Need beos 4.5 and 5.0 good isos powerpc

Be, Inc.
#1

Hi guys, managed to build a “new” trashintosh scrounged from parts and using a generic atx case/psu.
Now the first thing I think was that the easy part could be to download BeOS for PowerPC.
But ended up not being so easy, all the isos for BeOS 5 that are on the net are missing the PowerPC side of the disc or are the same image that has some files corrupted from the PPC install and the media files are bad.

Also beos 4.5 the copy in archive.org don’t have the PowerPC side of it, the isos for 4.5.2 and another 4.5 downloads up to 99.8% and never finish ( they are torrents ).
The images available in winworldpc and other sites are missing the powerpc side of the installation.

Does anyone have known good 5.0 and 4.5 PowerPC images?

#2

Untested; let us know how it goes: Index of /~beosarchive/unsorted/cypresstwist/BeOS/Distr/BeOS 5.0 Professional Edition x86 PPC/

2 Likes
#3

I think you can get everything here: OS (BeOS) | VETUSWARE.COM - the biggest free abandonware collection in the universe

You have to register but I have done it before - the downloads are genuine

1 Like
#4

About old BeOS: anybody managed to run BeOS 4.5 x86 with PE executables in virtual machine or real hardware?

#5

4.0/4.5 use PEF, it would need to be R3. It’s not something I’ve tried, PCEmu is probably the best choice to emulate ~1997 hardware.

#6

PEF is PowerPC-only executable format. I mean x86 PE format the same as in Windows. It was used in x86 BeOS before switching to ELF.

#7

Ah yes. But its still the same - only R3/x86 used PE. R4.0/4.5 use ELF just like R5.

#8

So, I got one of the images from one of the Archive.org and it does work. But not quite as you would expect… It you use ISO Buster, you can grab the PowerPC part of the disc, and it is fully installable. You can burn that image to a disc and if you then use the OS Chooser extension under MacOS as usual, you should be able to use that CD image. You might even be able to write it to a hard drive. I used this technique to re-install BeOS as my R5 disc is toast.

I’m pretty sure if you burn the sam image it would work too - it is the one with the .bin and .cue files. None of the ISO’s work for sure.

I have also successfully use PR2 and R3 from Archive.org too.

If you want to give a hard drive image I have made for someone else a go, PM me and I will send you a link. I have one that will install R5 and that should boot from a Mac (it has a cut down disktools flopy image as the Boot OS, hacked to boot to BeOS PPC.)

#9

R3 is the only version of Intel that uses PE. I have never bothered trying it personally because there is no really compelling reason - there is hardly any R3 software under Intel that was not recompiled for R4 or greater.

#10

The zip file from that link had the PowerPC part of the disc included. The disc has 3 partitions, one is standard CD file system and has the “tools” including the stuff needed to make a Mac boot BeOS, the second is the Intel BFS partition, the third is the PowerPC BFS partition… I have taken this disc image, extracted the PowerPC part using ISO buster on a PC (just the trial version) and successfully used it to do a full PowerPC install. The important part is having MacOS also set up to start the boot process, and installing the _OS_Chooser extension so that the Mac has the boot menu to select BeOS.

1 Like
#11

Thanks!.
The .image file is the same in other archives and is bad, but the cue bin inside the zip file works fine the mac side is complete and all files install no errors.
:smiley:

#12

Tried the 4.5 version here and the ppc side is missing.
Also the 5.0 iso offered is the same one for other files that have bad files in the media part of the install.

#13

R4.5 is not all that exciting. Unless you really have a bit of software that only runs under 4.5, there’s so little difference it won’t really be worth having both. I would suggest R3 if you want to see something slightly different and PR1 or PR2 if you want the earliest BFS based PPC build that is stable. But R3 is mainstream. If you can manage to get a DR8 build installed, that is the oldest and is pre BFS.

#14

There was a special PR2 version downloadable from Be’s website, it creates a 200MB loop filesystem, it’s available out there.

#15

PR2 is on Archive.org. I did have an original disc at one point, but lost it in a house move. Basically, you can get pretty much every version for PowerPC there, even DR versions only for BeBox.

#16

Mostly I like to try 4.5 to use sheepshaver looks like an interesting emulator in BeOS. Is a shame it doesn’t work on 5.

#17

It absolutely works under R5, what gives you the impression it doesn’t? It even runs under Dano.

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This is the original version from BeBits, not the one someone recently patched. But that should also run under R5. It’s pretty rare that software from older PowerPC doesn’t run… I have stuff from PR2 that still runs under R5.

2 Likes
#18

Cool, don’t know why tried to run it in the past but crashed.
Can you point out where you download the one you’re using?

#19

It would have been bebits. Probably @PulkoMandy has it in the archive on his site? I can probably find the Software Valet package if you want it, but might take a few weeks. The key is to select a drive running 7.5.3 - 8.1 (maybe 8.5), other than that it should just work with default settings.

#20

How much RAM is installed in your system? Runs fine on my R5 BeBox, but I had to do this first: Old Vintage Computing Research: When you have too much memory for SheepShaver