The weekend's RISC OS event has been and gone and we've got the rest of our lives to look forward to. Here's a round-up of extra news and Drobe's show-related coverage and some photos taken from Wakefield 2009 - plus a video from the show floor.
News
* RISCOS Open was selling copies of RISC OS 5.14 on CD so that it can be softloaded by Iyonix users. The OS was previously available as a beta Flash ROM image without a softloader. This official 5.14 build merges Castle's final 5.13 release, which includes USB 2 support, and all the changes made to the OS by the ROOL effort - and will be made available for free download from the ROOL website within the next few days. An experimental 5.15 build was also on the CD for people to play test and should also be made available online shortly - as well as the ability to buy a copy of the Acorn C/C++ compiler tools from the ROOL website. An explanation of the RISC OS 5 version numbers is here and a changelog for 5.14 is here.
* A new graphics card for RISC OS 6-powered computers, the Vpod, is unveiled.
* ArtWorks 2.9 goes on sale.
* R-Comp updates its back-up utility SafeStore and database package DataPower and launches a new family history program. SafeStore was, apparently, a show sell-out.
* Steve Potts and Steve Fryatt announced new versions of a VNC server front-end and CashBook, respectively.
* More pre-show news.
* Martin Hansen's write-up of the show.
Gossip
* R-Comp and MW Software were not the last to set up for the event at 10.20pm on the Friday before the show - Archive editor Jim Nagel reportedly turned up in the early hours to install his stand before heading straight to bed.
* In fact, many of the exhibitors were running off just a few hours of sleep. ROL's Paul Middleton struggled a bit in his RISC OS Select presentation due to lack of sleep, it seems, but did mention file searching would be vastly improved for the next version of ROL's OS.
* Exhibitors that made it to the aftershow party included Drobe man Martin Hansen, Keith Dunlop (of RISC OS Connect), Martin Wuerthner, Jim Nagel, the RISC OS Open team and Paul Middleton from RISCOS Ltd. Our mole couldn't quite catch what was being quietly discussed between Paul and the ROOL lads apart from resolving compatibility issues between ROOL's RISC OS 5 and ROL's RISC OS 6.
* ROOL had Beagleboards on show running RISC OS 5 and an A7000 also running RISC OS 5 - which could mean we're close to a RiscPC-compatible build of RISC OS 5 being made freely available. The ROM image doesn't work with RPCEmu, though.
* AdvantageSix hasn't given up on producing RISC OS 6 for the A9home, which would give users of the little blue machine an OS that isn't in perpetual beta, despite the distraction of commissioning the Vpod from partners Simtec. We'll have to just watch this space.
* The NetSurf team took nearly 500 quid in donations, bringing its total kitty over 700 after deducting expenses and other costs. Speaking of pennies, Drobe man Paul Stewart had to fork out 170 quid in extra bandwidth costs when people flocked to his website to download his Puppy Linux with RPCEmu Live CD .iso and crashed through his 50GB-per-month quota.
Video
The Museum of Computing History exhibited at the show and has published its own short review of the event plus uploaded a video from the hall. And yes, that is Martin Hansen speaking to camera right at the start - he's a multimedia hack, that one.
Photos
Many thanks to John-Mark Bell for the images. Click on a thumbnail for a larger version.
The NetSurf stand with Vincent Sanders (who maintains the Debian package of the browser) and developer Daniel Silverstone Some interesting ARM Linux device to run the GTK port of NetSurf Some of the vast array of Beeb kit set up for the show The RISCOS Ltd stand See, the Vpod does exist and it was the Drobe wot broke the news of it being a new graphics card The Museum of Computing History stand ROOL's official RISC OS 5.14 release, running on an Iyonix Spot the Vpod inside the RiscPC
"an A7000 also running RISC OS 5 - which could mean we're close to a RiscPC-compatible build of RISC OS 5 being made freely available. The ROM image doesn't work with RPCEmu, though."
The reason it doesn't work is known, and it's RPCemu's CPU emulation at fault. (It can't actually emulate an A7500. What it does is more like a StrongARM with features turned off.)
"See, the Vpod does exist and it was the Drobe wot broke the news of it being a new graphics card"
Except you were wrong about every detail /apart/ from it being "video or voice over IP"
Bang on with the embedded networking, USB and IDE? 8MB of video RAM? Simtec IDEFS? Voice? Come one, you just threw as many ideas as possible at an article and hoped one stuck; hardly bang-on
Well I couldn't make it work if I'd never seen it could I? If those with the ROM image want me to make it work, my email address is not exactly hidden...
RPCemu's CPU emulation isn't at fault, it's the podule ROMs and the various SWI hacks for hostfs, networking etc that break it. Also on bootup 5.15 loads an invalid mousetype into CMOS, which is annoying. 5.15 is running quite happily on my machine now.
"an A7000 also running RISC OS 5 - which could mean we're close to a RiscPC-compatible build of RISC OS 5 being made freely available. The ROM image doesn't work with RPCEmu, though."
Once it's downloadable, I'll run it though a few tests. There's a fair number of potential sticking points for a 32bit OS, but none should be unsurmountable.
RISC OS Open (ROOL) are pleased to announce the immediate release of the very latest RISC OS ROM release from Castle Technology (Castle) for the IYONIX pc desktop computer.
This is an official release from Castle and represents the first formal ROM release to include changes and improvements which have been fed back into the shared source project.
Wish I could have made it as it looks like it was a very good one, but in the middle of a major upheaval at the moment. Hope to see everyone at SE (if there is one) or Birmingham (the MUGs wont let us down, I'm sure).
Well funny you should mention the next shows. A few of us "MUG's" had a chat with some of the ROUGOL members, including Keith Dunlop, at Wakefield about the respective show plans and hopefully after our meeting in May things will be a lot clearer on both.
rjek
No, Drobe was bang on. We even got the GPU right. You're letting your proximity to the designers of the Vpod cloud your vision. Pun intended.
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