Topic: News

Peter Naulls has opened up his port scheme which for a minute 25 quid for 6 months enables you to get a pile of RISC OS ports, with support, of some really good software.

For more details, have a look Peter's website

News in from Cerilica and it's very good news indeed...

Cerilica Vantage new pricing

Following on from the great reception to Cerilica's premier product re-alignment at the Wakefield show, we are pleased to announce the package's new format and amazing price.

The Wakefield show saw the launch of Vantage's on-CD electronic manual format. The CD now contains three PDF full manuals, each optimised for on-screen viewing and printing through commercial and freeware applications such as Cerilica's RiScript, !PDF and Adobe's Acrobat. This change in product format has allowed the base price of Vantage to drop significantly from the previous 241.50ukp to 177.50ukp (UK, including package, postage and VAT).

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

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!

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...

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....

Mike Stubbs has stepped down from AU after 6 months in charge. He gave no reasons why, but has affirmed his dedication to the platform and to stay active within it.

The question now is who will take over the mantle which seems to have become somewhat of a poisoned chalice over the past year or so with no less than 3 editors (counting John Cartmell as well).

As usual, there is nothing on the AU website about this and very little on usenet.

The full article is on Drobe

Cerilica have been busy with their next revision of the !Vantage vector package, the upgrade is free to existing customers and should be with us before the Wakefield show!

There's an impressive list of new features that are rounding out the facilities nicely for those of us who are mere design mortals...

Several of us from the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) made the long journey to the South West show yesterday, and were pleased to see that it seemed to be a big success.

Although the show quietened down quite dramatically from about 2:30pm onwards, earlier in the day it had been quite busy. Many exhibitors said that attendance seemed similar to the previous year, with some saying that sales had been better - so much for the doom and gloom merchants.

Items of interest included:

RComp are pleased to announce that the first release of Messenger Pro Server Edition will be at the SouthWest Show this Saturday.

Messenger Pro Server Edition is a top-of-the-line part of the Messenger Pro email software family for RISC OS. The software allows RISC OS users to share email across a network to all manner of computer platforms (RISC OS, Winodws, Linux etc.).

Why do you need Messenger Pro Server?

There are many times that you need to have email flowing through a central machine on a network, especially if you want to be able to...

RISCOS Ltd have announced that RISC OS is to get the embedded treatement and that work is well underway for ARM7500 and SA1100 chipsets.

The first machine to have this technology on board is being developed by Castle for their Neuron product.

After a period of confusion Paul Middleton, managing director of RISCOS Ltd, has stated categorically that VirtualAcorn is not "a legally licensed product"

Note: While MyRISCOS may carry this story, it may not reflect the views of either MyRISCOS or the moderator of this article. There is a certain degree of confusion over VA having a licenced copy of OS 3.11 (from Pace) or having an agreement with Pace for 3.11 (this amounts to the same, but doesn't cost as much)

The Wakefield Acorn Computer Group has recently changed its name to "Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club". After a debate at the AGM in January, the members voted to change the name to reflect the new era of our faviourite computer platform.

Check this out:

It says that apparently RISC OS still has a loyal following, it sure does.

Also in case anyone doesn't know by now, Artex have announced that pre-orders for TEK are now being taken.

Happy New Year to all.


Note: The BBC have kindly added a link back to My RISC OS whilst they were correcting a spelling mistake that we pointed out - Cheers :)

Just a quick note to say the forums are back - not perfect yet but working.

Note: Just thought I'd point out, the new forum code allows you to subscribe to each forum to receive emails - so as soon as a new post is made, you will get an email of the forum post, with a link back to that forum topic so that you can quickly reply. :)

Bob Pollard, author of the internationally renowned TechWriter and EasiWriter range of software and chief programmer at Icon Technology,has recently passed away after a long illness.
He will be sadly missed
Bob leaves a widow, Reena
All of us here at myriscos.co.uk pass on our deepest condolences at this sad time.

RiscStation Ltd have announced today that their new software support email address has gone live.

This address is for software upgrades, bug reports or problems regarding any of the software supplied with the RiscStation range of machines. Please do not use this email address for sales enquiries or hardware problems!

email : riscstation.software@blueyonder.co.uk

Acorn User has decided to drop the regular issuing of its front cover CD which was due out this month (October Issue).
Seemingly we've all to download the 100's of Megabytes of programs, etc. off their web site.
Or as Acorn User calls it 'An exciting new scheme'. Exciting for whom?

(http://www.acornuser.com/)

Note: There is a reader poll attached to this article.