Installing the BeOS
Advanced Access BeOS Preview Release
For Power Macintosh and BeBox Computers

Contents

What You Need

What kind of hardware you need to run the BeOS.

Before You Start

Care about your data? Read this section first!

Preparing a Power Macintosh for Installation

Getting rid of old files, setting up disks, and so on.

Preparing a BeBox for Installation

Upgrading the boot ROM, and so on.

Installing the BeOS

How to install the BeOS once you've prepared your computer.

Using the BeOS

Getting started.

Release Notes

A few "gotchas" in this release of the BeOS.

Extra Credit: Creating a Partition for the BeOS

If you're brave and have the right tools, you don't need a separate BeOS disk.

Because you'll need to refer to this document while installing the BeOS, you'll probably find it easiest to use if you print it. You can also find the latest version of this document at the Advanced Access Headquarters on the Be Web site.

What You Need

The BeOS doesn't run on just any computer. Check the Advanced Access Headquarters on the Be Web site for a current detailed list of BeOS-ready computers, graphics cards, and other devices.

You can run the BeOS on a "Rev 6" or later BeBox Dual603 personal computer that has at least 16 MB of RAM.

You can also run the BeOS on many models of Power Macintosh or compatible computers that are based on the PowerPC 603 or 604 microprocessor and a PCI bus. This includes single and multiple-processor systems from Power Computing, Apple, DayStar, SuperMac, and other manufacturers.

If you're planning to run the BeOS on a Power Macintosh, you will also need:

• At least 16 MB of RAM.

• A standard Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) keyboard.

  Though you can work with smaller keyboards, you'll find that some tasks in the BeOS are easier with a PC-style keyboard (with function keys and an Escape key).

• A standard ADB mouse.

  You can do almost everything in the BeOS with a one-button mouse, but there are lots of shortcuts that are easier if you have a mouse with two or three buttons. You can use any multiple-button mouse that conforms to the Apple guidelines for multiple-button mice (we've tested multiple-button mice from Kensington; mice from other manufacturers may not work correctly). Note that if you have a one-button mouse, you can emulate a three-button mouse by pressing Control-Command while you click the mouse button to emulate the secondary mouse button, and by pressing Control-Option while you click to emulate the tertiary mouse button.

• A 150 MB or larger hard disk or partition.

  It's easiest to install the BeOS on a hard disk you use only for the BeOS, but if you're brave and have the right tools, you can create a partition on a Mac OS disk and install the BeOS on it, so you don't need two disks. See "Extra Credit: Creating a Partition for the BeOS," later in this document.

• A CD-ROM drive.

  You can use virtually any model of CD-ROM drive to install the BeOS. However, to take advantage of some of the advanced features of the CDPlayer application, you need a Toshiba model 3401, 3601, or 3701 SCSI CD-ROM drive.

• You can use the Macintosh's on-board Ethernet connector or a DEC 21040 or 21041 PCI network adapter to connect to an Ethernet network.

• The BeOS supports the graphics circuitry on the motherboard or bundled as a PCI card with supported Macintosh and compatible computers. See the Be Web site for the latest list of other supported graphics cards.

Important: This list of BeOS-ready hardware is provided for informational purposes only. Support for any particular hardware platform may change without notice. Be cannot be held responsible for the use of this information, or the appropriateness of any purchase decision based on this information.

Before You Start

Before you install the BeOS, be smart! Back up any Macintosh or BeOS files -- as you should do before installing any new software.

Caution: The BeOS Installer application always erases the contents of a disk before installing the BeOS -- even if you don't explicitly initialize the disk first.

If you were running the BeMail application in Developer Release 8 of the BeOS, save any messages you want to keep as text files and back them up onto another disk. You can also download a utility from the Advanced Access Headquarters on the Be Web Site that will convert all your Be Mail to a UNIX-style "mbox" file, which you can read in a variety mail applications.

If you reinstall the Advanced Access release of the BeOS, you may want to back up the contents of your /system/settings folder, so you don't have to reconfigure your network and other settings after you reinstall the BeOS.

Finally, glance through the release notes in this document and on the Advanced Access Headquarters on the Be Web site for any "gotchas" about your combination of hardware and software.

Preparing a Power Macintosh for Installation

Before you install the BeOS, you need to install some Macintosh tools that you use to start the BeOS. These tools are on the Macintosh portion of the BeOS CD-ROM.

1. Start the Mac OS and insert the BeOS CD-ROM.

2. If you have any earlier versions of the BeOS files for the Macintosh, delete them. In particular, delete the BeOS Mac Tools folder, it's contents, and the OS Chooser extension, which is in the Extensions folder in the System Folder.

   You can't use any of the files from previous releases of the BeOS with the current release.

3. Open the BeOS Install CD-ROM icon (if it's not already open) and double-click the installation script named Prepare Mac for the BeOS. In the window that opens, click Install, and then click Continue if you're asked if it's OK to quit other applications. When the installation is complete, click Quit.

   This script installs a folder named BeOS Mac Tools on the Mac hard disk. It also installs a system extension file named OS Chooser (in the Extensions folder in the System Folder), which lets you choose whether you want to start the BeOS or the Mac OS each time you start the Macintosh.

   Note: If you're planning to create a partition for the BeOS, rather than installing the BeOS onto an entire disk, follow the instructions in "Extra Credit: Creating a Partition for the BeOS," later in this document. When you've created the BeOS partition, continue with these instructions.

4. Open the copy of the BeOS Mac Tools folder that was installed on the Macintosh hard disk and double-click the BeOS Launcher application.

5. As soon as the Be logo appears, press the left Shift key until the boot selection screen opens. Then use the keyboard arrow keys to select the BeOS CD-ROM and press Return.

   If the BeOS CD-ROM doesn't appear in the list (it's listed as "'BeOS', type 'bfs'"), it's because the CD-ROM drive hasn't "spun up" and become ready yet. If this happens, use the arrow keys to select "Rescan for bootable disks" and press Return. You may need to do this a couple times if your CD-ROM drive takes a long time to spin up.

   After a moment, the BeOS License Agreement panel opens.

6. Read the license agreement carefully. If you accept the terms of the agreement, click Agree. If you don't accept the terms of the agreement, click Disagree, eject the CD, and return it to Be, as described in the agreement.

   If you clicked Agree, the Installer application opens.

7. Skip to "Installing the BeOS" to learn how to use the Installer to install the BeOS.

Preparing a BeBox for Installation

Before you install the BeOS, you need to upgrade the BeBox boot ROM -- a portion of the BeOS system software that's stored on a chip on the BeBox motherboard.

1. With the BeBox turned off, insert the Boot ROM Upgrader disk in the floppy disk drive.

2. Turn on the BeBox.

   Messages inform you that the boot ROM chip is being upgraded. When the upgrade is complete, you're instructed to eject the floppy disk.

3. Eject the floppy disk, insert the BeOS CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive, and turn off the BeBox.

4. Turn on the BeBox and as soon as the Be logo appears, hold down the left Shift key until the boot selection screen opens. Then use the keyboard arrow keys to select the BeOS CD-ROM and press Return.

   If the BeOS CD-ROM doesn't appear in the list, it's because the CD-ROM drive hasn't "spun up" and become ready yet. If this happens, use the arrow keys to select "Rescan for bootable disks" and press Return. You may need to do this a couple times if your CD-ROM drive takes a long time to spin up.

   After a moment, the BeOS License Agreement panel opens.

5. Read the license agreement carefully. If you accept the terms of the agreement, click Agree. If you don't accept the terms of the agreement, click Disagree, eject the CD, and return it to Be, as described in the agreement.

   If you clicked Agree, the Installer application opens.

6. Continue with the next section, "Installing the BeOS."

Installing the BeOS

Once you've prepared a Macintosh or BeBox for installation and started up the BeOS from the BeOS CD-ROM, you're ready to use the Installer application to install the BeOS.

1. Choose Drive Setup from the left pop-up menu in the Installer window.

   The Drive Setup window opens, with a list of drives connected to the computer.

   Note: While you're working in the Drive Setup window, don't operate the controls in the Installer window: Your actions are remembered until you close the Drive Setup window and then happen all at once.

2. Click the disk you want to install the BeOS on.

3. Initialize the disk or partition you want to install the BeOS on.

   If you're installing the BeOS on a whole disk (not just a partition), choose Setup -> Initialize -> Be File System (or if the disk was partitioned previously, choose Setup -> Initialize -> Entire Device -> Be File System).

   If you're installing the BeOS on a partition, choose Setup -> Initialize -> PartitionName -> Be File System, where "PartitionName" is the name of the partition you want to install the BeOS on.

   In the Initialize Be File System panel, leave the File System Block Size at 1024 (unless you really know what you're doing), type a name for the disk or partition if you want, and click Initialize. Then click Initialize in the panel that asks you to confirm you want to Initialize (and thus erase) the disk or partition.

4. Once the disk or partition is initialized, click Mount in the panel that opens, and click OK in the panel that informs you it was mounted.

5. Close the Drive Setup window by clicking its close box -- the small square just to the left of "Drive Setup" in the window's title bar.

   The Drive Setup window closes.

6. In the Installer window, make sure "Install From" is chosen in the left pop-up menu, "boot" is chosen in the middle pop-up menu, and the name of the disk or partition you just initialized is in the right pop-up menu. Then click Begin.

   The BeOS is installed on the hard disk or partition.

   When the installation process is complete, a panel asks if you want to use the disk or partition you just installed the BeOS on as the startup disk.

7. Click OK. Or click No to leave the boot preference at the previous (or default) setting.

8. Click the Installer window's close box to eject the CD-ROM and restart the computer.

   If you have a Macintosh, the OS Chooser dialog box appears, shortly after you first see the message, "Welcome to Mac OS." You can use OS Chooser to choose the OS you want to boot: the BeOS or the Mac OS, as described in the next section.

   If you have a BeBox, it restarts the BeOS.

Using the BeOS

To start the BeOS on a BeBox, just turn it on. To start the BeOS on a Power Macintosh, start the Mac OS and then double-click the BeOS Launcher application, which is in the BeOS Mac Tools folder you installed on the Macintosh hard disk.

If you ran the Prepare Mac for the BeOS installation script, it installed a system extension file, named OS Chooser, in the Extensions folder in the Macintosh System Folder. When OS Chooser is installed, a dialog box appears each time you start the Macintosh, where you can click the OS youwant to boot: The BeOS or the Mac OS. If you don't click either OS, the OS you were running when you last shut down the Macintosh boots after a few seconds. If you don't like this feature, simply remove OS Chooser from the Extensions folder.

If you have more than one BeOS disk or partition connected to your computer, you can hold down the left Shift key, immediately after starting the BeOS, to open the boot selection screen, where you can pick the disk or partition you want to boot from. To set your preference for which disk or partition you want to boot from by default, use the Boot preferences application.

Release Notes

This section lists some known surprises in the Advanced Access BeOS Preview Release. For a more exhaustive list, use NetPositive or another Web browser to visit the Advanced Access Headquarters.

• IconWorld is now only for drawing icons. To assign icons, application flags, and other attributes of an application, you use the FileTypes preferences application. Drag a new application file onto the FileTypes icon to edit its file type information. Type a signature in the form, application/x-vnd.MyCompany-ABCD, where "MyCompany" is a short version of your company name and "ABCD" is a four-letter string that's unique among the applications your company creates. Set the application flags as described in The Be Book. You can drag supported types from FileTypes' System File Types window into the Supported Types scrolling list. To add an icon, drag it into a well: The upper well for the application's icon, the lower well is for the selected file type. You can create large (32 x 32 pixels) and small (16 x 16 pixels) icons in IconWorld in the BeOS or in Photoshop. If you create icons in Photoshop, save them as raw files with 24 bits per pixel, 32 x 32 and 16 x16. If you create a mask for your icons and save it with the same name as the icon, but with the ".mask" extension, put the mask in the same folder as the icon when you drag the icon into the FileTypes window and FileTypes will automatically pick up the mask file and use it. You can only see the 32 x 32 icon in the FileTypes window. Ignore the Version Info fields -- they're just a placeholder in this release.

• For a number of reasons, this release of the BeOS uses a lot of virtual memory. If you run out of disk space for virtual memory, the BeOS crashes. If this happens, try using the VirtualMemory preferences application to increase the size of the swap file.

• Hard disks, CD-ROMs, floppies, and other disks aren't mounted automatically. Use the DriveSetup preferences application to mount, unmount, and eject disks.

• While you can read files on Macintosh disks, you can't modify them.

• If you're playing a .WAV sound file that's on a CD-ROM and eject the CD, the BeOS will crash.

• If you're playing a track from an audio CD and eject the CD, the CDPlayer application may crash.

• If you place a file with the same name as a shared library (such as libroot.so, libbe.so, libnet.so, and so on) in the root of a disk or any folder that contains applications the BeOS becomes unstable and may not boot.

• If you decide to keep a copy of Developer Release 8 of the BeOS as well the Advanced Access release on separate disks, you can use the boot selection screen to switch between them when you boot the BeOS. However, if your DR8 database becomes damaged, you can't use the current versions of the BeOS Launcher, OS Chooser, or BeBox Boot ROM to rebuild the database -- you'll have to downgrade to the DR8 versions to have the "Rebuild databases" option in the boot selection screen, and then you'll need to upgrade to the current versions again to be able to boot the current version of the BeOS.

• You may not be able to read the screen if you boot DR8 in 8-bit color and then boot the Advanced Access release in 32-bit color.

• If you have a Power Computing PowerCenter computer, set the screen resolution to less than 1024 x 768 in the Mac OS before you install the BeOS. Otherwise, you may notbe able to read the screen during installation.

• Zip, Jaz, Syquest, and other removable drives aren't reliable as boot disks in this release of the BeOS.

• Don't move, delete, or rename the /system, /apps, /bin, or /preferences folders or their contents, or the BeOS may stop working.

• Pressing Control-C may crash the BeOS.

• Printing and its UI are a work in progress.

• Nearly horizontal lines with a pen size of 2 are only 1 pixel thick.

• The BeOS is not as forgiving as other operating systems if you install VRAM SIMMs in a Macintosh incorrectly.

• The BeOS doesn't yet support fixed-sync monitors.

• 24-bit color is not yet supported on the following graphics cards: ATI Xclaim GA, ATI 264VT, and Iridium.

• If you use the Screen preferences application to set the refresh rate to an obscene level, you may not be able to restore it to a family-oriented level and will have to reinstall the BeOS.

• You can't boot the BeOS if you have Mac OS 7.5.5, Open Transport 1.1.2, and QuickTime 2.5 installed.

• The BeOS can't send or receive MIDI signals on a Macintosh.

• To run the BeOS on a Macintosh with UMAX Dual CPU cards installed, you must disable the Macintosh multiprocessing libraries in the Mac OS, before you boot the BeOS.

• To build a driver, make a copy of the kernel named _KERNEL_ and link against that file.

• While DR8 project files appear to work in the current version of BeIDE, the BeOS will crash the first time you try to change C/C++ options.

• Don't use kill_thread(0).

• spawn_thread doesn't allow the thread_name argument to be NULL. Passing NULL causes an access fault, and typically crashes the BeOS.

• You may have problems opening files larger than 5 MB in the Edit application.

• There are a few problems with multiple workspaces, which you set up and switch among with the Workspaces application. For example, if you restart the BeOS with a workspace open that has a different resolution than the main workspace, the main workspace will start with the other workspace's resolution. Switching back and forth between workspaces will typically restore the main workspace's resolution. Also, switching workspaces can cause the cursor to disappear or become a trashy block of vertical garbage, with only rebooting the BeOS as a recourse.

• Sometimes users of other computers can't send data across an Ethernet network to the BeOS running on a Macintosh. If this happens, sending data from the BeOS to the other computer will usually clear up the problem. A simple way to do this is to enter ping IPAddress in a Terminal window, where IPAddress is the IP Address of the other computer, and then close the Terminal window.

• The Flight application crashes if you choose Second Player from the Play menu or Map from the View menu.

• When running the BeOS on a Macintosh, the Sound preferences application crashes if you click its Defaults button.

Extra Credit: Creating a Partition for the BeOS

If you have the right tools, you can create a partition on a disk for the BeOS. This way you don't need a separate hard disk just for the BeOS.

1. Back up the Mac hard disk.

   Be smart! If you have files you can't afford to lose, back them up before partitioning the disk!

2. Defragment the Mac OS disk.

   There are a number of disk utilities that can defragment a disk. We've tested the Norton Utilities for the Macintosh. Defragmenting a disk allows you to repartition it without erasing existing files. If you don't mind erasing all the files on the disk, you don't need to defragment it.

3. Reduce the size of the Mac OS partition by at least 150 MB, and create a new, 150 MB or larger partition on the disk.

   Again, there are a number of utilities you can use to partition a disk. We've tested FWB's Hard Disk ToolKit, which comes with many Macintosh-compatible computers. The BeOS can only access a single BeOS partition on a disk, so there's no point in creating more than one.

4. Install the BeOS on the partition you created, as described in this document in the section, "Preparing a Power Macintosh for Installation."

Copyright 1997 Be, Inc. All rights reserved.

Be, the Be logo, BeBox, BeOS, GeekPort, and BeWare are trademarks of Be, Inc. Apple and Macintosh are registered trademarks and Apple Desktop Bus, Mac, Mac OS, QuickTime, and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. PowerPC is a trademark of International Business Machines. Metrowerks is a registered trademark and CodeWarrior is a trademark of Metrowerks, Inc. TrueDoc Imaging System Version 6.0, Dutch, and Swiss are registered trademarks of Bitstream Font Technology Solutions, Bitstream Inc. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners.