I got HaikuR1Alpha1 working under both Q (Qemu for OSX) and Virtualbox, using Mac OSX as the Host OS. The installation (from physical CD) went buttery smooth in both cases. However, both were unusable because the mouse pointer jumped erratically between Host and Guest OS.

However, the mouse I use on my iMac is the one that comes with the Wacom Graphire4 pad. Cordless, induction-powered, no batteries, only works on the pad. So today I bought a bottom-of-the range Logitech USB mouse, plugged it into the Mac and the problem was solved. Also, OSX doesn’t mind having more than one pointing device attached, so there is no need for plugging and unplugging the two all day.

Moral of the story, if something that should work, doesn’t, drop the hardware complexity level a step or two.

Many people are finding that they have problems with their R3/Intel installations if the CD-ROM is configured as a slave drive on the secondary bus. In some instances, you’ll need to make sure that if the CD-ROM is alone on a bus, it’s set as master, not slave. e.g. if your CD-ROM is the only thing on your secondary bus, make sure it’s the master.

You should find small jumper pins (tiny black slide-on thingies) on your drives, and hopefully a sticker or something on each drive describing how to set the jumpers. If you can’t find documentation for your drive, check the manufacturer’s web site.

In some cases, R3 won’t install at all if it’s on the secondary IDE channel.

Another solution is to enter into the Safe-Mode menu by pressing space during bootup. Here you can also disable multiprocessing. Although you’ll have to do this for every BeOS bootup, this is definitely more convenient if you have to work most of the time with NT.

Probably best to just get a second CPU!

When you are faced with changing IDE devices around to install and run BeOS, the best – and only – plan is to first contact the manufacturer of the computer system or the manufacturer of each device for correct jumper information. Historically, hard drive jumper positions have changed between models from the same firm AND between units of the same model. You should write down complete model and serial numbers to completely identify the device. These are usually on a label on the top of each unit, so removing the devices from their mounting slots is necessary.

Before you undertake this chore, turn on your system and look at the messages on the screen. The first group of messages will include one on using a function key to launch the Setup program built into your bios. Do this. Setup will show, on its first page, the current status of your IDE devices AND their logical locations on the IDE channel(s). You may not have to change anything.

As BeOS matures, its ability to handle IDE devices will undoubtedly become as flexible as the handling provided in Windows95, so moving jumpers around should become a nice tale to tell future generations.

From this point, you can manually launch the rest of BeOS. After clicking Agree at the installer screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T on the left side of your keyboard to open a Terminal. Type:

/system/Tracker &
/system/Deskbar &

and you’ll be running BeOS. Minimize the Installer – don’t close it, or your system will reboot!

Andreas (korp@bigfoot.com) adds the following:

As an alternative to launching Tracker and Deskbar manually, you can hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up TaskManager, and click “Restart the Desktop” to have them launched automatically.

Non SMP Capable CPUs

AMD K5

AMD K6

AMD K6-2

Cyrix 6×86

Cyrix 6×86MX

Cyrix MII

IDT C6 (Winchip)

Intel Celeron*

*[Norman Boyd notes: Intel says Celerons are not SMP-enabled, but you can run them successfully in that mode on an Abit BP6 board.]

The K6, K6-2 and K6-3, and the Cyrix 6×86MX and Cyrix MII all have the MMX instruction codes, which BeOS is slated to support as part of the OS in R5. (Current Wintel support requires that applications be rewritten to handle it, or use one of the DirectX drivers).

The K6-2 and MII both support AMD’s 3DNow! instruction set, which as of this writing (20 February, 1999), is unsupported by the BeOS, and may remain unsupported.

SMP-enabled CPUs

Intel Pentium

Intel Pentium PRO

Intel Pentium with MMX

Intel Pentium II

Intel Pentium II Xeon

Intel Pentium III

Intel Pentium III Xeon

For the Mobile Pentium MMX 266, see below. The Xeon and the PRO are the only chips able to go quad or octal mount, if you’ve got the money to spend on the hardware for them. (The Xeon is definitely not cheap. On the other hand, haven’t you always wondered just how many Quicktime movies it would take to bring an octal Xeon server to its knees?)

Systems which may support SMP

AMD K7

Intel Mobile Pentium 266

Many sources have reported that the K7, given its ties with the Digital Alpha electrical pinout, will be SMP-aware. We can only hope, as it shows (with the .18 micron fabrication process and copper interconnects) the potential for low price, and blazingly fast speed.

The Mobile Pentium 266 should be SMP aware, but as of this writing, I havn’t been able to confirm it. It is of interest as being the fastest SMP-aware Socket 7 CPU, if it is, and may be an excuse to squeeze a bit more oomph out of your dual Pentium motherboard.

1) Disable Plug and Play (PnP) in your BIOS.
2) Set PnP to manual, and then make IRQ 3 and 4 “LegacyISA” instead of PnP PCI Auto.

Your BIOS may have different terminology to the above, but you should be able to figure it out.

Remember to write down the changes you make so you can go back to the original settings if necessary.

If you have problems getting network or sound cards to operate, disable their PnP functionality. You can usually do this either by using a software-based configuraton utility that came with the card or by changing a jumper. Check the card’s documentation for details.

On many systems, you can also disable PnP at the motherboard level by digging around in your BIOS setup. Look around in your BIOS for a setting labeled “Plug and Play OS” or similar and disable it. If you have supported hardware that’s not working in BeOS for some reason, this is probably your best bet.

Note that if you’re also running a Microsoft operating system, you’ll have to set up all of your devices manually after disabling PnP.