USB2 support for RISC OS 5 on the Iyonix is here.
Iyonix USB2 support enabled
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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USB2 support for RISC OS 5 on the Iyonix is here.
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
USB 2 added, thats very nice and useful but in the long run of things, where is RISC OS 5 headed? Will it remain just a niche market (like the Amiga OS 4 – to be), is it explanding in popularity or shrinking.
Good to see other competition holding on though. I’ve found a number of other OS to be able to do a different variety of things more easily when compared to the common OSs.
The problem with charging relatively high prices for drivers is that people start to look elsewhere – one guy on the forum below the article seems to have decided to go down the Mac mini route as a result, as the driver is almost 10% of the cost of a new Mac.
Castle are in a difficuly position I suppose – they need to develop drivers to keep the OS current, but they need the funds to do that, and because their userbase is relatively small, that’s going to force the unit price up. Shame really, but understandable.
RiscOS is a lovely OS and GUI, but I don’t really know where it can go long term. I’d be interested to hear from its users – is there a particular niche that it excels at?
Other than playing Elite that is!
I just checked out the prices at http://www.iyonix.com/ and it made my eyes water. Where does most of that money go? I think most must go on the development costs rather than the hardware costs (like xscale and PCI and nvidia components). There are other PDAs etc that use xscale and they are no-where near as expensive. The castle ones are cheaper but they only run in the couple hundered MHz range and have 24MB RAM! Shock!
On the other hand you can get an Amiga micro A1, that runs up at 800MHz (on PPC CPU which are quick too) 256MB RAM for lower cost than an IYONIX.
Some deals seem to indicate you get the Amiga OS 4 as soon as it will be released too. This is a neat OS.
I have experience of Amiga OS 1.3 ….. 3.9, however I haven’t used RISC OS since approx 1997. How does RISC OS 5 compare to Amiga OS 4. Still not impressed by those hardware and costs differences – certainly leaning in the Amigas favour!
Amiga:
http://www.mrhardwarecomputers.com/pages/ma1.htm
RISC:
http://www.castle-technology.co.uk/castle/front.html
Acorn (rather than riscOS) WAS personal computing in any serious sense in the UK to an entire generation and many of those who were educated on the platform and then bought into it, as a small business tool continued to see it that way. The tools were and are available to do most tasks CAD, DTP etc and a machine upgrade was and in some cases still is, another riscOS pc that can continue to do the same tasks with the same software it always has in this strange parallel universe of computing where pcs are some strange and rather crude American thing.
There’s no sense in comparing it to an Amiga even if it is expensive by comparison – the hobbyists, mainly English and European, have always ‘got’ the Acorn/RiscOS thing and the serious users (and I’m not talking IT professionals) have never thought twice about another platform. Sorry, what does ‘cross platform compatibility’ mean again ? That’s its niche. If Castle can prove a sizable influx of brand new users I’d be happy to eat my hat though 😉
The high costs are a combination of recouping development and low production. PDAs are manufactured in their thousands, so the price per unit of the components will be lower.
Unless an investor is willing to risk losing millions of pounds, there isn’t much that can be done about the situation.
Perennial corrections:
The name of the OS is “RISC OS”. Not “riscOS”, “RiscOS” or RISC”, the latter of which refers to a specific type of technology.
24MB? No, I think you must have misunderstood something, or misread. Iyonixes are supplied with 128MB or 512MB of memory.
RISC OS machines are made in small numbers, hence the high price. Sad, but true.