But by default USB keyboards in BeOS disallow some of those keys.

Problem solution is here:

http://bebits.com/app/630

This patch enables right-win key on USB keyboards.

His very old articles for ZDNet’s long-defunct BeHive can be downloaded as a tarball.

I have tried clearing the CMOS, changing the battery, reset to defaults, and make tried every setting on power management ?

HELP.

These we donated computer, no doc on Motherboards, I cloned a W98 using Ghost and am trying to boot for the first time.

To fix the situation, delete this file:

/boot/beos/system/boot/InstallerRebootScript

• Windows 2000/XP: /[windows partition]/Documents and Settings/[username]/Application Data/
• Windows 9x/ME: /[windows partition]/[windows directory]/Application Data OR /[windows partition]/[windows directory]/Profiles/[username]/Application Data

After figuring out where your Application Data directory is, continue into the Mozilla or Phoenix directory, then Profiles/[profile name]/[random numbers and letters]/. This is where the bookmarks.html file is stored.

Leaving that window open, go to /boot/home/config/settings/Mozilla/[profile name]/[random numbers an dletters]. Rename the bookmarks.html file in this directory to bookmarks.html.old.

Now right-drag the bookmarks.html file from your Windows browser’s profile folder to the BeOS one and choose “Create Link Here.”

Your BeOS browser will now use the same bookmarks.html as the windows one. Pretty spiffy, eh?

One thing to note: for this to work properly, you must always mount your Windows partition before starting Mozilla.

Happy bookmark sharing!

Any screensaver can be run from the terminal with the command

screen_blanker “full_path_to_screensaver”

Running just screen_blanker by itself runs the currently selected screensaver.

From here it is quite easy to write a few 2-line scripts that each run a different saver. run’em through xicon, give some fancy icons and hey presto! Instant access to your favourite eye candy.

You could create a new folder full of zero-byte files and transfer the attributes one by one, but this really is the sort of drudge work computers were supposed to liberate us from! The following script will change every file in the current directory into a zero- byte file with nothing but attributes, so try not to use it in the directory where you keep your financial reports …

#!/bin/sh
#
for file in `ls`; do
	echo processing $file
	# using file2xyz2 as a dummy file - use a
	# different name if you actually have such a file!
	touch file2xyz2
	cp file2xyz2 $file
	rm -f file2xyz2
done

Now all you need to do is change the MIME types of your icon files into either “generic file” (application/octet-stream actually) or “application/x-vnd.Icon”, so that ShowImage won’t try to display it when the user double-clicks the file. You can do this in one go by selecting all the icons in the directory, then rightclicking on one and selecting FileType from the add-ons menu.

That’s it! Zip ‘em up and upload to your favourite BeOS depository. On a small collection of 52 icons, my zip file size went down from 72 to 35 KB using this technique.

NOTE: This is a bit risky and I take no responsibility if it doesn’t work for you!

You must have Windows XP and BeOS installed on different partitions on the bootable hard disk. This may or may not work if BeOS is located on a separate disk. It’s up to you if you want to try.

1. Start Windows XP
2. Select Start -> Run
3. Type in cmd and click Ok
4. Type diskpart and hit ENTER
5. Type list volume and hit ENTER
6. A listing of volumes on all your disks should appearSample (Swedish Windows XP):

   DISKPART> list volume
   
     Volymnr.    Enh  Etikett      Fils.  Typ         Storlek  Status     Info
     ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
     Volym 0      E   rtcw         CDFS   DVD-ROM      661 MB
     Volym 1      C                NTFS   Partition   6659 MB  Felfri     Systemst
     Volym 2      D   WIN98 2      FAT32  Partition   6460 MB  Felfri
     Volym 3                              Partition   6453 MB  Felfri
     Volym 4                              Partition   2059 MB  Felfri

7. Find the volume that is your BeOS-volume. Normally it should not have a letter, name or filesystem specified
8. Use the volume number instead of the italic text and type select volume BeOS-volume-number and hit ENTERSample: ‘select volume 3‘
9. CAUTION: Be 100% sure that this is your bootable BeOS-volume
10. The next step will make BeOS boot instead of Windows XP. If anything goes wrong, your system can become unbootable, so make sure you know how to fix the boot record if you mess up.
11. Type active and hit ENTER.
12. When you reboot, BeOS should load instead of WIndows XP.
13. Install bootman by typing bootman in a Terminal.
14. When you reboot, bootman should let you select the OS to boot.

Editor’s note: There are other ways to boot into a non-booting installation of BeOS, although most techniques require a bootdisk of some description, or an installation of MS-DOS / Windows 9x.

If you have MS-DOS, Windows 9x, or a DOS bootdisk, then you can use LOADBEOS.COM, which is supplied with BeOS 5 Personal Edition. This will let you boot from one or more BeOS partitions (both virtual and real) by pressing space when the screen fades in, and selecting from the volumes list.

Another method you can try is to burn a BeOS bootdisk, such as the image provided with Personal Edition. Floppy images may also be burned onto a CD using a CD burner package which supports El Torito bootable disks.

1. BeZilla uses system fonts for some elements, even on pages — input fields, lists, drop-down menus, buttons, etc.

   Therefore, you should set the plain, fixed and bold fonts in the BeOS preferences to those with support for your desired language.

2. There is a “specially introduced” bug for UTF-* pages (thanks to flaky unicode support and locale system in unices) — for UTF-* pages, it doesn’t use the fonts chosen for “Unicode” in Preferences->Appearance->Fonts, but for Western (actually, the settings for language group in OS locale, but locale isn’t used in BeOS).

So for now you have two choices — either add the multi-language fonts to the Western fonts, or try to set LC/locale in BeOS, as it is done in unices.

1. Install Bone7a (Do a Google search for

   Bone7a.zip).

2. Enter /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/sample and find prism.conf . Load it up in a text editor and set your SSID. Rename the file to "prism" .
3. Configure it as you would a normal PCMCIA ethernet card (see Configuring PCMCIA cards), with the binding in the pcmcia file set to "prism" (or "prism.conf", I suppose, if you didn’t rename the file).

Note: BeOS is still horrible with DHCP, so be prepared to manually enter your network information. Also note that Boneyard is inclined to crash, so enter in as much as you can, kill its process, and continue when this happens.

See also:

BeTips: Configuring PCMCIA cards

THE Wireless How-To for BeOS