I Can't Be-leive it!

I've been wanting to run BeOS for quite some time.  I've made numerous attempts over the last couple of years ever since learning that my Power Macintosh 8600 is on the hardware compatibility list for this OS, but I've always had it lock up on boot up, or very shortly after during the install process.

I could not resolve my issue(s), I didn't know if it was due to a hardware problem with my Power Mac's Logic Board, an incompatibility with the upgraded ATI Rage video card I had in there or some other problem.  Also, I had some concerns about the stability of the machine, I'd even done a recap on the main logic board.  So, the project remained on the back burner for quite some time.

But I recently got re-inspired because Sean from Action Retro was willing to go to great lengths to get BeOS running on his TAM (and show the failures along the way).  Sean has used various disk imaging hacks before to get software onto his computers.  Because of limitations of SCSI2SD, I'd been trying to run the install process of BeOS and this was what kept on locking up on my computer.  I decided to make a couple of hardware changes.  First, I went back to the built in Video on the motherboard, I wanted to eliminate any potential incompatibility with the ATI video card.

Watching one video alone was not be enough information to get going, but Sean pointed to a rollicking good thread about running BeOS on the TAM on Tinker Different.  This thread contains a helpful link onto Macintosh Garden that has BeOS disk images that are useable with compatible machines, bypassing the install process.  All one needs to do is copy them onto a modern SCSI to SD solution and give BeOS a try!  In order to enable using these pre-made disk images, it was time to upgrade my SCSI2SD solution.  As amazing as that tech was when I installed it in 2018, solutions like BlueSCSI and ZuluSCSI are much easier to work with on projects like this.

One other cosmetic improvement that I have been wanting to make is to move the SD card slot around to the back of the machine and replace the front cover on the machine (which of course I've kept) so I took this opportunity to make this change as well.

Of course I didn't want to loose access to the MacOS disk images I've built up over the last years.  Another interesting post on TinkerDifferent lead me to this amazing tool called Disk Jockey.  This software runs on the modern computer and allows the analysis of disk images.  I was easily able to create a disc image of the Mac Volume on the SCSI2SD card(s) and then convert them to full drive images for the modern SCSI solutions so the PowerMac can still boot the first and last versions of Mac OS (7.5.5 and 9.1) was well as BeOS.  I've stored these each on a separate SD card for easy of swapping.

It's really great to finally have a BeOS system, and I'm quite happy with how it looks...

I've really been enjoying tinkering with it.  The history of Apple's negotiations with both Be and with NeXT for their "next generation" version of MacOS are now the stuff of computer history legends.  I consider myself lucky to be able to go back and see the best of what both OSes had to offer at the time.