Acorn News Service

Contents

1. General News
2. Commercial News
3. PD/Shareware News
4. Club News
5. ANS Information

General News

1. RC5-64 cracking completed

   For the last few years, computers from around the globe have been working on trying to find the key for an encrypted message for a competition set up by RSA Labs. The underlying network infrastructure and clients were provided and created by distributed.net. After 1757 days the correct key was found. http://www.distributed.net/pressroom/news-20020926.html

   The Acorn Users RC5 Cracking Effort http://www.acornusers.org/rc5/ finished at number 55 out of several thousand teams, having checked over 100 million blocks.

   distributed.net is now focusing on the search for the Optimal 25-mark Golomb Ruler http://www.distributed.net/ogr/.

   To join the Acorn users team mailing list send an e-mail to: mailto:list-subscribe@rc5.acornusers.org

Commercial News

1. Upgrades for classic Acorns

   Memory upgrades from GBP5 and IDE interface from GBP15 in the Simtec sale:

   http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/clearance/

2. Commercial release of 32 bit tools

   Castle Technologies have released an updated version of the Acorn C/C++ development suite which supports 32 bit versions of RISC OS. GBP99 until 31st December 2002 http://www.castle.uk.co/castle/software.htm.

3. Acorn Publisher magazine online

   Acorn Publisher http://www.acornpublisher.com/, a magazine for all RISC OS users, can now be purchased online.
   http://www.co-comp.co.uk/shop/shopping/?id=33

   If you do not want to buy online then you can still pay your subscription using your credit/debit card by telephoning 0161 969 9820 or sending a cheque to: Acorn Publisher, 30 Finnybank Road, Sale, Cheshire M33 6LR.

   UK subscription rates are GBP29.95 for 1 year (6 issues), GBP33.95 to Europe, and GBP39.95 to the rest of the world.

PD/Shareware News

1. New software summary

   • CVS, new CVS port

     Port of the newest available version of CVS (1.11.2), a version control system which stores all changes made by one or more developers to one or more source files. The port supports pserver and SSH connections as a client and pserver connections when started as a server. CVS is able to use the OLE protocol to edit log messages.

     http://home.student.utwente.nl/m.m.bezemer/cvsuk.html

   • SuperFPEm, faster floating point emulation

     Speeds up floating point operations on RISC OS. It supports StrongARM, ARM710 and ARM610, but not ARM7500FE which has hardware floating point.

     http://www.toth.org.uk/~mech/

2. Updated software summary

   • ARMalyser v0.34

     An ARM code analyser that understands RISC OS executable, module, object and library formats. This release address the main problems remaining from 0.33.

     http://www.armclub.org.uk/free/

   • BeebIt v0.45

     A freeware BBC Micro computer emulator for RISC OS versions 3.00 and above. It emulates the Acorn BBC Model B, BBC Model B+ and BBC Master 128 computers. Various improvements. BeebIt should now be able to run 99.9%, if not all, of the BBC games available.

     http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mjfoot/bbc.htm

   • Locate v0.80

     A Desktop utility to search for files, directories and applications meeting a given set of criteria. It will match filenames using wildcards and will also compare size, age, type, attributes and contents. New features: full-info display option for the results window; modification date limits can be set by dialogue box; full support for the Theme Manager.

     http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/software/locate/

Club News

1. Upcoming meetings

   • BAUG (Bottisham), 8th October

     Problem solving evening

     http://come.to/baug

   • EAUG (Essex), 8th October

     20th anniversary celebration

     http://www.wattys.fsnet.co.uk/eaug.html

   • NKACC (Kent), 10th October

     Computer quiz night

     http://nkacc.roundel.net/

   • DARC (Derbyshire), 14th October

     An introduction to Linux by Matt Cook

     http://www.darc-comp.org.uk/

   • RONWUG (North West), 16th October

     http://www.ronwug.org/

   • ROUGOL (London), 21st October

     http://rougol.jellybaby.net/

   • HHRUG (Hemel Hempstead), 16th October

     http://www.hhrug.org.uk/

   • The RISC OS South-East Show, 2nd November

     http://www.fillin.co.uk/seshow/

   • ICENI (Suffolk), 6th November

     Ovation Pro

     http://www.archipel.demon.co.uk/ICENI/

   • WROCC (Wakefield), 6th November

     http://www.wrocc.org.uk/

ANS Information

1. Contact ANS

   Editor	James Sears	james@ans.acornusers.org
   Webmaster	Stephen Courtney	stephen@ans.acornusers.org
   Translator	Michael Gerbracht	michael@ans.acornusers.org
   Founder	Eytan Abrahams	eytan@ans.acornusers.org
   Life-Webmaster	Richard Hesketh	richard@ans.acornusers.org
   ADL Moderator	Paul Johnson	paul@ans.acornusers.org

2. How to send in news

   To send in your news items simply e-mail ans@acornusers.org, or use the form on the ANS website http://www.acornusers.org/ans/newsdesk.html.

   Also if you have an Acorn related announcements mailing list, feel free to subscribe ans@acornusers.org.

3. How to subscribe to ANS

   If you are reading this on the ANS web site, or have received a forwarded copy of ANS and would like to subscribe to the mailing list, simply send any e-mail to ans-subscribe@ans.acornusers.org. Alternatively use the form on the ANS web site at http://www.acornusers.org/ans/subscribe.html.

   For details of other commands e-mail ans-help@ans.acornusers.org.

Acorn News Service, http://www.acornusers.org/ans/