini 1,1? This would be a fun alternative to the various Lin*x distros to play with.

[@pianokeyjoe]

What intel system did you get BeOS 4 to install and run on? BeOS 4.x will not install on P3 or higher. I tried. I had to use BeOS 5.03 pro. And to answer that last question: NO. BeOS of any kind will not install on Intel Macs because those machines used the new gen Intel CORE line of CPUS and chipsets. Be only ran on Pentium MMX and AMD with 3Dnow upto P3 systems with the right video and chipsets(VIA and INTEL). I am speaking from experience as of 2018 when I last played with BeOS 5 and is still on my P3 slot 1 Via mobo system on a 40GB HDD(IDE only).

[@mojoxerspootykat594]

@@pianokeyjoe It has been so long it's hard to remember what it was. But knowing my predilection for AMD systems back in the day, it was likely a K6-2 or K6-III system. It MIGHT have been an early Athlon or even Duron system, since I was really an AMD fanboy then. I'm disappointed to hear that the early Intel Macs are a no-go. Ah well.

[@RobReynolds]

Does the 4.5 installer not see the ide / sd card?

[@fc3sbob]

BeOS is the best, I bought a copy of 4.5. I had it running on my Sony laptop in the 90's. I could load every video I had at once and play them at the same time, it was so amazing.

[@theposguy1435]

I am not a mac guy at all, But I do enjoy your channel I have a special request can you Make a video trying to install Mac os on x86? And is it even possible?

[@Nymunariya]

did you just drag and drop the files to make a backup of the TAM? You should really look into Disc Copy for making backups. It can also restore them, but I prefer to use Apple Software Restore for that. It makes managing multiple harddrives for multiple macs super easy.

[@everyonesloopy]

wait, now i want to see if BeOS can be installed on a Next machine, i mean, if it runs on a mac, it HAS to run on a Next, right?

[@francoisrevol7926]

Haven't watched yet but I HAVE to like it! 😀

[@CDE.Hacker]

In putting my PowerMac 9500 on ebay, I noticed it still has the BeOS launcher. I must have reformatted the BeOS drive because the third drive is a Mac drive again. Now I wish I never formatted it again. It's still on eBay until Thanksgiving, check it out.

[@MichaelSidneyTimpson]

Why don't you install an ssd as an ide drive in the cd rom drive that doesn't work

[@MichaelSidneyTimpson]

OSX, OSX, OSX....also Linux! And why not UNIX or BSD? Nextstep? Gamecube OS?

[@TheRedoxRxN]

So are we going to see the TAM triple booting into MacOS, BeOS, and NeXTStep in the next video?

[@teg24601]

I've seen it discussed multiple times in Video Game circles, but it is possible, that the Be CD is suffering from bit-rot, to a degree that error correction cannot overcome. There are a number of PS1 and SegaCD games that people are losing from this phenomena, and it is happening to a lesser degree to PS2, GCN, DC, and other early optical consoles.

[@jperih]

I was always told the Launcher and Extension do not work on OS9, just use OS 7 or 8

[@DimNussens]

that is just incredibly impressive! Install media is the ficklest of mistresses.

[@NewmansMusic]

Is BeOS using the blue curve UI? Haven’t seen that since Redhat 9.

[@sluxi]

it's not Bluecurve, it's BeOS's own UI. I did always like Bluecurve & Wonderland icons.

[@TyTytheCat2004]

would be cool to see if someone could 3d print a custom case for your TAM that'd hold all the components you've added to it

[@gatts205]

"Beeeeeeeeee!" is the "Khaaaaaaaan!" of the Mac world

[@m4dizzle]

"What could go wrong?" Yes

[@krzbrew]

I can just say You son of a Be, you did it.

[@Mainyehc]

Ooooor… why not go full Rhapsody on it? 😏😈

[@nalinux]

I loved playing Quake with a Voodoo card on BeOS 4.5 :)

[@kylerbelshaw7042]

21:10 What the Titan is Luz's mom doing here? I knew she was a bit of a sci-fi nerd, I didn't expect her to be a computer nerd.

[@AndreDeLimburger]

I believe it required OS8 to boot, and won't boot with OS9.

[@BryanIrvine]

I started running BeOS at RC2 PPC on a Power Computing PowerBase 180. I was sad when it died. I'm glad Apple went with Next because it was just a better more complete OS, but I miss Be.

[@Tennesseeroadster222]

20th anniversary mac says I'm the dude playing a dude disguised as another dude

[@denniswoycheshen]

Winamp, it really whips the llamas ass.

[@NetrunnerAT]

Why Not use PATA to SATA Converter or SCSI to SATA?

[@tacotime3094]

Yes

[@tacotime3094]

Yes

[@Mainyehc]

Yes

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Apple secret police open up!! Oh he's just messing with that TAM again nevermind

[@retropuffer2986]

That install Be FanTamstic. 😜

[@evertonshorts9376]

Does this disk image work with Sheepshaver?

[@stgigamovement]

You should try running that dev build of Snow Leopard that runs on PPC via XPostFacto and LeopardAssist (with whatever else is needed)

[@kaitlyn__L]

Didn’t that happen like a year ago?

[@stgigamovement]

@@kaitlyn__L not on the TAM

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@stgigamovement oh I see!

[@stgigamovement]

@@kaitlyn__L since the TAM looks kinda like the post-Tiger Aluminum iMacs, running the PPC beta Snow Leopard on a TAM would be symbolic

[@braydenstafford3634]

Apple is going to sue jeep for using the Macintosh name all over the new wagonneer

[@Nexxxeh]

I've had to swap out all the Kingston A400's as they started failing catastrophically.

[@pianokeyjoe]

On topic with the TAM, BeOS 4.5 would have installed on the TAM just fine if you had left it stock. The main issue is the drives. You can not shoehorn an OS that did not have modern drivers for modern hardware. BeOS 4.5 just did not have those drivers. Heck it would not work with systems made in 2001-2003 so there ya have it. BeOS 5 had mainly DRIVER support updates and upgrades hence it working but again.. NO SATA.. Sata came out with Windows Vista era PCs and MacOS-X Leopard? Era Macs.. Well you know this lol!

[@egbront1506]

There is another stumbling block, which is the G4 upgrade processor. BeOS had zero support for G3 processors or newer. You can only install on the PPC 603/4 processors on the few Apple models supported or found to work. However, after installing, BeOS seems to work perfectly well on G3 processors if you swap them out I have found. Can't speak for G4 but since they are just G3s with Altivec added, they should work too. As for the SATA card Sean used, it is flashed with a SeriTek firmware, which injects two drivers (one for legacy MacOS 7.6-9.2 and the other for OS X 10.2+) so it seems to the naked eye that MacOS/OS X just sees the card as a SCSI card but it is purely down to the drivers within the firmware. Of course, those will not work on BeOS past the small MacOS helper boot partition with the MacOS/BeOS boot selector buttons.

[@memsom]

@@egbront1506 the boot volume for R5 was about 2mb when I created it, so the MacOS is uses is completely hobbled. It is the absolute bare minimum to boot the OS enough to get BeOS to boot. It uses a hacked MacOS 8 Disk Utils image. I was going to also hack the boot logo for MacOS but I ran out of time for making the image.

[@egbront1506]

@@memsom Yes, hence helper partition. Apple's hobbled implementation of Open Firmware can only boot from HFS/HFS+ volumes, so you need a minimum installation of MacOS on a helper partition to host the bootloader and FS driver for BFS (BeOS), or UFS (Rhapsody or A/UX).

[@memsom]

@@egbront1506 pretty sure it is a boot loader and device tree enumerator. BeOS does not care about drivers. Once the OS takes over it boots from OS from scratch. It uses the enumerated devices to grab initialised devices

[@egbront1506]

@@memsom OK. I assumed a FS driver was embedded somewhere as neither OF nor MacOS can see the BFS installation volume.

[@brnrds]

This is getting very silly and I fully support it

[@Alien_Bob]

I can't believe Beyonce made her own operating system

[@jrdavis1992]

She didn't. Although it would be a first if Beyoncé did.

[@JaredConnell]

@@jrdavis1992 then why is it named after her???

[@SordidEuphemism]

It *is* her Internet, after all.

[@jrdavis1992]

@@JaredConnell No, BeOS was named after Be, Inc., the organization that made the system. Not the singer Beyoncé. Her name having the letters "Be" is just a coincidental thing.

[@NielsPaul]

She broke Sean’s soul though.

[@dennissdigitaldump8619]

I just wished there was a card that could emulate the BeOS i/o. So that a modern system would have i/o similar to a raspberry pi/arduino. Imagine mhz level i/o fully adaptable to anything. And yes I do have a two way daq-station, but it was not a part of the OS from the beginning.

[@MichaelSidneyTimpson]

why not keep a second monitor tiled above the first

[@bradnelson3595]

Put a pair of Groucho Marx glasses on the G4. That might get the G4 past whatever recognition barriers that BeOS has.

[@lelandclayton5462]

Back in the day I was getting sick and tired of Windows and I didn't like MacOS. Linux was still tricky to get running and had on system running Mandrake Linux. Anyway, I gave BeOS a shot and loved it. Almost switched to BeOS but I was having issues trying to find a compatible dialup modem. Found one that fit the bill but only worked as 14.4K instead of 56K. I then gave QNX and go and after six months I switched to Debian Linux.

[@OtterlyInsane]

Wasn't there something on the era of Macs having to have a boot partition on the first 8GB of the drive?

[@memsom]

Mac OSX I believe. Classic didn’t care

[@RussellFlowers]

Pretty sure USPS is now attempting to destroy your packages just to avoid all that driving around.

[@uweburger]

I like it ;)

[@Somelucky]

I was pretty sure BeOS died before SATA fully replaced IDE.

[@Nikkerston]

When mac os sorbet leopard on TAM?

[@stgigamovement]

Or that Snow Leopard beta that works on PPC

[@BobCat0]

BeOS ran fine on my Gateway Pentium 233 that I won on Jeopardy!. I prefer OS/2, though. Btw, OS/2 Boot Manager was the best for installing a bunch of bootable operating systems.

[@Vlad-1986]

Yeah, BeOS is really cool. Is one of my fav OSes, and I discovered it just last year. Even had a Haiku partition on my computer. Really hope that modern reimplementation gets better hardware support. Glad to see the real deal on real deal hardware. Seems like the installation is as bad as the modern fork tho

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

i remember BeOS in 1999 i fight with that system on a clone style intel based pc it worked fairly ok to be honest .... i also remember QNX but the sound didn't work.