BeOS R4.5 Demo

You are about to experience your PC in an entirely new way. BeOS is designed from the ground up to handle high-bandwidth digital media, such as digital audio and video, in real-time on low-cost PCs and Internet appliances.

The best way to show you the performance you'll get from BeOS is to let you drive it yourself. This special CD-ROM Demo version of the Be Operating System is exactly like the real thing, except for these differences:

There is no Installer or DriveSetup utility, so you cannot install the BeOS Demo onto your hard drive. CD-ROMs are much slower than hard drives, so some things are slower than they would from your hard drive. The BeOS Demo CD does not use virtual memory, so you are somewhat limited in how many applications and files (like movies) you can open and use at the same time.

These differences, a limitation of the CD medium and amount of physical RAM in your computer, impact using BeOS. For example, you will need to create a settings floppy before you can surf the Internet. There are more details about these limitations are available in the Welcome to BeOS document once you've booted up.

Note: PC Plus cannot give support for BeOS, but we do host an active BeOS forum, available from www.pcplus.co.uk or by pointing your newsreader at nntp.futurenet.co.uk. There is also a wealth of information on this CD (see below) and from Be's Web site.

Getting Started

Creating a boot floppy
Booting straight from CD
Creating a BeOS Settings floppy

Resources

BeOS Ready hardware list
BeOS Intel FAQ
The World of Be
BeOS retailers near you
Legal Notices and Information

Creating a boot floppy

A boot floppy is similar to a Windows Startup disk. If you restart your computer with it in the drive, the computer will boot from the floppy rather than your hard drive. If your computer does not support booting from CD, or you do not feel like messing with your BIOS, follow these steps:

1. Label a blank, formatted 1.44Mb floppy disk 'BeOS Boot Disk' and place it in drive A.
3. Once MKFLOPPY has finished, it will return you to the command prompt. Close the DOS Window.

With both the boot floppy and the SuperCD in your drives, restart your machine. During the restart, your computer should find the floppy and boot from that. You must leave the SuperCD in your CDROM drive while you are in BeOS - it needs it there to run the operating system.

Note: if you boot from floppy rather than CD (see below) you will not be able to create a Settings Disk to store preferences such as your network settings.

Booting straight from CD

Creating a boot floppy should work on any computer. But if your system supports bootable CDROMs, a quick change to your BIOS settings will enable you to boot directly from the SuperCD. This is not only much faster than booting from floppy, but enables you to create a BeOS Settings floppy to store preferences such as your network settings.

Unfortunately, there are a number of different BIOSes around, and each put the settings we will be altering in different places. The BIOS controls the most basic level of hardware access on your computer - making unnecessary changes can stop your system working. Never change a setting unless you know the effect it will have, and always make a note of any changes you make so you can reverse them later, if necessary.

On most computers, you can access your BIOS setup by hitting F2 (or sometimes DEL) when the computer is first restarted. Across the top of the screen you will see a number of options, normally from Main to Exit. Use the arrow keys to navigate between them, the ENTER key to select an item and the ESC key to exit sub-menus. If you are lucky (as with the newer PhoenixBIOS), you will have a menu item labeled Boot to select. If not, check under Advanced, then Advanced CMOS Setup.

You are looking for a series of settings called 'Boot Order' (or similar, depending on the BIOS). Once you have found them - remember, not every computer supports booting from CDROM - make a note of the current order then change it to the following:

1. Floppy (or removable drive)
2. CDROM
3. Hard drive

Once done, use ESC to exit the subscreen and select Exit. Make sure there are no floppies in your drives, and the BeOS SuperCD is in your CDROM drive, then choose to save your changes and exit. Your computer will restart and boot BeOS from the SuperCD.

Creating A BeOS Settings floppy

You can save some settings, like your network preferences, by creating a settings floppy.

Before you shut the BeOS down, click on the Be portion of the Deskbar to pop up the Be menu, and select Create Settings Floppy to use a floppy disk to save the settings and preferences you create. To use these settings the next time you boot from the BeOS Demo CD, be sure the settings floppy is in the disk drive when you boot BeOS.

Note: Performance when reading from and writing to the floppy drive is much slower than it would be when you read settings from your complete copy of BeOS installed on a hard drive.