A quick browse to Castle's website shows a link to Iyonix PC -- what's this?RISC OS 5? 32Bit? XScale? PC? Good grief! It seems that the rumour mill that was bandied around on Usenet recently has some reality behind it. Castle's recent release of the 32bit tools foreboded something "in the works" but surely this is too good to be true? Scamper on over to www.iyonix.com for yourself and see the spec:
RISC OS 5
32bit
XScale
DDR Memory
66Mhz PCI
PCI Graphics
High speed podules
UDMA 100 hard drive
Coming soon? How soon? RISCOS Ltd have only just got 4.32 out the door and now 5's right on the cards. That's impressive work.
If all this spec is true it puts quite a spin on to Microdigital's assertion that no 32bit RISC OS exists and questions the need to keep the StrongARM in Omega. It's rather nice that this Iyonix machine also supports podules, so you can have a smoother and more controlled move from your existing hardware to Iyonix then just jumping straight at PCI-everything.
Castle will be showing this new wonder at the SE show in Guildford on Saturday 2nd November. Be there.