Directions: running BeOS 5 as a VM inside vSphere 6

[red85toy]

Hello,
I have BeOS 5 Pro running as a Virtual Machine inside vSphere 6, these are my directions:

http://www.rodpeterson.com/beos/BeOS5vSphere6.htm

Thanks,
Rod

[nimd4]

vSphere

Um, how about running it (with)in VMware Workstation Player - because not everyone is pirating the software..;) & btw., BeOS FTW! :)

[Wheatley]

I'm pretty sure these instructions can be adapted for other VMware products.

[red85toy]

Hello,
That is correct, you should be able to run it inside VMware Workstation.
The 2 important parts are the IDE hard drive setting (so you can install it) and the Windows 2000 setting (to get the Vlance network driver to work).

Keep in mind you can install VMware vSphere 6 evaluation for free, but you do have to delete/wipe your drive after 60 days.

Thank you,
Rod

[sparcdr]

It works on workstation 12 and 12.5 but it is not even capable of VESA modes, so it is limited on colors. There are no other major problems with it however but I would advise trying it in 8086box or similar due to that limitation assuming that vSphere somehow works with the video whereas VMware Player by way of the core which derives from Workstation doesn't. I have tried 5.0 PE v3, 5.0 Professional and 5.1 "Dano" but all have the limitation with VMware products in general.

Intel EtherExpress (E100), RTL8139C, and NE2000 were common in 2000 when BeOS was a thing and VMware uses either PIIX4 or ICH-9 IDE controller emulation so any other emulator capable of fitting those criteria would work, albeit only PCem and its derivatives support using real roms from S3 Trio/Virge and other cards of the day that would support the higher color palette. E1000 (Gigabit version of E100 in a modern sense) is probably supported in MagnusSoft / YellowTab ZETA which was available up to late 2005 or so, but I suspect some differences in architecture that would preclude using the modern driver on older BeOS releases.

Similar to classic MacOS, upstream vendor limitations existed in the fact most of the driver support had to be implemented or at least tuned by the os vendor rather than the "open" PC go find a driver attitude that is still prevalent today on Windows as it was on DOS. You simply need to press spacebar when the BeOS bitmap splash screen comes up to force it to boot the cdrom. You can extract the floppy images using UltraISO or similar and mount those separately in the event the cuesheet (Assuming you're using that rip) doesn't read those bits at the offset you will still be able to boot the BeOS installer.

[red85toy]

I have added a few screen shots to my directions... showing the Pulse application can see all 8 Processors.
I also included screen shots when I install the BeOS with 1 vCPU, but change to 4 vCPUs at a later date.
http://www.rodpeterson.com/beos/BeOS5vSphere6.htm

I have found that it is not limited on colors - I do run my screen at 1280 x 1024 at 16bit color:
Find this folder inside BeOS: /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/sample
Open the VESA file, have the second line show:
mode 1280 1024 16
be careful that there are no extra spaces.
Copy the VESA file into this folder: /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/
Reboot, you should have a good color screen

For the networking, I use Flexible network adapter inside VMware.
Open BeOS VM, download and install lance driver from: http://www.vi-tech.org/beos.html
VMware virtual NIC (vlance) driver for BeOS Version 0.6
You can also download it from here: http://www.rodpeterson.com/beos/Drivers ... ICBeOS.zip
Reboot the BeOS Virtual Machine
Turn on networking inside the BeOS VM
Type in your IP information.
Click save, restart networking, try to browse the web.

Thanks!
Rod