BeBox

The BeBox was a personal computer company Be Incorporated, which was delivered with the operating system BeOS. The BeBox was a system with two microprocessors (dual processor system ) of type PowerPC, which was in a blue design housing of the company frog design. Striking it were two rows of lights on the front panel, which indicated the utilization of the processors.

History

The BeBox was from the beginning a multiprocessor system. Initially, they should be based on two Hobbit processors from AT & T. After the production of the Hobbit processor had been adjusted, however, long before it was started with the production of BeBox, was chosen as a replacement to the PowerPC processor. The first version of BeBox, which was released on 3 October 1995, used two type processors PowerPC 603, each with 66 MHz. As of August 1996, two processors were used 603e type PowerPC 133 MHz clock. On 31 January 1997 it was announced that the production of BeBox is set. A total of about 1000 BeBoxen were delivered with 66 MHz processor and 800 MHz processor with 133 worldwide. There are also some prototypes with more than two processors have been made ​​but never went into production.

Equipment

The BeBox consisted of two PowerPC processors, initially at 66 MHz and 133 MHz later. However, a second-level cache was not available, since the processor controller used either could manage a processor and its cache or two processors. For memory presented the BeBox 8 SIMM slots are available, these could each accommodate a maximum memory module with a capacity of 32 MB, which allowed a memory expansion up to 256 MB. Next the BeBox had 5 ISA and 3 PCI slots for expansion cards. By default, an S3 graphics card is included. To connect the hard disk and the CD -ROM drive was a fast- SCSI adapter, in addition was a floppy disk drive and an IDE adapter available.

An external connectors placed the BeBox a connection for DIN keyboard, a PS2 format for mouse, four RS232 ports, two joystick ports, two MIDI-In/Out, three infrared ports, one parallel port and the GeekPort to available. The GeekPort was a 37- pin interface, which provided analog and digital inputs and outputs as well as different operating voltages. For sound editing BeBox the RCA jacks for Line-In/-Out, as well as a jack for microphone and headphone set ready. Thanks to the CS4231 codec Crystal CD quality was possible in this case to all of these inputs and outputs.

GeekPort

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

In the beginning with the developer release of BeOS delivered BeBoxen, it was easy to install later versions of BeOS, but only supported the BeBoxen from Revision 6 all versions of BeOS, including BeOS 5 On a recent BeBox an older version of BeOS ( However, to install before release 3 ) is not easy, because in these early versions often the flash ROM of the BeBox has been updated so that this with older versions of BeOS ( no longer cope before DR7 ).

Pictures of BeBox

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