First post, by RJDog
Recently I have been thinking about getting an old 1994~1997 Mac. I still havent decided if I want a 68040 system, or first gen PowerPC, or second gen (PCI) PowerPC.... or even decided if I actually want to spend the money.
Anyway, long story short, that led me to an OS that I had nearly forgotten about... BeOS, the would-be contender for MacOS replacement, also released for x86 after they realized that probably wasn't going to happen. I remember trying out the BeOS 5 Personal edition back in 2001ish on the P2 I had at the time but having a less than stellar experience with i because the video card and sound card and network card were all not on the modest BeOS Hardware Compatibility list. Well, now I have a small collection of retro PCs and, shockingly, three of the built systems I have are fully on the Hardware Compatibility list for BeOS 4 and/or BeOS 5. They are:
Pentium MMX 166
SiS 5598 chipset and VGA (BeOS 5 only)
Creative AWE32
Intel EtherExpress 100
Pentium Pro 200
440FX
ATI 3D Rage II
Crystal 4236
Intel EtherExpress 100
Pentium III 667
i810
nVidia Riva TNT AGP (this is not what is currently installed, but I have one)
SoundBlaster Live!
Intel EtherExpress 100
So, yeah quite a gap between the MMX/Pro and P3 system; I don't (currently) have a P2 system.
Anyway, what are ya'lls thoughts on BeOS, and recommendation for what system/version I should run on? Right now I'm thinking of running BeOS 4 on the PPro system -- I currently have OS/2 running on it and could be interesting to try to dual-boot OS/2 and BeOS...
And, yes, I am fully aware and going into this know that this, much like OS/2, is going to be a "toy" system for me. I will not use it regularly or play games on it but moreso a "cool, look, see, I can run BeOS!".