Rien
 8/10/04 3:44PM |
Hoping this means we will get some form
of portable RISC OS mini-machine coming now?
Rien |
blahsnr 8/10/04 3:47PM |
Cool two versions of 32bit happy (presumably hardware independent) RISC OS to choose from
Bit ironic after all the mud that was thrown Castle's way about them doing lots of work for the embedded market during the 'big spat' to find out that ROL are doing exactly the same.
Is this now a sign of ROL's waning commitment to their 'core desktop market' or just the reality-check that anyone developing RISC OS as an OS will have to expand into non-desktop areas to take the OS forwards. |
blahsnr (+0.1) 8/10/04 3:58PM |
Rien
I enquired sometime ago about RON, to hear from PM that ROL were considering the netBook Pro after having failed to get a port for the netBook. After a couple of emails PM then said he couldn't comment any further.
Wacky-backy or an NDA? Who knows Doubtless the next RISC OS show will be interesting! |
Rien
 8/10/04 4:04PM |
Maybe the emebdded RISC OS Select IS
a coop between castle and RISC OS?? |
blahsnr 8/10/04 4:08PM |
Rien
Are you by any chance in a (Dutch) coffee shop at the moment  |
Rien
 8/10/04 4:12PM |
No, but I am in an optimistic mood...
Rien |
mrchocky
 8/10/04 4:20PM |
The NetbookPro has a variety of crazy hardware that unfortunately don't make it a great choice to port RISC OS to. |
jc (-0.1) 8/10/04 4:34PM |
To Rien,
I'm not following your logic. I can't see Castle being the main partner with embedded-32 and letting Advantage Six get the first bite at the cherry! Clearly A6 are the partners with ROL on this embedded version and Castle have been - are - will be partners in an Iyonix version. Great news for everybody! |
hzn 8/10/04 6:22PM |
So ROL finally did what they set out to do when they started off with ROL - a 32 bit RISC OS. What a waste since a 32 bit RISC OS is there already... or did they build it on top of Castle RISC OS? Or to put it differently: Do we have two different 32 bit RISC OS threads?
Anyhow: Put a battery in the wall mountable A9 with flatscreen and there you might have your Laptop?
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sa110
 8/10/04 6:44PM |
What fab news this is. We might even get a more afordable modern computer than either the Omega or Iyonix (wishful thinking).
Can't wait to see the version released for the desktop market.
Hzn, wouldn't that then be classed as a Tablet PC? |
Rien
 8/10/04 6:44PM |
Maybe Riscstation can do that for us.. |
hzn 8/10/04 6:47PM |
Affordable? I think I saw UKP 400 - 1500 and I assume for a reasonably fast one you won't be in the lower half of that price range...
Guess why I wrote "laptop" and not notebook (can be put on my lap) And then there is the issue with the keyboard... since if the wall mountable one does require a keyboard and mouse it's not a tablet PC either. |
AMS (-0.1) 8/10/04 7:02PM |
In reply to jc:
Now this is purely speculation but (to quote STD as reported on Drobe in an article by Chris Williams http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1123.html). It was stated that (with respect to STD re-opening) that this "may be subject to Castle Technology Ltd fulfilling certain obligations in a timely manner."
Like (perhaps) supplying a variant of the HAL adjusted to work with the STD ARM9 ? Now that's purely speculation but it seems highly unlikely that after years of foot dragging by ROL that suddenly they have 32bit just after they come to a settlement with Castle.
But then that's the marvel of speculation it can mean something or nothing at all....... |
sa110
 8/10/04 7:05PM |
Hzn, perhaps STD and ROL have trumped everone and gone for a computer that requres neither keyboard or mouse, just the power of the brain. |
simo
 8/10/04 7:08PM |
So I wonder if this means that Castle will dump their 32-Bit RO and just move the Iyonix-specifics into A HAL for Adjust-32?
Then we can have just one 32-Bit RISC OS, yay! Mind you, even two 32-Bit RO's is probably going to be easier for developers than a 32-Bit and a 26-Bit RO.... |
AMS (+0.1) 8/10/04 7:29PM |
Based on what the update states it appears that Castle have said none of their RO5 technology was used in the A9, assuming the HAL is counted in in that then an unqualified congrats are due then to ROL, well done guys.
Glad to see these events have not dimmed Castle's enthusiasm for RISC OS, after all they've given us (pre the A9) the first new (and currently only) 32bit hardware - and all without selling a single Windows License to a RISC OS user either (nice !).
As to the A9's upper price of 1500 GBP, if that's the OEM price I dread to think what the retail price will be ! Can't wait to see if the same people who complained about the price of Iyonix will do the same when confronted with a slower ARM9 box at a higher price.
Anyway - congrats again ROL nice work guys - keep it up !!!!
Regards
Annraoi |
The Doctor 8/10/04 7:58PM |
I wonder if Samsung have actually released that 1.2ghz Arm10 they announced a while ago? |
AMS 8/10/04 8:16PM |
Sadly not. |
sa110
 8/10/04 8:21PM |
would be great to have RISC OS running on it when they finaly get around to releasing it. |
Revin Kevin
 8/10/04 8:40PM |
Is the GPS they mention Global Positioning Satelite or something else? |
jlavallin (+0.1) 8/10/04 8:57PM |
I may be wrong but I thought that Pace developed a HAL for an Arm9.
Could this be resurfacing? |
TonyStill 8/10/04 9:11PM |
So if this is really a RO Ltd 32-bit RO (rather than a rebadged Castle one) does it answer the question of what the Omega XScale will use? |
JWCR
 8/10/04 9:42PM |
Does this mean that ARM9 cards might soon be available with Select-32 ROMs as an upgrade for the RiscPC? |
The Doctor 8/10/04 9:48PM |
What would be the point of that?
Select and Adjust are already available for RiscPCs as is a 233mhz Kinetic card upgrade.
Cheers! |
AndrewDuffell
 8/10/04 9:56PM |
Are not ARM9s faster? |
jmb (+0.1) 8/10/04 10:07PM |
Bearing in mind that the RPC was designed for the 50odd MHz ARM8, the fact that it's scaled to a 300MHz StrongARM is fairly good going, I'd say. Given that you don't get the best performance out of a StrongARM in a RPC, what's the point in putting a potentially faster ARM9 chip in there instead?
Additionally, where's the commercial incentive to do so? RPCs aren't being made any more (due to lack of available parts). |
Ike
 8/10/04 10:45PM |
To Rien:
you wrote: Maybe RiscStation could do that.
How about finally paying back the deposit???? |
JWCR
 9/10/04 1:08AM |
I was beign sarcastic, given that so many upgrades and modifications have been available for the RPC over the years, that have extended its life way beyond that of contemporary Wintel machines. Should have added a smiley.  |
AMS (+0.1) 9/10/04 2:47PM |
In reply to Andrew:
ARM9's come in different flavours. Some as slow as 33MHz, others clocked faster. The one depicted at the top of this page is an Atmel AT92RM200 some of which manage around 200Mips performance (putting them in or around StrongARM performance). ARM's site says that some ARM9's manage 300Mips (around Kinetic performance?). Some ARM9's do have the Vector Floating Point (VFP) fitted and can do 200+MFlops (but I am not aware of any RISC OS variant that supports that).
And then there's the big inponderable which of the many variants of ARM9 have STD chosen - their webpage does not detail the type or performance.
It probably wouldn't make a whole lot of sense fitting an ARM9 to a RPC as (for integer performance) the improvement would - at best - be negligable. If the VFP option were exploited that might be of benefit - but it is not compatible (at the moment) with the FPE (so again unlikely to bring immediate benefit).
It is more the principle that ROL can now provide a RISC OS variant for processors currently unsupported and 32bit only that is the significant news and that does open the possibility of using xScale and ARM10 (or ARM11's when they become available). Even at that these would be best exploited in new hardware as some of the performance issues of the RiscPC simply *won't* be addressed by just changing the processor there are other bottlenecks too....
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