markee174 (+2.0)
19/8/06 9:27PM |
Will Castle sell me an upgrade for the existing video card in my Iyonix?
Does RISCOS 5.12 kill pyjamas? |
TonyStill (+2.0)
19/8/06 11:28PM |
Following on from the doom-mongering over RoHS, this is good news. It's also pleasing that RO5 development is still happening.
Perversely, I'm almost pleased that Castle are to charge for future upgrades too. We've had a lot of upgrades at no additional cost (I've had all 11) and the revenue from Iyonix hardware sales must have waned since the early rush. That may well mean a choice between establishing a new revenue stream from chargeable upgrades and cutting back on OS development. If that is the case, I hope sufficient people will be moved to buy the upgrades.
I await pricing with interest! |
dms (+2.0)
20/8/06 12:24AM |
I’m intrigued how the use of an intermediary company helps comply with the RoHS regulations. As was discussed in the earlier thread, to sell a non-compliant product it must have been placed in the market prior to the compliance deadline. The industry-wide interpretation of “placed on the market” is that the item is made available for sale in its final form. An Iyonix motherboard is not the final form of an Iyonix computer. I’m not saying that Castle are wrong, but I will comment that if they aren’t, I’m surprised that no large companies I’m aware of (including the one I work for) have used this apparently simple workaround. |
markee174
20/8/06 3:05AM |
Iyonix websites news page has not been updated for over a year  |
Gulli (+2.0)
20/8/06 11:28AM |
In reply to dms:
I'd guess that the intermediary company is simply an economic safety net. Quoting the article: "It's understood Castle made sure enough motherboards were manufactured before the July 1 cut-off date, and then passed the lot onto Iyonix Ltd, who build the final machines and ships them to customers." It would therefore make sense to have the new company purchase the motherboards and keep them in stock and if sales don't go as expected then Iyonix Ltd. can go bust without Castle being in danger of going down with it.
But as I said, it's only a guess. |
martin (+3.1)
20/8/06 12:43PM |
I wonder how worthwhile it will be to redesign the motherboard simply to stick with the existing Iyonix.
Better to double up that job with a redesign that includes a faster processor (800 MHz) or a miniturisation of the board for possible use in a smaller box, or even a laptop.
Just a random, and probably not a very practical, thought... |
dms (+1.0)
20/8/06 4:44PM |
"I wonder how worthwhile it will be to redesign the motherboard simply to stick with the existing Iyonix."
Because a redesign to change one package is probably a day's work for a design engineer plus a week for a CAD person and another week to test out the revised design. A complete new motherboard design would likely be at least two or three months years and take at least six months. |
dms
20/8/06 4:46PM |
Doh! Make that "man years", not "months years". |
AMS (+3.9)
20/8/06 4:59PM |
Good news then on a number of fronts. It's understantable that RO5.XX upgrades are now chargeable items as support for newer Video cards and USB 2 (with Isosynch ????) are in the offing. Also purchasers know that the upgrades exist before they buy (rather than subscribe in advance as is the Select model).
As to the RoHS stuff the original article was a classic red-herring, the components used are available in RoHS compliant variants, the motherboard need not be redesigned *at all*, all it requires is Lead free "thinning" and the use of RoHS compliant components.
In reply to martin:
No redesign is required.... if you use RoHS compliant, pin compatible parts, and a motherboard that simply uses an appropriate substrate (a complaint one) and no lead in its construct then the whole thing would work like the Iyonix but be RoHS compliant (other than upping the PCB version number no other changes should be required). That having been said it would be nice if we could get an uprated machine.
|
JohnB (+4.0)
20/8/06 5:20PM |
I will be interested to hear further information relating to graphics speedups resulting from use of these newer cards to decide if it's worth investing in. Having had a quick look on Novatech I can see you can pick up a "3D Fuzion GeForce FX5500 256MB TVO PCI" for £40 so, provided the cost of 5.12 isn't too high, this will make for an affordable upgrade. |
AMS (+0.9)
20/8/06 5:53PM |
Need to correct myself I do.
According to the article one component (an Ethernet chips) is non compliant, so a redesign of that part of the motherboard is required. Should read more carefully in future, appologies all. Normal service is now resumed..... |
druck (+5.0)
21/8/06 9:21AM |
I'm eargly awaiting news from Spellings Inc, that Geminus supports the new card, both for dual head and general accelaration. I've been looking for an excuse to upgrade my card, which is one of the very original 32MB MX2s but hasn't got enough memory left in 2048x1536x32bpp mode to provide useful accelaration. |
mrtd (+4.0)
21/8/06 10:16AM |
So, what does RO 5.12 have to offer over 5.11 for someone with no plans to upgrade their graphics card?
Will Iyonix Linux continue to work with the new card? |
jb (+7.0)
21/8/06 10:26AM |
reply to AMS: The only non compliant (major) chip ATM is the MACH logic chip. It is not available in the current package, but is in a larger one. Hence a board re-layout is needed. In the fullness of time this will obviously happen.
reply to MRTD: a) basically, little if you are happy as you are. b) mods are needed for iyonix linux for the new card. these are in hand (once I can actually rebuild the current kernel from formally supplied sources)
John |
diomus (+4.0)
21/8/06 10:43AM |
Apologies - the article originally said an ethernet chp instead of a logic chip. The perils of confusing MAC and MACH over the phone.. |
helpful (-1.0)
21/8/06 12:33PM |
Yeah, a new type of card for ROHC to blow up!
He must have been bored with killing the old nVIDIA cards by now - been there, done that, got the Iyonix turned into a door stop due to lack of video output 
(Apologies to non-ROUGOL members who will wonder what on earth I'm on about!)
So to get back on topic, is the new card fanless, i.e. quiet? |
ROHC
21/8/06 4:31PM |
In reply to helpful:
Heh
Actually the card I was looking at was:
[Link: www.scan.co.uk]
So I could use a
[Link: accessories.euro.dell.com]
But the cards PCI-I
As it is I want a card with 1920 x 1200 on the DVI...  |
spellinn (+5.0)
23/8/06 10:05AM |
In reply to druck:
We are working on modifying Geminus to support these cards. One thing that hasnt yet been mentioned is that the cards perform the R/B colour swap in hardware, but only for 32bpp screen modes. This will be fine for 90% of the applications, however for the other 10% that want/need to use non-32bpp modes, you will need a special version of Geminus to perform the colour swap in software-also in the pipeline.
In reply to rohc:
<off topic>
Reminds ROHC that he needs to renew his domain name ASAP or the ROHC will dissapear for good....
</off topic>
Cheers,
Neil |
jb (+3.0)
23/8/06 8:53PM |
Hi Neil
8 bit is also fine.. this is just a re-write of the pallette. it is only 16 bit that required Adrian's colour swap software
JOhn |
jess (+2.0)
24/8/06 10:35PM |
I'm curious why the Iyonix doesn't support the standard 16 colour VGA mode that all standard pc video cards do. If the OS didn't detect a card it recognised, it would come up in VGA, allowing the possibility of softloaded drivers for other cards. |
jb (+2.0)
24/8/06 11:06PM |
Good point, except that if it doesn't recognise the card it cannot initialise it - and some vendor specific initialisation IS needed to reach the basic vga stage. On an X86 platform this initialisation is done by running the BIOS rom code on the card. IN RISC OS we have to know how to do that - and that usually tends to be proprietary info. (though some inf is starting to filter through the open source arena.) |
jess
25/8/06 12:32PM |
So you'd have to run an x86 emulator if you wanted a generic initialiser? |
jb
25/8/06 12:39PM |
yep - could do in theory- though there is still a lot of work to do to get a good one that is really aware of external hardware.
As a point of intterest I have tried this route but it has so far not been a help!
John |
wuerthne (+1.0)
25/8/06 2:01PM |
In reply to jb:
The method suggested by jess is exactly how ViewFinder does it: It has its own x86 emulator just to run the start-up BIOS code. Once working it would work for all future cards, too, which would probably be a good investment in the long run. |
jess (+0.1)
25/8/06 4:48PM |
Am I correct in thinking that there are SVGA modes that are common too (VESA) but not implemented by all cards? (upto 1024 x 768 and 256 colour iirc) |
ksattic (+2.5)
27/8/06 3:39AM |
According to RISCOSmark, rectangle copies are 25% faster with the FX 5200 in 16M colour modes (12% in 256 colour modes). Seeing as these are common operations, I think that is excellent! |
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New Iyonix computers are shipping with Nvidia FX52 series graphics cards and RISC OS 5.12 fitted as standard. The 