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Curated by: THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR (262 videos)
Around the year 2000, Be Inc. made a radical shift. Instead of continuing to push BeOS on the desktop, they turned toward a new idea: internet appliances — small, always-connected devices built entirely around the web. At the center of that vision was BeIA, a stripped-down, web-first operating system that featured the Norwegian Opera web browser. In this video, we dig into BeIA from both a historical and hands-on perspective. Well, admittedly in emulation only, as I don't have one of those original appliances. But good enough to reconstruct a working BeIA system using fragmented SDKs from archive.org, walking through the DevKit, the build process, and the unusual “crushing” step that transforms ELF binaries into compressed CELF files to fit entire systems into as little as 16 MB ... In this episode: 00:00 Intro 00:49 Be's Post-2000 Internet Appliances Strategy Shift 02:48 Inside BeIA - BeOS for Internet Appliances 05:49 Building a BeIA Boot Image 09:37 Testing The BeIA Boot Images 11:50 Conclusion 🔔 Subscribe for more retro hardware adventures! Want to join THE PHINTAGE SUPPORTERS or THE PHINTAGE ENTHUSIASTS community and get a mention in an upcoming video? Learn more here: https://www.youtube.com/@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR/join This video was made possible with support by: THE PHINTAGE ENTHUSIASTS: Alisha Manuela Stutz Christian Zerrahn David Schell Ernesto Leonardo Bertola Waseem al sammane ZyeByteVT THE PHINTAGE SUPPORTERS: Aaron Aluatis Balint Szikszay Brian Repinski CaffeinePizza Cecil Chip Smith Cinemint Media Clank CompuDroid Diego Valle GrayT! Ian Cobb ihartmacz Jack Beckman Jack Rosenthal Lord Pingvin Luke Granger-Brown Matthew Veety Mlok Karel MS-DOS Manfred nadrazhul PPCEmulator Roy Edmund Antaw ryaxnb SoftMASCII Steven Glogger Wobinu Films xcalibur839 Z098 Visit also THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR website at https://www.thephintagecollector.ch for insights into my retro computer collection. This presentation, Copyright @ 2025 THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR, Gianpaolo Del Matto. All rights reserved. Individual Copyrights apply for referenced material (see sources). Music composed by 🎶 Abdallah El-Ghannam https://www.youtube.com/@AcrossTheU.S.A | https://www.fiverr.com/abdallahghannam 🎶 rootkitty | https://soundcloud.com/rootkitty ℹ️ Sources: ## Overview / General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Inc. # BeIA Sources https://web.archive.org/web/20001205144300/http://www.be.com/products/beia/ https://web.archive.org/web/20001109044400/http://www.be.com/developers/ https://archive.org/details/beia-release https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/beia-sdk-dump/15263 https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/ # BeIA Devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_eVilla https://oldcomputer.info/terminal/clipper/index.htm https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=44870 https://web.archive.org/web/20080212001605/http://www.ia1hacking.com/ia1_viewarticle.php?idx=9 # Sony eVilla https://www.theregister.com/2001/06/15/sony_launches_evilla_be_appliance/ https://www.theregister.com/2001/08/31/sony_kills_off_evilla_net/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/sony-axes-evilla-web-surfing-appliance/ # Industry Context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_appliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Com_Audrey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Companion # News Coverage https://www.wired.com/2000/02/beia-here-now/ https://www.theregister.com/2000/02/07/be_to_launch_info_appliance/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/be-sets-sights-on-internet-appliances/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/be-targets-internet-appliances/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/be-tries-free-software-strategy-again/ https://www.computerworld.com/article/1577571/sony-unwraps-internet-appliance-bluetooth-module.html https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/REVIEW-COMPAQ-S-NET-APPLIANCE-NOT-QUITE-ALL-IT-3237327.php # Press Releases https://asleson.org/public/mirrors/www.be.com/press/pressreleases/99-12-20_compaq.html https://asleson.org/public/mirrors/www.be.com/press/pressreleases/99-12-21_qubit.html https://asleson.org/public/mirrors/www.be.com/press/pressreleases/00-02-07_fic.html https://asleson.org/public/mirrors/www.be.com/press/pressreleases/01-01-06_sony.html https://asleson.org/public/mirrors/www.be.com/press/pressreleases/01-01-08_harp.html https://asleson.org/public/mirrors/www.be.com/press/pressreleases/01-01-08_musicrepublic.html # Retrospectives https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2001/04/be/ https://www.forbes.com/2000/11/01/1101appliances.html https://www.edn.com/a-web-appliance-by-any-other-name-is-still-a-pc/ https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/23-sony_ces/ https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/26-when_over/ https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102741012 # Misc https://www.flickr.com/photos/84822102@N00/ (Be expo photos and slides) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--bLSaBtYFs (BeIA demo)