Be Box

The Be Box and BeOS were a grand experiment by Jean-Louis Gasse (formerly of Apple) and his team to create the "next Mac" or a computer with a real multitasking high performance OS on the PowerPC (and later Intel) architectures. Sadly, Be was not to be and quietly was liquidated in 2002. Briefly you could download the BeOS for Intel. The interface was really nifty and implemented by Benoit Shilling.

One of the coolest features of the original Be Box was its great bezel which had dual "light pipes" which were LEDs built into the case that represented the dual CPUs running (and which was being used more). Truly one of the great case designs. Here Mark Brinkerhoff describes the design of the bezel he completed for Be in the early-mid 1990s.

We would like to thank Chris Dunphy for the donation of one of our two Be Boxen (the pre-production developer release unit with gray bezel and no logo). The other (production) Be Box was donated by Matt Hamrick.

Chris writes:

The first batch of BeBoxen shipped without the fancy bezel - just raw hardware. Only a few developers got those. The one below is from the second batch - still a "preliminary release for developers only". It is a beautiful piece of hardware. I think I got it sometime in early 1995. I was working on a project that was going to use the IR interface on the BeBox to control home CD changers and jukeboxes - no other computer had such an interface built in. Unfortunately, the IR interface code in the OS was never more than preliminary, so I never got very far. When Be killed the BeBox and switched to running on Mac clones (with no more IR), my dreams of IR world domination were dashed.

April 2005 interview with Mark Brinkerhoff on the design of the Be Box bezel (MP3 file)

The DigiBarn has two Be Boxes, check them out!

Preliminary developer release Be Box Serial number: PPC9604000965	Mark Brinkerhoff, designer of the Be Box bezel	Detail of the bezel
Mark points out light pipes	A full production Be Box Serial number: PPV9604012600

Know anything about the Be Box or BeOS? Contact us!

See Also:

Our pages on the Be OS version 5 (Personal Edition)

Our Be Box running!

Be Inc site (from liquidation in 2002)

The excellent BeBox Zone website, everything you ever wanted to know about Be!

BeBits, a source for BeOS software