We've just received this press release from Castle Technology. Castle are offering a free 4-port hub with every new Iyonix ordered in September and October, see full press release below:

From the comp.sys.acorn.announce newsgroup

RISCOS Ltd

Press Release 2nd September 2003

RISCOS Ltd and Virtual Acorn have today signed an Agreement to allow for the distribution of RISC OS 4 ROM images with the Virtual Acorn range of Emulators.

Martin Wuerthner has sent out this press release (quoted in full below).

This could mean that RISC OS Printing could be given a new lease of life. Leveraging off work done in the Linux world under GPL, Martin is looking at developing a new RISC OS printer driver based on the Linux gimp-print system.

Castle Technology have put together an FAQ about their recent purchase our favourite OS RISC OS.

In a nutshell,

• RISCOS Ltd can still produce RO4 & Select


• Castle want Select for RO5


• Castle can grant new licences for RO (for new areas so as not to get the backs up of existing licencees)


• Tematic deal with all the new embedded RO versions

For the full low-down visit the FAQ

Just spotted on our fellow RISC OS news sites (Iconbar and Drobe), Castle and Pace have done a deal, with Castle buying the rights to RISC OS and Pace will receive technical support for their existing products which use RISC OS.

Full details of the deal can be found in the Castle Press release

The impact of this move will no doubt have a major effect within the market....

It's been a little while now, since the RISC OS Expo 2003 show, but following various articles in the press, The Iconbar have published an article with another viewpoint of the Microdigital talk in the Show theatre.

For those whom are not already aware, Microdigital appear to have been listening to some of the noises out there and have made a higher specification laptop available for running RISC OS 4 / Windows XP Professional.

Note: As mentioned in the comments, the Alpha and Alpha Professional run RISC OS under a host Windows XP (Home / Professional)Operating System.

Following a gap of nearly two years, Cerilica !Vantage has been updated from version 1.01 to version 1.10 closely followed by 1.10a.

This so called 'stability' release has had, and indeed still does have, a few teething troubles. In particular, users running on RISC OS Select 4.29 - 4.36 will not be able to run the current version.

So what's new in this long awaited 'upgrade'?...

I've recently been updating my background control application to include some new features and also made it a little more compliant with RISC OS style conventions.

Microsoft will not create a new version of Internet Explorer for Macs in a move that leaves Apple users in an uncomfortable spot.
...
It reckons users are in good hands with Apple's own Safari browser, and so the trouble begins.
...
Comment: Should be good news for us! As another non IE browser might pursuade people to write pages that dont require IE! Well we can but hope

Our congratulations go to the WROCC for their Wakefield show efforts and to the visitors to the show who helped raise over £1100 for charity at this year.

Also, our thanks go to MicroDigital for providing the Creative Labs Inspire 5.1 speakers for the 2nd prize draw at the show - we won them and so now the office is nicely wired for sound, if only it had been draw three?!? :-S

We've just received a press release from Mike Williams on behalf of Castle Technology, announcing today, the availabilty of support for USB storage devices for the IYONIX pc.

From today you will be able to see, once registered and logged in, three new news feeds on the site. Those of Drobe Launchpad, RISC OS C Programming Info and the Unix Porting Project which should nicely add to the mix of news and information already available on this site and the news feeds we also carry from RISCOS.org, The IconBar and Acorn Arcade

I for one hoped but never imagined it would actually happen!

RISC OS Ltd have released some code into the open source community!

The open sorce code in question is the front end to !Printers+ and secondly, although not open source still welcome, Pop-up Printers (developed for the Iyonix).

Simtec have recently been updating their USB stack and this is now up to version 1.42.

Since exhibiting at the recent Wakefield Show, Microdigital have resumed their web site's NewsDesk feature (apparently by popular demand).

I am trying to find all the old and un supported commercial software that has been produced for the RISC OS platform over the years in an effort to keep this software alive.

I am currently able to offer full copies of Enterprise Accounts with printed manuals to any one that wants this software and I am looking for other packages to bring to the RISC OS community.

I am thinking about all those companies that have left(?) the RISC OS scene such as OAK, MINERVA, CC, etc they had or have wonderful software that can still be of great use to users at the right price.

If you have or know any one that has the rights to packages that are no longer published then please get in touch with me and maybe we can help RISC OS users together.
Thank you
Robert McCann

One of our registered users has submitted this little item for interest.

"For those interested in what might have been, you can purchase the one and only (I think!) Nucleus case in existance on ebay."

The item can be found at:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3021430569

Note: Well the auction ended just under an hour ago. There were 23 bids, the highest being £312 and the reserve was still not met. MyRO thinks that 'astute nick', in setting a high reserve price on the Nucleus, was not so astute after all! Looks like this piece of nostalgia is set to gather dust in its original home.