Has anyone tried to run BeOS on a 486? I have a 486 that I have run Win98, FreeBSD, and currently Linux on it, but I was wondering if BeOS would even work due to hardware restrictions.

BeOS was developed for the PowerPC first, then later versions became Pentium compliant. You won't notice it, but when you try setting up BeOS it will identify the processor and say, "Oh, hell no, you ain't installigamating me on this machine right here, there." But you won't see this. In simple terms, it not going to work.

Yes, BeOS required a Pentium as a minimum. But you would not want to run BeOS on anything less than a 200 Mhz machine. This is because BeOS breaks up processes into very small pieces. This is what makes it so responsive under a load. BUT the act of breaking up the process takes some CPU power. Although this analogy isn't great it does get the idea across. The act of breaking up the processes takes a certain amount of CPU power, for agument sake lets say 50Mhz... well if you are running on a 75 MHz machine that only leaves 25Mhz for actually doing anything. But on a 800Mhz machine you still have 750Mhz... Before anyone complains I know that this analogy is flawed but it does get the idea across. Basicly there is a minimum MHz necessary before there is an advantage to breaking everything into small pieces. Richard