For info on running BeOS on BeBox and Apple/Close pre G3 hardware, see the BeOSplatformsPPC page.
Up to the last official release of BeOS Be Inc supported PPC platform, but couldn't get the official spec. from Apple so G3/G4 PPC series didn't work. However one could use old/aging PPC machines and upgrade tham with G3/G4 upgrade cards and have both of both worlds (speed of G3/G4 and BeOS running)!
BeOS was also found to be running in emulation http://www.frizbe.net/assets/thumb_be_in_osx.jpg (link no longer works), extract from http://www.frizbe.net/(link no longer works):
"Be in my Cube" posted by cowGP
With each release of Virtual PC I get all excited that it will work better than the previous version. Usually setting hopes and expectations to high, I quickly discover that sure there have been some minor improvements but in the end it still doesn't cut it. I had always wished that BeOS would boot in virtual PC, but it never would. It would alway hang during the boot process or somewhere just before the installer appeared.
Last week Connectix released the latest and greatest revision, Virtual PC 5. Excited about new features such as OS X support, multiprocessor support, and DVD support, I was installing the new version as sson as i had my grubby mits on it.
For kicks I thought I'd just see if Connectix magically fixed their supossed BIOS issues which had kept BeOS from running on previous releases. And well as you can see from the image, I have successfully installed BeOS on a Virtual PC partition running Virtual PC 5 on Mac OS X 10.1.1.
Unfortunately Connectix seems to not have gotten their OS X version working any where near as close to the performance I had hoped it would be. BeOS is slower than... well slow. but it's not just Be, it's all the OS's I've tried. Windows ME and Win2K both similarly run slower than tollerable. I haven't tried running Virtual PC in OS 9 (classic) yet, but I'll have to try that next now that I know Be installs, and see if it's a lack of OS X optimising that's causing all OS to run so doggy. I'll post again after I try that.
However, BeOS isn't running perfect. I have no keyboard. A result of USB issues, as soon as I press a key on the keyboard, all input freezes. The space bar and arrow keys work just fine during boot as I can select a fail safe graphics mode just fine. But once up and running all I have is a mouse, and a short lived mouse at that, since as soon as you type anything it's frozen. I wasn't hearing audio yet but I think it could be there, just some tweaking needed.
I'm a whole lot closer to running BeOS in my Apple PowerMac Cube but I fear Be's lack of USB keyboard support could bring all hopes to a stand still. I'll keep you posted if things get running better. In the mean time, here are two full screen shots for proof.
Recently Mac-on-Linux guys http://www.maconlinux.org/ got to run MacOS inside Linux environment directly accessing hardware (project similar to [[appSheepShaver]]) which could be a good way to run next versions of BeOS on G3/G4/G5 machines without hick-ups.
I got email reply from one of the developers...
From: Samuel Rydh <samuel@ibrium.se>
Subject: Re: is MOL capable of running BeOS PPC version ?
On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 02:40:16PM +0200, Zeljko Blace wrote:
> Do you know if annyone tried it ?
It will not work completely. MOL needs some OS-side drivers
in order to get video for instance (MOL does not emulate
the video card). Besides, MOL nowdays avoids emulating
things like SCSI chips so custom OS-side drivers
are needed for this too.
With some work one could get it working but I'm not convinced
it is worth the effort...
/Samuel
BeOS R5 in Virtual PC freezes because VPC emulates a chipset not compatible with the buggy R5 input_server. Zeta has fixed this and works just fine, but it's sloooooooooow, like any other OS newer than Windows 3.11. This is because VPC emulates a complete x86 PC, including the processor, and no matter what you do, emulation is slow, you won't get any faster than a first generation Pentium even on the lastest Dual G5s... and you won't even get the PPC BeOS running, it will be the same x86 BeOS that can run 100 times faster and better on any second-hand PC you can get off eBay.
Biffuz
