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Home > Archive > Issue 131 Current Issue: No. 260 (28 March 2010)
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Acorn News Service Newsletter

Issue: 131 (4 May 2003)

Featured site this issue: http://www.classicacorn.freeuk.com/

General News

Wakefield Show update

This year's Wakefield Show is on Saturday, 10th May and will be open between 10am and 4:30pm. Tickets are available only on the day, entry will be GBP5 per person (under 16s free if accompanied by an Adult; credit and debit cards not accepted).

A working Domesday System with be in action on the WROCC (Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club) stand. The Domesday system was a then state of the art electronic 'Domesday book' for the modern era. This will be a rare chance to see a working system in action. <http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Acorn/domesday.htm>

The show will once again have a large charity stand. The stand has raised over GBP10500 for charities over the years, all thanks to your generosity. For details see <http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/charity.html>.

There will also be a prize draw with the chance to win an Omega. When you get your ticket on entry you will also receive your entry form (it forms part of the ticket). The draws will take place at approximately, 12 Noon, 13:40 and 15:45. See <http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/prizes.html>.

Show theatre programme:

  • 10:20 Castle - The IYONIX pc - the fastest RISC OS computer
  • 11:20 Brian Jaques - Scribbles from a Web Writing CD
  • 12:10 MicroDigital - Designing for the RISC OS desktop market
  • 13:10 Simtec - USB on RISC OS
  • 13:50 RISCOS Ltd - Select 3 Features
  • 15:00 Castle - The IYONIX pc - the fastest RISC OS computer

The show web site <http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk> has been updated with the latest transport information and other news.

Classic Acorn

A new web site devoted to the restoration of Acorn computers and Acorn related hardware. Showing procedures for stripdown, cleaning, upgrades and repair of 8 and 32 bit hardware.

<http://www.classicacorn.freeuk.com/>

New online resources for RISC OS users on drobe.co.uk

Drobe Launchpad <http://www.drobe.co.uk/>, a RISC OS news and information web site, has recently been expanded to include:

  • Online event diary
    Calendar of RISC OS events happening throughout the year. Each event is labelled with a date, category, description and contact details for the organisers.
  • FTP archives
    Roughly 14GB of mirrored RISC OS software and related web sites, available via HTTP and FTP.
  • Reference material
    Schematics of older Acorn hardware, technical reference manuals for the Risc PC and other Acorn computers, plus a collection of photos.
  • Online chat
    Talk and discuss in real time with other drobe.co.uk readers.

This is on top of forums, article comments, FAQs, wallpaper, newsgroups, online republishing of Acorn User magazines, StrongHelp manuals, two RSS feeds, and the comprehensive search facilities from AcornSearch.

<http://www.drobe.co.uk/>

New mailing lists

Commercial News

CocoGnut - Peer-to-peer filesharing for RISC OS

After the creation of the Audiogalaxy Satellite for RISC OS, Alpha Programming has been busy creating a filesharing client which will continue to be functional in the future.

CocoGnut is a program which enables you to find and download files such as audio, video, documents and programs, which are shared by other users on the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. CocoGnut is one of many clients designed to run on the Gnutella network, and there are clients available for most popular operating systems.

CocoGnut costs GBP15 if paying by cheque or PO, or GBP16 for credit/debit cards (processed by PayPal). CocoGnut is still in development, and will be for the foreseeable future.

More information can be obtained from: <http://www.alpha-programming.co.uk/software/cocognut/>

APDL/ProAction update

  • ProArtisan 24 - GBP29
    The latest development in the successful Artisan series. Designed for RISC OS computers running RISC OS 3.5 or later, it is a powerful image editing and processing tool.
    <http://www.apdl.co.uk/progs/pro24.htm>
  • Schema 2 - GBP59
    One of the award-winning spreadsheets previously published by Clares Micro Supplies. The SchemeEx converter is now included as standard and a macro manual is being put together, and will be supplied free to people who purchase from APDL.
    <http://www.apdl.co.uk/progs/schema.htm>
  • Spooler - GBP9.90
    Spooler intercepts all printing from desktop applications and stores it temporarily on disc, then prints the document in the background so that you can continue working in the Desktop. Spooler can also produce extra copies of documents without the application doing any more work.
    <http://www.apdl.co.uk/proact.htm#spool>
  • Topographer - GBP19
    A major application both for general use and the Geography curriculum, where it allows children to have fun whilst learning about maps, contour lines, valleys, rivers, etc. Topographer's 3D section allows you to convert a 2D map into a 3D model on screen. Topographer also covers aspects of the IT and maths curriculum with its modelling capabilities.
    <http://www.apdl.co.uk/progs/topo.htm>

If you have any queries please e-mail <info@apdl.co.uk>, write to APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN, or telephone +44 (0)20 8778 2659. Postage outside the UK is extra, check the web site.

<http://www.apdl.co.uk/proact.htm>

Castle Technology printer manager

As part of its ongoing commitment to RISC OS, Castle has announced its new version of the RISC OS Printer Manager - 'pop-up' Printers. This new printer manager replaces existing versions of Printers and offers many fixes to long standing bugs and the following new features:

  • Pop-up Configuration
    Connecting a new printer will cause Printers to self-configure. If the Printer Manager does not recognise a particular printer, a simple dialogue box appears.
  • Full USB Support
    The new Printers seemlessly supports USB printers. The plug and play features of USB mean that a wide range of USB printers can now be used on all IYONIX pc computers, even through low cost USB to parallel adapters.
  • New "Duplicate" Feature
    Duplicate is a new feature that allows the user to 'clone' multiple configurations for a single physical printer. This makes it easy, for example, to switch between draft and high resolution without having to keep reconfiguring the printer manager.

All IYONIX pc computers now come with 'pop-up' Printers. This is a free upgrade for all existing IYONIX pc users through the IYONIX pc update system and will be made available on CD soon.

The 'pop-up' Printers will be available soon for existing RISC OS 3 and RISC OS 4 users - further information on this will be released in due course.

<http://www.iyonix.com/>

ExpLAN: May special offers on Kyocera lasers

ExpLAN has announced a series of special reductions across a range of Kyocera laser printers, complete with RISC OS drivers. Most (but not all) of these are B-grade units, supplied with 12 months warranty.

Price details available on <http://www.explan.co.uk/printers/offers.html>. Of special note are: * FS-1200, Postscript A4 unit, 12ppm, a few B-grades now at GBP169+VAT * FS-8000C, PostScript *colour* A3, reduced by GBP120 to GBP1670+VAT

These offers are only available against cleared funds, and all sales must be completed before 31st May 2003.

AAUG.net launch spam filtered email forwarding at Wakefield

Spellings Computer Services Ltd and AAUG.net are pleased to announce a new e-mail service to be launched at this years' Wakefield Show. AAUG.net are now offering spam filtering and Microsoft virus protection on any aaug.net e-mail address for GBP25 inc VAT per year.

AAUG.net's spam filtering uses a combination of public DNS Blackhole Lists which list thousands of known spam sources, and advanced heuristics to spot spam messages which originate from sources not yet in the DNSBLs. A web interface is provided so you can check for any legitimate e-mail which has been filtered in error, and whitelist or blacklist specific senders and domains.

Customers who have domains registered through spellings.net may also add filtering and virus checking to their domain e-mail for GBP70 inc VAT per domain per year. AAUG.net will continue to offer their basic unfiltered e-mail forwarding service, but this will now be priced at GBP5 per year (although existing customers will not be charged anything further for their unfiltered service).

Wakefield Show offers: AAUG.net spam filtered e-mail forwarding launch price of GBP15 inc VAT, spellings.net customers GBP50 inc VAT.

<http://www.aaug.net/> <http://www.spellings.net/>

General spam information and the SBL: <http://www.spamhaus.org/>

R-Comp 32bit DataPower 2

The 32bit version of DataPower 2 has been sent to pre-registered customers and includes DPGraph (DataPower's charting add-on) and also the complex client/server modules which allow DataPower 2 to work in a network environment.

DataPower 2 is a powerful, relational database system, with SQL support and a friendly "DTP-style" approach to laying things out. Existing DataPower 2 users can upgrade to the 32 bit version for GBP40 (includes joining the Registered User Scheme).

<http://www.rcomp.co.uk/>

PD/Shareware News

Updated software summary

  • AMPlay v1.51
    Front-end for the AMPlayer audio MPEG module. Bug fix.
    <http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay.html>
  • BeebIt v0.50
    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. 32 bit compatible; new routines to render the video screen in 256 colour modes; added a cursor to teletext mode; slight speed increase to the handling of interrupts; snapshots have been improved and reimplemented; screen save can now save a teletext screen to a sprite.
    <http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mjfoot/bbc.htm>
  • DirSync v1.07
    Compare two directories and synchronise. New features in this version include: supports plugins to save the contents of the comparison to HTML or text, and to synchronise to an FTP site or Obey file.
    <http://home.c2i.net/jjvdgeer/riscos/dirsync.html>
  • Tau v1.30
    Peter Killworth has re-released Tim Birks' excellent graph-plotting program Tau, and updated it to include colour, definable linestyles, etc. Tau is designed to produce publishable quality graphs first time (unlike almost any other package), and yet is infinitely adaptable by the use of style files.
    <http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/PROC/people/pki/soft.html>
  • Topten v0.6.9
    Provide the same functionality as the "Documents" sub-menu in the "Start" menu of the Microsoft Windows 95/NT 4.0 shell. That is to remember in a single menu the latest objects (files, directories and now URIs) accessed from the Wimp desktop. 32 bit compatible and other improvements.
    <http://bgilon.free.fr/RISCOS/inettopten/UK/TTHTMLE.htm>

Club News

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