Day 10: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar – BeOS #retrocomputing #firstcomputer #electronics
🎄💾🗓️ Day 10: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar – BeOS 🎄💾🗓️
BeOS, developed by Be Inc. in the mid-1990s, was an operating system for multimedia applications, multitasking, and multithreading. Initially designed for the BeBox—a proprietary hardware platform featuring dual PowerPC processors—BeOS was later ported to the Macintosh and x86 architectures. Its kernel was monolithic, and the system was primarily written in C++. It featured a 64-bit journaling Be File System (BFS), which supported metadata and allowed rapid file queries and fast performance for multimedia tasks.
Despite its technical strengths, including support for symmetric multiprocessing and a responsive graphical user interface, BeOS struggled to gain market traction. Development ceased in 2001 after Palm Inc. acquired Be Inc.’s assets. BeOS continues through Haiku, an open-source project aiming for binary compatibility with BeOS R5.
Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Open Hardware is In, New CircuitPython and Pi 5 16GB, and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
My 2×133 BeBox is still upstairs. Loved that OS. Wrote my first BeOS program cross-compiled from a Mac while I was waiting for the machine to arrive. Created a tutorial on replicants for the community based on Neko the desktop cat, and also created what I think was a pretty nifty library for user notifications.
My 2×133 BeBox is still upstairs. Loved that OS. Wrote my first BeOS program cross-compiled from a Mac while I was waiting for the machine to arrive. Created a tutorial on replicants for the community based on Neko the desktop cat, and also created what I think was a pretty nifty library for user notifications.