Live news from Wakefield 2005 | Drobe.co.uk archives

Live news from Wakefield 2005

By Chris Williams. Published: 20th May 2005, 22:38:04 | Permalink | Printable

It's not BBC News 24, but it'll do [Updated] A9home won in prize draw

It's about time we took advantage of modern communication networks and this new fangled thing called the Internet to bring you news from the Wakefield show, as it happens or as we stumble across it. Our team present at the event will be beaming brief news updates and show information, plus the odd photo, to our special, no frills Wakefield live news page. If you're not going to the show this weekend, or even if you are, keep an eye on the page for the latest from the event - we're aiming for a BBC News Reporters' Log approach.

We'll be looking to get to the bottom of DVD access on the Iyonix, the fate of Merlin, the exact specifications of the A9home and its future, news that a particular dealers has the last shipment of rechargable motherboard batteries for RiscPC and A7000s, where CinoDVD is, whether or not the show presentations have any new material compared to last year, how much time RISC OS Firefox takes to get going, and more. It's going to be fun.

And if you are going, be sure to visit the Drobe stand, pick up a flyer and chat to us about what you think of Drobe and RISC OS, or if you've heard any news or information from dealers and developers exhibiting on the day. It's an excellent chance to put usernames to faces. Our stand is also representing the open source browser project NetSurf, as we're looking to spread a love for this work amongst show punters.

Update at 14:11 22/05/2005
And the winner of the A9home in the show prize draw is Brian Cocksedge.

Links

Wakefield live news page Wakefield show website

Previous: RISC OS 5.09 beta released
Next: A9home emerges in beta form

Discussion

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Great initiative! Thanks for this!! :-)

jjvdgeer on 21/5/05 8:10AM
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Hardly a new idea though.. iconbar.com has been doing this for the last two years

andypoole on 21/5/05 10:05AM
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I'm on my way to the show now ready to beam back live pictures to iconbar.com. Sitting on a train in Newcastle Central Station at the moment waiting for depature. :|

AndrewDuffell on 21/5/05 11:05AM
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Hmm, interesting censorship there.. Are we just lucky, or is it anything that puts drobe in an even slightly bad light?

andypoole on 21/5/05 12:44PM
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People moderate comments down, this has been explained before. I've had a look, and that particular comment was from someone purely advertising another site. So it was correctly moderated. Simple. You are welcome to go elsewhere.

piemmm on 21/5/05 12:49PM
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The A9home seems like an interesting computer, and I can not wait for it to be released.

Revin Kevin on 21/5/05 12:51PM
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Hmm, I refuse to believe that my comment was moderated down enough to be removed in the last two minutes (from not being moderated at all..)

Still, what I said was true though.. iconbar have been doing live Wakefield reports for the last two years now, yet drobe appear to pretend it's a whole new arena..

andypoole on 21/5/05 1:01PM
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The a9home is well small judging from the photos on the live show page, looks like no noisy fans, either!

piemmm on 21/5/05 1:08PM
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Unfortunately I can't get to wakefield this year, so this type of thing is invaluable to me before the actual show reports go up.

I already know about iconbar's live reporting, but it's a shame that the comments above are classed as "advertising another site" as I think on the whole, it's better for the users if they find this type of thing out.

But anyway, keep it up, the news snippets look good so far.

john on 21/5/05 1:09PM
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The A9 looks to be just the sort of h/w I was looking for. I feel slightly disappointed with the price point - £499 + £87.53+ delivery gives us a total of around £600. However it isn't a bad price for the RISC OS market and I'm just pleased to see this great little machine nearing completion.

I'd be interested to know what model of HDD is bundled with the £499 model. But in any event I need to save my pennies and hope my PC hardware hasn't devalued too much by the time the A9 is released `_^

JohnB on 21/5/05 1:30PM
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Not hard to predict that people would complain about the price. People complained about the price of an Iyonix citing that if it was cheaper they would buy it. Along comes a cheaper machine and "if only it was cheaper".

jonix on 21/5/05 2:08PM
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wow! the a9home is TINY! I want one :P

helf on 21/5/05 2:35PM
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jonix: I for one WILL be buying an A9home. I've been waiting for something that is a significant step above an upgraded RPC, runs a current version of the OS and is below the Iyonix price range. The A9Home is that computer so, unless I decide to leave RISC OS for good, then that's what I have to buy ^_^ The fact it is so compact and cute is just an added bonus.

JohnB on 21/5/05 2:45PM
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yeah, its very nice! and its screaming for a laptop mod

i might buy one just to get that working.

I still cant get over its size

I was not expecting something that small.

helf on 21/5/05 3:14PM
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The A9H looks lovely. Seems like I great way to replace my RiscPC. I know Acorn built them well but I was wondering what would happen if it finally died. Still the other option is a macMini with VRPC. Small, fast, cool and 2 interesting OSs. -- Spriteman

Spriteman on 21/5/05 3:16PM
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The A9home does indeed look very nice. The case looks like an off the shelf extruded aluminium case but seems to work very well. I am 80 percent certain I will buy one.

vshears on 21/5/05 3:24PM
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The hard disc is 2 1/2 laptop drive - no make given. Power supply gives 20 Watts because of 4 USB connections - but the A9home itself only draws 2 1/2 watts

499 + VAT seems a bit high - but that's what the BBC Model B cost in 1983.

I thought the Apple took 5 secs to draw at the demo but on the stand later I timed it at 4 secs.

No date given for it being on sale - 'It's ready when it's ready'

Dave C

DaveC on 21/5/05 3:37PM
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Apple only seems to take about 2.5 seconds on my RiscPC

mavhc on 21/5/05 3:53PM
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But this is Beta software - maybe with de-bugging routes - certainly not optimised.

This was in a high screen mode as well - there is 8Mbs of video Ram

DaveC on 21/5/05 7:25PM
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What's that running on the Apple mini? Emulator or fake?

freder on 21/5/05 8:24PM
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freder> emulator.

aardvark on 21/5/05 11:15PM
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Maybe we were just lucky we didn't get a full sized version for double the price? ;-)

Looks like Apples & Acorns are on a similar style path now. :-)

Sawadee on 21/5/05 11:34PM
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But, they are not Acorn's any more.

sa110 on 21/5/05 11:57PM
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details, details

Spriteman on 22/5/05 9:52AM
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Witht he apple render how does it compare with the Iyonix and Omega.

Also it is good news about all those informtaion terminals with RISC OS 5 in.

Revin Kevin on 22/5/05 11:51AM
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It seemed very nippy in the presentation, even dropping out into prompt and forcing a full redraw.

Given the price differential, comparisons to Iyonix and especially Omega seem unfair (on the Omega and Iyonix)....

Iyonix is still (IMHO) top of the range machine at top of the range price. A9 is a great replacement for RISC PC if you don't want to stretch to it.

markee174 on 22/5/05 1:57PM
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The Artworks and IconTechnology lecture sessions both had a 'workshop' sessions about them (probably more by accident than design).

It was great to see the programs being put through their paces.....

markee174 on 22/5/05 2:09PM
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Apple rendering:

Pity resolution, colour depth and enlargement were not stated. Apple takes 3-4 secs to render on IYONIX pc true colour 1600x1200 at 150% and just 1 second in same setting but at 50% display scale.

hzn on 22/5/05 2:26PM
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hzn: The A9 still has a lot of untapped potential which is why the OS and machine is being classed as 'beta'. The OS needs further modifications to utilise the full specification of the machine. There is also debug code present on the developer models demonstrated. Aside from testing, the whole point of the 'beta' release was to allow Ad6 and their co-developers the time to now refine the OS and the drivers for the machine. I would expect significant performance and functionality improvement yet from the machines displayed at Wakefield.

The A9 appears to match and on many renders exceed the Iyonix on graphics performance at present (I have seen timed drawfile rendering speeds which validate this, but not yet timed Artworks renders). I would anticipate this performance to be increased further in the coming weeks.

md0u80c9 on 22/5/05 11:37PM
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