Buy Iyonix, get card reader free | Drobe.co.uk archives

Buy Iyonix, get card reader free

By Chris Williams. Published: 8th Jul 2003, 15:36:13 | Permalink | Printable

Summer special offer

Castle have announced today that over the months of August and July, all Iyonixes will be sold with a free bundled 6-in-1 universal memory card reader. Last week's news of Castle acquiring RISC OS from Pace probably helped boost sales of their XScale Iyonix and perhaps this summer special offer from them will convince more users to join their 32 bit RISC OS platform.

The 6-in-1 reader supports CompactFlash, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital media and IBM Microdrive cards.

Links

Iyonix website

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Discussion

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And there is a driver for it as well? Cool! -- Andrew Harmsworth, Cambridge. www.gcse.com owner and author

harmsy on 8/7/03 5:42PM
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Why are there so many digital camera memory card formats anyhow ... and I see XD isn't on the list yet. -- Govind Kharbanda, Edinburgh

govind on 8/7/03 5:44PM
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It's just a mass storage device, it doesn't need a specific driver for the particular device.

It looks like this is the same model as the one I already use on my Iyonix (bought from R-Comp in Holland) - if so I can report that installation and setup is literally a five second task!

dgs on 8/7/03 5:50PM
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It would be great if they used one of the drive bay type USB card readers with a breakout lead to the USB port. That way it takes up less deskspace and is more convienient. Let's hope more of these types of products are available soon. The existing list is very impressive. Perhaps support for the new SCSI>USB converter? That would be great. -- Smiler -

Alex Melhuish

Smiler on 8/7/03 6:31PM
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I think drive bay (internal) USB readers are available for the Iyonix separately from R-Comp or CJE.

An internal drive does make it less portable, though.

My external drive isn't taking up desk space, because my Iyonix is sitting on the floor :-)

dgs on 8/7/03 6:42PM
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1 more reason for castle to get the on-board USB working...

epistaxsis_RISC OS on 8/7/03 7:08PM
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Govinda: My Olympus C-730 takes the xD card and the camera is recognised by the Iyonix as a USB external hard drive when it is connected directly to the Iyonix with the supplied USB cable.

The C-730 can also use a Smart Media card, but it makes no difference to the Iyonix which card is in the camera. Works fine with either.

Thus you don't actually need a card reader if you buy the right camera.

Worth checking out www.iyonix.com/usb for known compatible devices. HTH Stan -- S Williams,

blahsnr on 8/7/03 7:15PM
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Great news, means that Iyonix users can get almost any palmtop they like and exchange files with it.

I must say that all this Castle/Iyonix news lately has made it seem a bit more tempting.

thegman on 8/7/03 9:34PM
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...the on-board USB will never work properly, because the limitations (i.e. bugs) of the various chips in the Iyonix. In any case, it wouldn't do much to change the physical arrangement of connectors in any drive mounted device.

-- Peter, drobe.co.uk

mrchocky on 8/7/03 9:52PM
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A USB card must cost about £10 these days, so Castle would be wise not to worry about it too much. I'm guessing the built in ones do work under Linux, Windows CE or whatever OS the board was originally intended for?

thegman on 8/7/03 10:13PM
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The board (the Iyonix) was designed to run RISC OS, so I'm not sure what you're on about. Changing the OS doesn't solve the hardware bugs.

-- Peter, drobe.co.uk

mrchocky on 8/7/03 11:14PM
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Sorry, should have clarified. It was my understanding that the board is an Intel ref. board, so presumably it's used elsewhere in a different form for other purposes. If it's not, my mistake.

thegman on 9/7/03 12:00AM
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You won't find many Intel reference boards with podule support designed into them. That should give you a clue as to what the board was designed for!

James

jbyrne on 9/7/03 9:38AM
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I realise that the Iyonix mobo was made for the Iyonix, but I thought that it was a modified Intel ref. board. If it was, then I would have thought USB would be one thing they would not have to change, and therefore the bug would be in any iteration/version of the board.

IIRC changing the OS can solve a hardware bug, take the f00f bug in the Pentium, I believe this is patched over on most moden x86 OSs, so although not fixed, the problem is solved. I imagine this is very different to the bug Chocky speaks of though.

thegman on 9/7/03 9:53AM
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Well, that's more FUD that's been spread.

That's not solving a hardware bug, that's working around it. Most chipsets contain some kind of bug, and subsequently, contain various work arounds.

-- Peter, drobe.co.uk

mrchocky on 9/7/03 10:43AM
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Aww Peter, you say the nicest things!

If you don't want to answer the question for whatever reason, fine, but there is no point in simply having a go at me. I'm not making statements about the board, merely seeking clarification.

Read again what I said, I appreciate my poor grammer may make it difficult to follow, I said the 'the problem is solved', which I my experience, is true (the 'problem' being that the computer would crash when running certain code).

You should take things a little less seriously IMHO, not good for your heart to get stressed over things.

thegman on 9/7/03 11:20AM
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thegman: In the case of the Iyonix if the hardware bug could have been worked around like that I'm sure it would have been.

It's also a completely pointless discussion now since there are no USB sockets on the Iyonix motherboard supplied (except for the very early machines for developers I think). The USB sockets on the PCI card work fine.

illudium on 9/7/03 11:38AM
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I did answer the question, along with clarification as to what precisely dealing with a hardware bug entails. If you don't like the answer, don't ask the question.

I wasn't having a go at you at any point. And I spot a case of lastworditis.

-- Peter, drobe.co.uk

mrchocky on 9/7/03 11:47AM
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Come on, there's nice superintelligent computer programmer types...lets all play nicely now...

hutchies on 9/7/03 12:13PM
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illudium: fair enough.

hutchies: point taken!

thegman on 9/7/03 12:52PM
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I think that the Iyonix board was designed by Castle and they probably used Intel chips. Otherwise I suspect they would have kept the AGP support (which ALL PCs have now, so the orignal board would have too, if it existed).

Also does all this work with the podule upgrade card on a RPC? -- Smiler -

Alex Melhuish

Smiler on 9/7/03 6:02PM
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To my knowledge, you need a small "riser" board to be fitted to the Iyonix so it can take podule cards.

Whether the podules actually work or not depends on *if* the podule's ROM module is 32bit compliant. If that's the case in *theory* it would be possible to free up a PCI slot by fitting the Castle USB podule in removing the onboard USB PCI card (assuming of course RO5 don't get too picky about the kbd being on a different USB card from that originally used).

You should note that the USB PCI card (although currently used in USB 1.0 mode) can support USB 2.0 (once someone get's around to writing a USB 2 stack for it). So I'd be inclined to keep the PCI one.

-- Annraoi McShane,

AMS on 9/7/03 6:40PM
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Smiler: Nothing of the sort. Intel don't make PCs (to my knowledge anyway) and they're _certainly_ not in the business of making "PCs" with ARM processors. They make development boards, so people can try out the XScale. Often these boards are PCI cards themselves, so usually there's no video at _all_.

The question about AGP on the Iyonix is already well answered on the Iyonix website. You should read that before making any more presumptions.

-- Peter, drobe.co.uk

mrchocky on 9/7/03 7:21PM
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"This is excelent news doctor!" - does anyone remember doctor who?

--- Tim

Timothy609 on 9/7/03 8:47PM
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I do understand what Intel make, and one of the things they make is chipsets. Their chipsets are designed to make it easy to add PCI, sound, graphics etc. I thought if one of these were used by Castle then the ability would be there. I did ask about AGP at the SE show when it was released. -- Smiler -

Alex Melhuish

Smiler on 10/7/03 7:15AM
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I think 99.999% of PC users use their AGP port for a good gaming card, and the rest to get good performance out of a high end graphics package, so I don't think we need to worry too much about the lack of an AGP port. If there comes a time in which you just cannot get PCI graphics cards, then I would think something could be worked out. I've only used an Iyonix at a show, and the video seemed spicy fast to me.

thegman on 10/7/03 10:04AM
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