BeBox

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BeBox in action

The BeBox was a Be Incorporated personal computer that was shipped with the BeOS operating system . The BeBox was a system with two microprocessors (dual processor system) of the PowerPC type , which was placed in a blue designer case from frog design . Among them were striking LED -Reihen on the front panel, which indicated the utilization of the processors.

history

The BeBox was a multiprocessor system from the start . Originally it was supposed to be based on two Hobbit processors from AT&T . However, after production of the Hobbit processor had ceased, long before the BeBox production began, the PowerPC processor was chosen as a replacement. The first version of the BeBox, which appeared on October 3, 1995, used two PowerPC 603 processors with 66 MHz each. From August 1996 two PowerPC 603e processors with a clock rate of 133 MHz were used. On January 31, 1997 it was announced that the production of the BeBox would be discontinued. A total of around 1000 BeBoxes with a 66 MHz processor and around 800 with a 133 MHz processor were delivered worldwide. Some prototypes with more than two processors were also made, but they never went into series production.

Furnishing

The BeBox consisted of two PowerPC processors, initially with 66 MHz and later with 133 MHz. A second-level cache was not available, however, because the processor controller used could either manage one processor and its cache or two processors. The BeBox provided 8 SIMM slots for main memory, each of which could hold a maximum of one memory bar with a capacity of 32 MB, which allowed a memory expansion of up to 256 MB. The BeBox also had 5 ISA and 3 PCI slots for expansion cards. An S3 graphics card was supplied as standard . A Fast SCSI adapter was used to connect the hard disk and the CD-ROM drive , and there was also a floppy disk drive and an IDE adapter.

On the external connections, the BeBox provided a connection for DIN keyboards, a PS / 2 interface for a mouse, four RS-232 interfaces, two joystick connections, two MIDI in / out, three infrared connections, a parallel port and the GeekPort available. The GeekPort was a 37-pin interface that provided analog and digital inputs / outputs as well as various operating voltages. For sound processing, the BeBox provided cinch sockets for line in / out as well as a jack socket for microphone and headphones. Thanks to the CS4231 codec from Crystal, CD quality was possible at all of these inputs and outputs.

GeekPort

The GeekPort is a 37-pin connector that offers various operating voltages, 16 directly programmable I / O lines and four A / D pairs. The sampling rate is 100 kHz. As the name suggests, interested hobbyists who wanted to expand their computers with self-made parts were intended as the target group .

BeBox and BeOS

On the BeBoxes initially supplied with the BeOS Developer Releases, it was possible to install later versions of BeOS without any problems, but only the BeBoxes from revision 6 supported all versions of BeOS, including BeOS 5. On a newer BeBox an older version of BeOS However, installing (before Release 3) is not that easy, as the Flash ROM of the BeBox was often updated with these early versions , so that it can no longer cope with older BeOS versions (before DR7).

Web links

Commons : BeBox  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files