Expo pre-show news - RISC OS News, Software and Information

Expo pre-show news

Published: 18th Jun 2004, 14:11:59GMT Source: drobe.co.uk
By Chris Williams

Page 1 of 1

Spotlight on Euro users [Updated 19:14 18/6/2004]

The RISC OS Expo 2004 show, as organised by the Big Ben Club and held at the Hotel Mercure in The Netherlands, is tomorrow. Like all good shows, there's news and announcements to coincide with the event, so here's a run down of what to expect.

The Expo, being the European mainland equivalent of the UK's Wakefield, is sponsored by Desk, X-Ample, Castle, RISCOS Ltd. and last but not least, MicroDigital. Given recent news, and looking at the exhibitor list, we can perhaps predict a toasty show atmosphere - but at least, hopefully, all and any questions users have will be answered by attending parties. Drobe will, naturally, have its spies, sorry, writers present keeping a careful eye on proceedings.

We asked Desk's Frank Kraaij what he expected the show to bring us, however Frank's reply gave nothing away: "sorry, it will spoil the surprise I have for the public. Come and visit." AAUG chairman dgs added it'll be an "exciting show". We've heard whisperings that MicroDigital will be distributing Omegas at the show, although we're not sure how the current Castle vs. RISCOS Ltd. battle will affect that - the Omega developers must be too busy to answer emails, or even pick up the phone.

R-Comp will also be at the show, with STD UniPods in stock and also MusicMan version 1.20, which allows users to select whatever MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio encoders they choose.

Icon Technology are also on the guest list, as Mike Glover told us, "I will be showing and selling the latest versions of EasiWriter and TechWriter featuring ArtWorks support and auto-save, also on the CD is a free copy of !Citation the bibliographic reference manager." MW Software told us they'll be selling "the same as at Wakefield", which includes Artworks 2 and GimpPrint.

The Belgian RISC OS usergroup will also have a couple of interesting projects on their stand: "In a never ending quest to find the perfect compact and native portable RISC OS computer, the RiscBox got designed," writes John Tytgat. "Not wishing to make compromises on functionality, the RiscBox contains a floppy drive, a harddisc, two half-width podules, built-in power supply and is driven by a StrongARM." The usergroup will also demonstrating the Netsurf Unicode support that they developed.

Castle, who are also attending and sharing a stand with X-Ample, have recently launched the 'Panther TC', which is a beefed up Iyonix in the usual black Panther case, packing 1GB of DDR RAM and two 120GB hard discs. Castle have also extended their Spring LCD monitor offer, but this time we're spared the puns.

Finally, other exhibitors include the Unix Porting Project, Archive, Microsoft and the Aemulor and CinoDVD team. Just kidding about Microsoft.

Last year's Expo went down well, we hope this year's show is just as eye opening.

Update at 19:14 18/6/2004
As pointed out by Adrian Lees of Aemulor, the Aemulor/CinoDVD team have pulled out of the show, and will not be attending.

Links
RISC OS Expo website

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markee174 (+2.0) 18/6/04 2:35PM	The LCDs Castle are offering with the Iyonix are very nice. I've got the 20.1 inch LCD here and the only problem I find is going back to anything less.....
JWCR (+1.0) 18/6/04 2:48PM	I tae it that the new version of MusicMan will play the OggVorbis files it creates. I was not aware that there were any other desktop OggVorbis player available for RISC OS
jmb 18/6/04 2:57PM	*In reply to JWCR:* DigitalCD will play ogg.
ninja (-1.0) 18/6/04 2:58PM	DigitalCD supports Ogg Vorbis.
Herm (+1.0) 18/6/04 3:02PM	!DigitalCD from Andre Timmermans is my player of choice. It plays most common formats including OggVorbis see [Link: users.skynet.be]
AndrewDuffell 18/6/04 6:42PM	Aemulor and CinoDVD are no longer attending - according to adrianl
fylfot 18/6/04 6:56PM	Andrew Duffell: Was a reason given?
adrianl 18/6/04 7:00PM	It's Neil's personal business, ie. it's not for me to say. But it has nothing to do with the RISC OS dispute - before people start speculating - and nothing to do with Aemulor/Cino either. A bit unfortunate because Cino's playing a lot more smoothly now and the low-colour screen emulation of Pro is a LOT slicker too... Plus it would have been our first show on the continent.
monkeyson 18/6/04 7:01PM	Neil had to cancel at the last moment and Adrian wasn't due to attend anyway. http://www.iconbar.com/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=5506
adrianl 18/6/04 7:08PM	Adrian's busy coding, well that and watching films - it gets harder and harder to avoid getting sidetracked as the playback gets smoother! :o
hzn (+1.0) 18/6/04 8:49PM	Pity Aemulor/Cino can't attend since that was one of the intersting features for me - well, if on the other hand they use the time to solve the "unaligned file system entry point" issue in Aemulor Pro instead that's fine with me! Anyhow, RISC OS Expo is indeed a very good show and a fixed entry in my calendar since visiting UK shows is too expensive now; UK shows are too small and short for the expense to get there from Germany. (I'm talking about flight, local transport, accomodation, visit at a pub, ...) The RISC OS Expo is a nice drive by car in the morning (some 450km) and back at night which is much more affordable.
Sawadee 19/6/04 8:55AM	adrianl Great to hear that the Cino's coming along well and smoothly. I had a quick look back at the 14th May article about Castle and Cino. It says that it will be less drain on the CPU with the new ADFS etc. Has the testing of Cino been done on a new ADFS yet, any news about the ADFS or still waiting? Cheers, Steve.
adrianl (+1.0) 19/6/04 10:57AM	*In reply to Sawadee:* I'm still working on it. The updated ADFS does help Cino a bit already, but there should be more to come. At the moment Cino is visibly smoother playing from hard disc, which uses DMA, than from DVD which doesn't (yet!)
senduran 19/6/04 1:41PM	*In reply to markee174:* What LCD is it exactly that Castle supply when you ask for a 20.1"? They don't seem to say on their website.
markee174 19/6/04 2:15PM	They were originally going to supply an Iiyama, but found some isssues with the ones they tested so supplied a NEC 2080 UX+, which works very well. I paid an extra 100 quid for dual input. Its a lovely piece of kit (if budget is tight always skimp on the computer and spend extra on the monitor). 1600 * 1200 is great to work at.... I think they take the view most people want a spec of monitor rather than lots of technical details in their adds and they source whatever is appropriate/available/in stock. They were more than happy to tell me what monitors they were supplying when I asked and they let me plug my PowerBook into 1 at Wakefield so I could see what it was like.
epistaxsis@work 19/6/04 5:12PM	*In reply to markee174:* 1600x1200? too big! RISC OS & high resolutions is a far better experience than other operating systems. Now that I've got an LCD that will do 2048x1536 my old Iiyama 22" CRT is going to work where I'll be restricted to 1600x1200 purely for visibility reasons (bloody windows! ) <dream>Now all I need is 2 dual DVI graphics cards and the drivers to run an IBM T220... 3200x1600...</dream> Having said that I must admit I am currently getting all McDonalds on myself... High res + RISC OS + LCD? :bowdown:
markee174 19/6/04 6:57PM	"Now that I've got an LCD that will do 2048x1536" Thats not a screen, thats a cinema screen....
Sawadee 20/6/04 3:52AM	Sometimes I use the projector which I have a 3 metre X 2.3 metre screen. Fun for showing OHP or the Animator software stuff, but doesn't have the clarity possibly because I'm only running it through a not so expensive quality "AverKey 300" external scart device. The projector is about 6 years old now, some of the newer ones these days are so much better and brighter even under light conditions. I thought it was wonderful 4 years ago when I upgraded my small Acorn monitor to a big 17" one, though I had my eye on the 21" monitor. I have not seen an LCD screen on a RISC OS, can the 20.1" LCD in high resolution mode produce clearer screen images under light conditions. I find that my small Windows laptop LCD can glare at times if I move too much to the wrong angles. Cheers, Steve.
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