Launching the BeOS on Hitachi Flora Prius Systems (1999)
11 comments
·June 8, 2025AshamedCaptain
yardie
> it was notified by Hitachi in November 1998 that Microsoft's licensing deal with Hitachi effectively prevented such an approach.
For those too young to remember, this is what the anti-trust case against Microsoft was actually about. Internet Explorer, while important, was just a small part of the Microsoft's monopolistic practice of absolutely fucking over developers, other OSes (including Linux) and consumer choice. It's mildly infuriating now to hear about the bad old Microsoft not being allowed to give end users the best browser available, knowing that was just the tip of the iceberg.
AtlasBarfed
That's the state of antitrust in the US: openly State publicly anti-competitive language and documents...
Zero chance of any enforcement.
It's kind of hilarious seeing hacker news report on what the EU does. "Can you believe these ridiculous requirements" says Hacker News.
Yes. Yes I can believe that
jonah-archive
This is an utterly random question, and I'm sure there's a better place to ask it, but does anyone reading this happen to have/know the logic analyzer pinout [0] on the BeBox mainboard? I got a weird rackmount BeBox (an LCS LD-CS1, the controller for their LD-88 audio mixer [1]) and have been rebuilding the blinkenlight board, but I'd love to drop an Agilent on there at some point.
0: https://bebits.irixnet.org/beos/docs/DR8/UserDoc/DR8UsersGui... "The pin-out for the logic probe interface is available upon request from Be, Inc. Be can supply a card and analyzer set-up libraries that connect the CPU bus to an HP 1660A."
1: http://testou.free.fr/www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/de...
detourdog
It’s been a while but are you talking about the “Geekport”
https://www.beunited.org/bebook/
The Nike store on 57th street in Manhattan was powered by a BeBox. I forget if it ever actually worked. The original developer was replaced by Kandu and I remember them thinking it was trouble. Kandu was famous for hating anything more complex than MS-DOS. We worked on a project where they claimed to have rewritten most of DOS.
codr7
Imo they had already lost at this point.
Sad, I used BeOS full time for a few glorious months right after the Intel pivot. Reminded me of my Amiga days.
drooopy
I played quite a bit with that free intel version they came out with back in 98? 99? Shame that my internal modem wasn't working and I couldn't get on the internet with it.
Aldipower
May I ask what your tasks were you did with BeOS. Just curios.
doublerabbit
And from BeOS Haiku lives on.
If you haven't you should check it out.
It without all the X and Wayland mess it's a good alternative for an operating system.
yjftsjthsd-h
Launching from Windows is funny. Reminds me of GRUB4DOS and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software) even if the particulars differ.
This article is not complete without the reminder that this entire dance of instructions was required because MS would not allow a Windows OEM licensor to ship ANY customer-facing computer that would offer the option to boot BeOS via a pre-loaded bootloader or similar.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/be-stings-microsoft-with-lawsu...
> Be outlines its tortured history of trying to get its operating system included on machines from major computer makers, most notably Compaq Computer and Hitachi.
> Be said that in September 1998, Hitachi verbally committed to loading the BeOS alongside Windows on a line of PCs. Be had planned to offer software that would easily let computer owners choose between the two operating systems, but said it was notified by Hitachi in November 1998 that Microsoft's licensing deal with Hitachi effectively prevented such an approach.
> Although Hitachi eventually sold some PCs with the BeOS loaded on the hard drive, Be said the operating system had to be started from a floppy disk, and the machines bore no indication that they even came with the operating system.