"Please help! I have a notebook with out a cd-rom drive; just a NE2000 network card (+ 800MB hard disk). I want install BeOS, how can I achieve this?"

Well, let's start by saying there are two basic ways to install BeOS. One is a virtual file system and the other is a native file system. Both file systems use the BFS (Be File System).

The "virtual file system" is a file called image.be. Under Windows (DOS/Win9x/WinNT) it must be a contigious file. You obtain this version from Bebits. This version is known as R5.0 PE, (Personal Editon), and was released by Be as a free for non-commercial single users. The Windows based file is in the form of an "InstallShield" setup program. The installer will unpack a 500MB file that is used as the virtual file system to a directory called 'beos' in the root of your 'C' drive. (Once you have that file you can "zip" it down to about 34M for moving or saving as a backup.) To boot into BeOS you must then:

• Under DOS - run the 'LOADBEOS.COM' file.
• Under Win9x - Use the supplied shortcut or a BootDisk.
• Under WinNT - a boot disk is your only option. *

Beware of using NTFS. Windows 9x uses FAT or FAT32, BeOS PE will work happily with these filesystems. WinNT4 uses NTFS or FAT, BeOS can get along with both of these. Win2k uses NTFS (though FAT32 is possible), BeOS will run fine on this configuration. WinXP uses a revised NTFS - BeOS will have problems and may fail to boot. BeOS PE always runs best using FAT32 file system.

When you boot into beos your beos bootloader (a modified version of loadlin) will look for a subdirectory called /beos containing the image.be file or a native partition. If found, it will use the file as if it were a normal BFS filesystem.

BeOS can only exist on a Be File System. The extended attributes that BeFS contains are needed to run many BeOS applications.

So, what do we know so far. We can install a virtual file and compress it and we might be able to move it. That takes a bit of a trick to just move it. On window machines you will need to defrag your disk first. Then you should use the copy with the binary flag and be sure to put it in the correct subdirectory. Copy /? huh?

How do you get that file across to a non-CD machine. You can use any other method to move a file. You can use a Zip disk, a portable CD, a USB device, (MY FAVorite) a network. Hum? Most NIC's have a dos or linux driver. If you run windows you can make a shared CD or a shared folder or file and move across the lan. Yes, you can take the BeOS pro CD and mount it on another computer and use the installer across the lan. All this will only let you have a PE version installed. That isn't really bad but sometimes you want to use the entire hard drive or the entire partition. Lets look at that next.

On the Pro CD or one of the distros like Zeta or max or developer edition you can install straight from a CD to a partition. That is pretty simple and you ought to be able to do that. If you have a working PE you can also use the "Installer" program to "install from" and "install to". The install from can be the current PE or another image.be that is mounted. That can be a mounted CD or a (this is really advanced. There is a Be made tutuorial "Free as in Beer" that describes this process.. you can get this by dowloading the benewsletters archive from BeBits)).

Finally you can alway take the Hard Drive out and move it to another machine. Remember that BeOS doesn't care what machine it is in. Each time it boots it looks to another set of hardware. None of that reboot, complaints, wrong driver like windows would scream. You can use a mini-IDE to IDE adapter for a Laptop style drive (get them from all good PC Hardware sources..)

There is some work to look on PXE and other type of lan booting but none has been posted yet. It could be done with a bit of work.

So, how would I do the above? I might take the hard drive out if it were easy enough. If it was hard (and remember that laptops are goofy with small weak stuff that gets lost) I might just use dos or a min win install to copy the image.be over the lan from a windows shared drive. Any good linux user could do the same with a floppy disk/small distro and don't forget that beos can run on an ext2 formatted drive.

This is it.

1. Create the image.be file. This can be done be installing BeOS Personal Edition on another computer.
2. Move or copy it to the harddrive via some media to the proper directory (c:\beos).
3. Create a bootable BeOS floppy disk to enable you to boot into the "installed" BeOS image (via the image.be file).

If you don't have a BeOS boot floppy disk (something you can easily make from the installed files.. there's even a shortcut to do this in the program group), you will need the following two files to be added to a DOS version 3+ floppy:

• loadbeos.com (yes, .com... Not to be confused with a website address. A .com file is like an .exe file)
• zbeos (it has no extension on the end of its name... Its just called zbeos)

Making a CD is also possible (el Torito boot stylee), except it's slight overkill to boot your OS from a CD containing less than 1.2MB of files... (you decide..)

loadbeos.com will basically do a soft reset of your hardware, placing the zbeos file into the correct place in memory for your computer to continue booting BeOS (or as Jefro originally put it, it "kicks out the command.com".) As with all DOS to BeOS boot sessions you might have some hardware issues. Some BIOSs (Basic Input Output System, the software that initializes and controls your computer's hardware) won't set the hardware correctly for BeOS after the "soft" boot. This can be fixed by turning off the computer completely before choosing to boot into BeOS. Also note that BeOS will normally only detect a single prrocessor on a multiprocessor machine using this method.

I stole this from I think memson.

Quote:

Bootable BeOS Installation CD Kit by Neiras (gabeb@canada.com)

License: Freeware Upload to: 21. January 2001 Update to: - Side calls: 6.654 Downloads: 5.265

Description of BootableBeCD: Download

With BootableBeCD you burn fast and simply boat Cds for installation the BeOS personnel edition.

The practical Tool eliminates the disadvantage that BeOS could be installed so far only from existing operating systems such as Windows or Linux out. On the basis the guidance existing in archives you burn first the BeOS Bootloader and then the actual BeOS image (image.be) on CD. With that CD can install you then for BeOS also on a "naked" computer without operating system problem-free.

x86 version - starting from BeOS R 5 - 661 KB (677,137 bytes)

To create a BOOTABLE BeOS CD from within BeOS:

1. Get BeOS 5 Personal Edition for Linux from ftp://ftp..be.com/pub/beos/BeOS4Linux.tar.gz (edit link)

2. Extract BeOS4Linux.tar.gx to a folder of its own. Delete all files except "image.be".

3. Move or copy the file "beosboot.img" (included in this kit) to the same folder as "image.be".

4. Fire up CDBurner. Make sure your CD-R drive is selected in the drop-down box at bottom-left.

5. From the "Disc" menu, choose "Add Data Track" and select the file "beosboot.img".

6. From the "Disc" menu, choose "Add Data Track" again and select the file "image.be".

7. Click "Burn Now".

The CD is now bootable! If CDBurner keeps failing on you, try Melt. It's available from Bebits.

Remember, you need to set your BIOS to boot from CD-ROM before the CD will actually boot.

Have fun!

N.S.

* This is speculation. It may just be possible to use the NT Multiple Boot Loader (NTLDR) to provide a pretend Windows System to fool it into booting BeOS. The NTLDR will look in the file BOOT.INI and then it can boot based on directories. It is possible to boot WinMe and WinXP of the same partition and these are quite different OSes. The key may be in what HAL.DLL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) does after NTLDR.