Topic: Hardware

R-Comp have released a new Virtual RiscPC computer called the RisCube MINI.

In a surprise announcement this evening, the SIMON team, speaking through Matt Edgar of Advantage Six Ltd. have released a new product for the A9 Home Computer.

Stuart Tyrrell Developments have once again brought us a seasonal special offer. Following on from their Advent Prize Draw and January Sale, we now are treated to a special offer for Valentine's Day.

This offer is brought to us in conjunction with RISC OS Ltd and gives a special price on a fully populated Unipod, with RISC OS Adjust, a preinstalled hard drive and a £50 voucher for subscrption to the Select Scheme.

All of the above for only £290.

Rather than try to reword the excellent press release from STD, we thought we'd quote it below for your amusement...

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.

Steve Potts of the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club has been a busy snapper.

If you fancy having a look at the baby from Castle, a click to the link above will show all.

He does say also that more pictures are available from his website - so mosey on over and see what folks are foaming at the mouth to get their grubby mits on!

It started as quite an innocent posting on csaa by the wizard known as Dave Ruck (the genius behind probably the most useful product ever, disknight). An unofficial mailing list was closed and a new spangly one covering all RISC OS graphics cards opened.

Innocent enough...

Next, under the "Right to Reply" banner, the graphics hardware whizz supreme, John Kortink gave a response.

All well and good...

Not. The normally tranquil and slighly glowing arena that is csah has become an inferno of claim and counter claim.

As is the case in the world against Viewfinder usenet arguments we see two well known RISC OS bods and quite a lot of users getting embroiled in a mud slinging and handbags at dawn affair.

On the basis of all usenet articles on this matter and a friendly couple of people on both the Viewfinder and RISC OS graphics card list, the weight of evidence firmly falls against JK. Of course, this could be complete bumpkin.

Note: Hmmm, I think I need some sleep!

Mike Williams, former head honcho of Acorn Publisher, has emailed in to us with the full drop on the new baby from Castle. Hang onto your knees folks - this stuff is HOT!

Iyonix Motherboard

• All new design
  
• ARM XScale processor (80321)
  
• GeForce2 MX400 PCI video card
  
• Up to 1GB DDR (Double Data Rate) memory (200MHz)
  
• UDMA 100 Hard Drive
  
• PCI expansion (32-bit & 64-bit)
  
• Hi-speed podule bus
  
• Gigabit networking (10/100/1000 base T)
  
• Technical Reference Manual (to be published)
  

Tasty or what! - Now read on....

Comment: At least thats how it appears from the latest news on the viewfinder mailing list...

I very regularly get support questions via email from users that still subscribe and post messages to the deprecated Viewfinder mailing list.

I'll stress once again that the Viewfinder mailing list needs to disappear,

Microdigital have reported that they have started sending out letters to customers who have pre-ordered their Omega computer.

In case it's passed your attention, the Microdigital website seems to be getting updated now more often than something which gets updated quite frequently.

It has tonnes of news, very interesting developments on the software front (I'm intregued to say the least over the three pronged attack) and of course, news of their Omega machine.

Note to other RISC OS hardware companies

Follow the lead set by MD. Give us information!!!

Simtec Electronics, famous for their ARM processor hardware and more recently, the NET 100 ethernet cards have just announced a range of USB interfaces for the RISC OS market.

There are two versions. One is an ISA card (USB11-isa) suitable for the RiscStation R7500. The other is a podule version (USB11-pod). This means that they are suitable for Acorn computers, such as the RISC PC, A7000, A5000 and even the lowly A310!

In addition, there is a full support website that already contains a user guide and full-on Device driver API documentation - culminating in about 300 pages!

In yet another exclusive to MyRISCOS, Gareth Simpson of Simtec Electronics, the company who manufacture the motherboards for the RiscStation range and ExpLAN SOLO machine (to name but a few), has given over some of his time to give this interview.

As with the other interviews, this was conducted by email.

Simtec have now released the first pictures of their new 100Mb ethernet NIC card for Risc PCs. The Net100 has 512k of flash memory on board and includes RISC OS driver software.

Reports from the South West Show have described this new product but some have understated its specification. A collaboration between four of the best RISC OS developers has produced the NET100 - note the number!

Together with CTA Direct, R-Comp Interactive and Stuart Tyrrell Developments, Simtec Electronics have produced a 100Mb network card for RISC PC and A7000 computers.

Not really RISC OS, but...

On ZDnet there's a bit of Info about this at LinuxWorld.

A colour screen, a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor, a tiny pull-out keyboard, rechargeable batteries, CompactFlash and Secure Digital expansion slots, and 64MB of memory

I wonder if it would run RISC OS? Oh! Wait! That's RON isn't it!

Again from the Viewfinder mailing list...

Existing Viewfinder users can now upgrade to an ATI XPert 2000 Pro AGP card.

For all those people eagerly awaiting the new Riscstation portable, it appears that there is not long to wait now. February is believed to be the time of release for a limited number of machines initially.

Riscstation have recently updated their website (after a very long period of inactivity).

Let's hope that this announcement is echoed at BETT this week and the the education market is given a chance to run RISC OS, out and about once more.

As a very happy user of the Viewfinder Graphics Card upgrade for RiscPC's, I was pleased at this announcement recently received from the Viewfinder mailing list.

So far John has been busy improving the firmware with new versions appearing regularly, the firmware has been very stable since version 1.16 but that hasn't stopped John beavering away making it faster, smoother, and basically better.

To quote John Kortink...

According to RISCOS Ltd. Funding has been secured for the RON (RISC OS on Netbook) project. This project will now be going ahead.

Cnet Reported : The new handhelds will be part of HP's Jornada 560 series.

Hewlett-Packard will soon announce two handheld computers that run Microsoft's upcoming "Merlin" operating system (Pocket PC 2002 possibly)

Both devices will use Intel's StrongARM SA-1110 processor and will have active-matrix screens that can display 16-bit color.

See their article for more info

The article also suggests that Pocket PC 2002 (if that's it's name) will eventually run on XScale