Cerilica is pleased to learn that its premier package, and one of RISC OS' most advanced and modern packages, has been confirmed to run on a Microdigital Omega system!

Cerilica recently submitted its application upon request to Microdigital, developers of the new RISC OS hardware, for initial testing. Cerilica was proudly told of the success of the test and shown proof shortly after the event where the technically complex software package ran 'out of the box'.

Details of the Omega have been released by Microdigital but to confirm, Vantage was running on a new-design 300MHz StrongARM hardware system with high resolution and deep colour depth screen mode as well as contemporary levels of memory bandwidth. Even though we understand Microdigital are currently in the process of writing all final device drivers and are fine-tuning the system, Vantage was capable of operating fully rendering some of the most complex new demonstration files that can be found at: Cerilica's preview area

News in that even this close to Wakefield, those bods at R Comp have released a new package...

Grapevine, is a brand new application for RISC OS users which has been under development for some time.It will be available at the Wakefield show this weekend!

Introduction

Communication is an essential part of our daily lives, be it talking to friends, family or business colleagues. The more in-depth letter has its electronic counterpart in the form of email, but what about the immediacy of phone or informal conversation? The answer is Instant Messaging, and that's where Grapevine comes in. It allows you to communicate in real-time with friends, family and colleagues directly from your computer.

It's amazing just how useful this is - you go online to check email, or browse the web, and can see any of your friends or contacts who are also online. You can then have a conversation, whilst also doing the browsing or emailing you started out to do. These people can be anywhere in the world, not just local people, allowing you to keep up with old acquaintances many miles away.

In the PC world, instant communication tends to be split into lots of different programs, making it laborious to use if you have friends on different services. Grapevine's aim is to provide a single application, initially supporting Microsoft's "MSN" service and the more chat-room orientated "IRC".

Why is Grapevine significant?

Instant communication is one of those things that may seem pointless until you have used it. Now that the Internet has become commonplace, the ability to see friends and family online, and converse with them when you are browsing the web, or checking email, becomes an essential part of internet usage. And you thought that the internet was about passively browsing the web!!!

By bringing everything under one actively developed roof, RISC OS users can communicate with people without needing lots of disparate applications, and enjoy a consistant user interface. And of course, although you are using RISC OS, your friends can be on Windows, or Mac, or Linux etc...

From a personal perspective, I now have the choice of Grapevine under RISC OS, or Microsoft's versions under Windows. And I can tell you, for the last few weeks (or more!) it has been Grapevine that has been my weapon-of-choice (it's running a conversation as I'm typing this!)

RiScript's development continues to progress well with the recent major release of version 4.15. Available now as an on-line upgrade to all existing customers, the version brings even more powerful PDF reading capabilities such as handling of CIE colour models and Euro symbol support. RiScript now also automatically embeds any Type1 font data that may already be present for more accurate document text (features such as hinting will be preserved).

RiScript customers may download the upgrade at their own convenience via the Cerilica on-line upgrade area

Some of you may not be aware that as a registered user (who's logged in!), you can alter what you see on My RISC OS:

The 'Choose Your News' block on the lower left hand side contains news feeds from other websites, including but not limited to: The Icon Bar, RISC OS.Org and Acorn Arcade. You can change which news feed you see simply by choosing the site title from the drop down list and then clicking the 'Choose Your News' button.

Secondly, you can minimise or maximise any of the side blocks that appear on the site.This is accomplished by clicking on the + or - symbol next to the side blocks' title. Nice and easy! :)

My RISC OS: Your premier RISC OS portal!

The Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club will be giving away a free floppy disc to visitors to our club stand at the Wakefield 2002 Acorn RISC OS Show.

After more than four years of development, Artex Software are proud to present the realtime strategy game TEK 1608!

Some features:

1. High resolution rendered graphics
   
2. State-of-the-art design
   
3. Stunning gameplay, easy to understand but challenging
   
4. Screen resolutions from 640x480 up to 1024x768 (the latter requires 2MB VRAM)
   
5. Additional smaller windows can be opened for guarding or tracking your battle units or buildings
   
6. A small map of the whole area is displayed on the status bar, showing all your units/buildings, and everything you know about the enemy
   
7. The surface consists of isometric fields with four height levels
   
8. Your units can only see what's within their radar. So you can hide movements and make really nasty unseen attacks.
   
9. Everything outside the radar of your units is displayed dark.
   
10. Every place never visited before is unknown, ie black.
    
11. Three different terain sets
    
12. 12 different battle units

Just a reminder to everyone that the show is nearly upon us and that if you are wanting your tickets in advance then you can do so one of three ways.

Either by post,

Credit card orders via the website or by phone credit card order.

Please visit the show website and following the link for admission for full details of prices, snail mail address and for credit card order the link to the ordering system, sponsored and run by Spelling Computer Systems on our behalf.

Please note the snail mail address is being changed this weekend, any mail sent to the old address will automatically be redirected to the new address provided you address the letter per the website details.

PLEASE NOTE:

Closing date for the receipt of advance orders is Monday 13th May, credit card orders can be processed on the 14th if booked before noon.

Any received after this time can not be certain of having the tickets returned in time.

So get your orders in NOW!

RComp are pleased to announce that our 100Mbit network cards began shipping today (Saturday). These new cards are the result of a partnership in the RISC OS market ensuring the production of high performance, yet cost effective hardware.

The new cards set standards in price, performance and features. Fitting into the network slot present in all RiscPC/A7000 systems (no backplanes etc. required), the performance of the card is only limited (on current machines) by the speed at which the processesor can handle network packets, when used on a 100Mbit network.

According to the Select Website "Select CD's have started shipping and should reach everyone sometime in the next week"

Note: As a thought, how long does it take post to get from Cardiff to (say) Edinburgh first class? Sometime next week doesn't sound right.

Following our exclusive with Roy of RiscStation, Paul Richardson of ExpLAN, maker of the ground breaking Solo machine (amongst other things) has agreed to tell us some of his thoughts regarding the RISC OS arena...

In the space of the last week, two very well known RISC OS companies have both announced their own ADSL in a box products.

R-Comp will tailor their product to meet your exact needs at around 155 UKP (includes VAT and UK postage). This will allow up to 4 machines to be hooked in at a very high speed.

The offering from CJE is similar and costs 180 UKP for the complete setup.

Both systems offer full RISC OS compatibility without the need for DHCP or other such extensions as well has mega-fast download speeds and always being online without the need to tie up your phone line.

With the cost of the actual ASDL connection dropping (with the introduction of the BT DIY kits), if you haven't got cable, this may be the high speed offer you've been waiting for!

Microdigital have revealed that their long overdue Omega computer looks to be on for a Novemeber launch.

In an exclusive interview with MyRISCOS, Roy Heslop of RiscStation has revealed that a full statement on the portable will be made later this week.

Plenty of other items have been covered in the interview as well. To see what's going on, read on...

Archive Publications, publishers of the ever green and well respected subscription only magazine, Archive have announced a new magazine - Living with Technology.

Paul says in the latest Archive

"Ah, but what is it about?

"Well, technology is here to stay, and with the speed which it changes is likely to increase tather than decrease in the years ahead, so we have to live with it, like it or not. The new magazine will aim to help you keep up with the changes, understand what is going on and what the newer technologies involve."

An opportunity not to be missed!


If you'd like to help publicise the Wakefield 2002 show, please visit


http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/2002/ and go to the "News" page, where you'll be able to download some posters in PDF and/or Draw format. Your help greatly appreciated. Let's make this year's show THE BEST!


Ruth.

Tau Press the publishers of Acorn User have announced that Robert Donaldson has taken over the helm.

Good luck Rob - from past experience, you'll need it ;-)

The list of exhibitors at Wakefield 2002 is growing daily. Please check the show website for the very latest news.

One unexpected addition is RISCOS Ltd have now said that they will be attending. Initially they were not going to.

VirtualAcorn can now confirm that VirtualA5000 V 1.10 can read and write Packet CDs. Packet CD (also called UDF) allows CD writers to copy files using drag and drop file transfers, files can be renamed, deleted, or have their filetypes changed on a writable CD. This means that users can backup their VirtualA5000 hard disc directory to a CD whenever they need.

Once a CD has been finalised using Windows it can also be read on a "real" RISC OS machine, and provided applications and files have been archived then all the filetypes will be preserved. Depending on the particular CD software provided on the PC it is also possible to write data to a CD on VirtualAcorn, then read the CD on a "real" RISC OS machine and then add further data to the CD using VirtualA5000. So far CD writing has only been tested using CeQuadrat PacketCD(tm) and Roxio DirectCD(tm). Full information on setting up a CD Writer is now on the VirtualAcorn Technical Support pages.

And that's not all....