Rich's Random Retro Reviews

Another one of my saved searches on eBay is for BeOS related things. Unfortunately these days  this search seems to pull back Bang and Olufsen stuff - which I definitely cannot afford but every now and again, something properly BeOS pops up.  This little beauty came up for auction and was listed at £4.99. Within the last 30 seconds, it still had no bids, so I put one in for £4.99 and waited. I wasn't too bothered if someone else bid on it but I thought it would look cool in my CD wallet, next to other obscure software CDs. Turns out I won the auction so I paid and a few days later this turned up.  Now I did have a 7300/200 that was another buy from eBay a while ago - which in theory this would have run on, but I had to have a cull of machines in early 2022. I was up to about 11 Macs at that point and I was getting moaned at as they were everywhere - in the garage, under the bed and anywhere else I could store them. So this will have to sit th...

I've loved the BeOS ever since I tried it out from a demo CD from the now defunct PC Plus magazine here in the UK. I've done several videos on YouTube about it. I've even built two 100% compatible machines in the past dedicated to running this obscure operating system. Including a video on borrowing a copy of the CD from PC Plus.  Someone I follow on Twitter found a BeOS demo CD and posted a pic of it. I liked it and commented that I'd love to have an image of the CD but not to worry as it was sealed. He said he thought he might have another one that he would send me if I was interested and of course I was. We exchanged details via DM but all went quiet. A few months pass and I suddenly get a DM apologising for the delay and if I still wanted it let him know. He popped it in the mail and a few weeks later it arrived. I haven't tried it on any physical hardware just yet, but that's a plan for after I've finished building my test bench. Here's a pic of me...