BeTips.net

Prior to BeOS 5, if something really serious happened that could halt the OS, all you would get would be a frozen desktop. In BeOS 5, critical errors will throw you into „Kernel Debug Land“ — a sort of Terminal-like mode that will roll over the top of your desktop. Debug Land will let you enter specific commands in order to help Be’s tech support department troubleshoot problems.
Hopefully you’ll never see Kernel Debug Land (few users do), but if you do, and are trying to type commands, you’ll sometimes find that the output scrolls by too quickly to read (for example, the output of the „ps“ command). To solve this, enter:

set paginate on
set pagesize 40

This will cause output to be displayed one screen at a time.

If already have BeOS R4.5.x installed on a real partition, and then install BeOS 5 Personal Edition from within Windows, and boot as usual from bootman, you may find that the boot loader gets confused. You may see weird error messages from the media_server, the Deskbar going crazy, and more.
To circumvent this, hold down Spacebar as the boot icons begin to appear and select „boot volume,“ „Personal Edition,“ and „Continue booting.“
The long-term fix is to use the Installer app to upgrade your 4.5.x installation to BeOS 5, then uninstall Personal Edition from within Windows.

If you’d like to use one of the tips here to install BeOS 5 Personal Edition to a dedicated partition (for example Install Personal Edition to a real partition or Create a Free BeOS Install CD), but don’t own a copy of Partition Magic, there are a number of free tools available that will let you resize existing Windows partitions non-destructively, making space available for a shiny new BeOS partition.
First off, there’s a freeware program called „Partition Resizer„, which is an easy-to-use DOS-based program that works well. It’s not graphical like Partition Magic, but hey, it’s free!
Once you’ve created free space on your hard drive, you can use another freeware program called „Ranish Partition manager„, to claim the new free space for BeOS.
While Be’s own DriveSetup is easier to use for most purposes, DriveSetup is not a non-destructive partition manager. These tools will let you resize partitions without blowing away your existing OS installations.
Good Luck, and of course I assume no responsibility. Read the directions that come with these programs!

Prodigy Internet customers have a network username and password due to the (Cisco?) firewall, which looks like this:

username: 123456789@prodigy.net
pw: abcdef

Most importantly, you’ll need to enter DNS addresses manually. They are:

Primary DNS: 198.83.19.241
Secondary DNS: 198.83.19.244

Mail Servers:

pop.prodigy.net (Incoming)
smtp.prodigy.net (Outgoing)

Oops — looks like Be didn’t get the RealTek 8139 driver into BeOS 5. Fortunately, you can download this driver directly from RealTek:
http://www.realtek.c om.tw/cn/driver/8139-driver.htm
This driver is already available on Be’s Experimental page.
This tip will be removed if the driver makes it into a future distribution of BeOS.

In BeOS 5, MediaPlayer gets a new, but easily overlooked feature — the ability to save „clippings“ just like ShowImage, StyledEdit, SoundRecorder, and other apps. Saving stills from video streams is now easier under BeOS than any other operating system.
While a video is playing or paused, just drag from the MediaPlayer window to the Desktop. That video frame will be saved as a targa image on the Desktop. Hold down left Ctrl while dragging and you’ll get a context menu asking which output format to use — you can save in any image format for which you have an installed Translator.
This is especially great if your video camera has a „Still Photo“ option but you don’t have BeOS software that supports extracting those stills.

If you place a script called ‚Filter‘ in /boot/home/config/add-ons/MailDaemon and set it as executable, it will be run automatically each time the mail_daemon detects new mail.
This script will pop open an alert window specifying who you received e-mail from and offers two options: To open the e-mail to read, or just „OK“ to get rid of the alert box.

chmod 755 /boot/home/config/add-ons/MailDaemon/Filter

name=$(catattr "MAIL:from" "$1" | sed 's/.* : *//g')
alert --idea "New mail has arrived from: $name" "OK" "Open mail" > /dev
/null
retval=$?
if [ $retval -eq 1 ]
then /boot/beos/system/Tracker "$1"
fi

If you’re running BeOS Personal Edition and need more than 500MBs to play with, there are a couple of interesting techniques you can use, either for creating a larger BeOS boot partition or just for getting yourself some additional storage space. Use these tricks at your own risk (though there’s no reason they shouldn’t work).
Be’s Travis Geiselbrecht (author of the virtual filesystem driver), offers this tip on creating additional virtual filesystems. This technique assumes that you have your existing Personal Edition installed on C: and that you want to create an additional virtual volume sitting in your D: drive or other drive letter (since there can only be one eosimage.be file per disk volume):

Well, you could go to 95/98, NT, or linux, create a file called ‚image.be‘ in a directory ‚beos‘ (case is important on NTFS and ext2) off of the root of the volume. Make it as big as you want. Create it however you want, the data inside it will be blown away soon. You could, for example, write a little program to build the file if you’re a developer, or do something like create a big .zip file and rename it image.be. [Under Linux you can do this with dd. -ed.]
When you reboot into BeOS, you should see another virtual drive in DriveSetup. The ‚Map Style‘ column should read something like „unknown. “ Then, select the drive, goto Setup | Partition | Intel and create a big partition or however you want it. Then, you can initialize it as BFS and you’re set.

Isen Kusima (cycnuskus at hotmail.com) offers this technique:
Assuming that you already have installed BeOS R5 Personal Edition in Win9x, WinNT, or Win2000, and that you have a hard drive with more than 1GB unused:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/[YourHardDrive]/beos/new.img bs=1024k count=1000
$ mkbfs 2048 /[YourHardDrive]/beos/new.img COPY-TO-HERE
$ sync
 

$ mkdir /mnt
$ mount -t bfs new.img /mnt

BeOS 5 supports software modems (a.k.a. „softmodems“ or „winmodems“) from Lucent and PCTel. Most of them should work without further hassle, but there are many many different Lucent chipsets and some of them are trickier than others. If yours doesn’t appear in the Dial-Up Networking prefs panel automatically, try this.
First, turn off PNP in the motherboards BIOS.
In the modems settings, select „Lucent PCI V90 Winmodem.“ Now when you click on „Connect via,“ you should see a „Lucent“ option alongside your serial ports.
AFAIK, the Lucent winmodems will use neither ’serial1′, ’serial2′, or any other ’serialx‘. This is because, unlike a ‚real‘ PCI modem, there is no actual serial port included in a winmodem. The winmodem simulates a serial port in software, and a little bit of hardware. You should select the setting „Lucent,“ if it is present.
If that setting doesn’t appear, then your modem is not being recognized for some reason. If not, go into the Devices prefs panel and check that a PCI communications device is present. It should have an IRQ assigned to it. If it doesn’t then you are out of luck. BeOS cannot use your modem for the present.
If there is an IRQ assigned to your modem then you should find out what IRQ and memory ranges are assigned to it by Windows (remember, you must have PNP turned off). Make sure the settings in BeOS match those in Windows. If they match, but still no joy, then you will have to use an external modem for now.

Curious to know what codec was used to create that movie you’re watching, or how many dropped frames are appearing in digital video transfers over your FireWire connection? Pull down File | Get Info in MediaPlayer, then click the little „More…“ link for a detailed report on the current stream.