I have an old, minimal machine (with no CDROM drive) that I would like to use for install BeOS 5.0. Is there an installation HOWTO document that will tell me how to set things up? Thanks.

Do you have the commercial product BeOS 5.0 Pro? Or are you tying to install one of the free distributions? Here's the best way I can think of: Have BeOS installed on a different computer, take the drive from your 'minimal' computer and connect it as Slave. Us the Installer application to install BeOS to the Salve drive. Remove the slave drive and replace into the 'minimal' computer. Here are a couple of things you'd have to watch for doing that: First, while BeOS is on the other computer, install the drivers, patches, and software you'll want on the 'minimal' computer. Second, you may have to use a BeOS bootfloppy the first time. Many questions can be answered by reading these pages: www.betips.net You know, a brand new CD-ROm drive is rather inexpensive... -Bob

I think I put a wiki page on bebits called installways.

The computer is a DEC Multia. It is an ultra-slim machine that does not have physical room for a CD. I do not have any available "slave drive" physical space in my main computer (WinXp) either, so I need to do an over-network install if possible. I have installed NT 3.51/4.0/Win2K/WinXP over a network, as well as Linux and FreeBSD. Needing only a boot floppy, I could connect to a remote machine with the CD drive shared and start an installation. That is what I would like to do with BeOS now, if possible. I am the newest newbie ever, so any real options are appreciated. Thanks again. >You know, a brand new CD-ROm drive is >rather inexpensive...

As far as I know, a network of BeOS is not possible. Could always buy a CD drive, remove an unneeded slave drive, and do an open case install.

There are quite a few ways to install what you want. Actually you can do a network install with the ProCD or even the PE version. Just make the CD or directory shared and run the installer as you would a local file. I suggest that you use the NT or linux for PE. Beos doesn't boot into the XP's NTFS 5.1. If you get it installed then you can copy over any other distro and rename it image.be or just make a new partition and use installer. Did you see the wiki page? What I had originally and what it is now might be two different things. There are more than a few ways to do this.