Acorn News Service Newsletter
Issue: 156 (18 April 2004)
Featured site this issue: Risc PC 10 years old: http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1027.html
General News
Wakefield Show charity stall
The 9th Wakefield Show on the weekend of 15th and 16th May at Thornes Park
Athletics Stadium, will once again have a charity stall, raising money
primarily for Wakefield Hospice.
People can either bring items they wish to give to the charity stall on the
day or arrange to send or deliver them in advance to the Wakefield Hospice
who are providing some storage facilities until the show. Send or take
advance donations to: Wakefield Hospice (Fund Raising) Ltd, Hemingway House,
Thornes Moor Business Park, Thornes Moor Road, WAKEFIELD, WF2 8PG. They can
accept deliveries direct by hand between 8:30am and 4:00pm Monday to Friday.
Please ensure you mark the parcel: "FOR THE ATTENTION OF TERRY RIGG -
WAKEFIELD 2004 RISC OS SHOW".
Other details about this year's show can be found at:
<http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/>
Commercial News
RISCBook+ Special Edition
The popularity of the R-Comp Interactive RISCube and RISCBook family of
computers has allowed RCI to arrange a special promotion with their
suppliers: the availability of the 15.4" Widescreen multimedia RISCBook+
Special Edition, for the same price as the normal RISCBook+.
The RISCBook+ SE has a similar feature set to the RISCBook+ (Microsoft
Windows system with integrated RISC OS emulation; Centrino, 512MB, 40GB) but
adds a 4-in-1 media card reader, enhanced surround sound audio, and the
15.4" high resolution widescreen display. All these extra facilities are
fully accessible from RISC OS, of course!
The price is the same as a traditional RISCBook+ at GBP1350 inc VAT and UK
delivery. This is a very special promotion (hence whilst stocks last) as
this laptop is listed at that sort of price (from most suppliers) without
RISC OS, whereas the RISCBook+ SE includes RISC OS 4 and UniPrint VA.
<http://www.rcomp.co.uk/>
APDL / ProAction Software Topologika rereleases
- Freddy Teddy Bumper Pack
Another Topologika Software classic getting a relaunch at Wakefield is
Freddy Teddy; this time as a part of the Freddy Teddy Bumper Pack.
Bringing together 6 of the best known stories, this pack promotes basic
numeracy and has been designed from the outset to be easy to use for
children of all ages. The new Freddy Teddy pack will be available for
GBP19.90; or as an upgrade to any single Freddy Teddy title for GBP15.00;
exclusively via APDL.
- All about Planes and All about Handwriting
At this years Wakefield Show All about Planes and All about Handwriting
will be relaunched. This double-product pack includes an extensive
multimedia tutorial guiding users through cursive handwriting, and a
second component that aims to encourage reading through focus on planes.
A number of additions have been made above the last Topologika release.
It will be available for GBP19.90; or as an upgrade to the Topologika
release for GBP10.00; exclusively via APDL.
APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN; call 020 8778 2659
or e-mail <info@apdl.co.uk>. Note that these products will not be
available for mail order until after the show.
PD/Shareware News
Updated software summary
- DirSync v1.08
Visually compare two directory structures. New features in this version:
plugins can now be used with the keyboard; compiled with StubsG so it no
longer needs the 32bit SharedCLibrary on 26bit machines; synchronising
action window now shows if it is reading or updating; when the timezone
setting is set to 'Assume difference is n hours', the synchronising also
adds/subtracts this number of hours when copying files. Bug fixes.
<http://home.c2i.net/jjvdgeer/riscos/dirsync.html>
- GCC v3.3.3 pre-release 2
A free collection of compilers that provide the user with a powerful tool
for translating C, C++ and Fortran source into fast ARM assembler that is
suitable for execution on RISC OS. Though this is a pre-release, the
compiler toolset should be considered stable. Changes since pre-release 1
include bug fixes for RISC OS filename handling, an interactivity problem
with AMU and updates for diffutils, flex, grep, make, patch and sed. Users
of pre-release 1 are urged to upgrade.
<http://hard-mofo.dsvr.net/gcc/>
- IscaFS v0.12
Read-only image filing system for accessing Linux ext2/ext3 image files
and hard disc partitions. This version includes bug fixes and support for
MimeMap.
<http://home.pages.de/~mac_bacon/smorbrod/IscaFS/>
- MakeAlias v4.1
Create aliases of applications, files and directories. Slight modification
so that aliases of objects that exist on the boot device have the paths
defined as "Boot:^" rather than the absolute drive name. You can now call
the alias any name you wish. Renamed aliases are prefixed with "!+"
instead of "!=".
<http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mripley/software.html>
- Nettle v0.2042r
Terminal emulator and telnet client. It utilises the ZapRedraw module for
speedy display and is a fast, clean, native implementation. The main
purpose of this release is to improve the detection of Internet pollword
capabilities, which meant that the previous release (0.2040r) did not
perform so well "out of the box" on an Iyonix. Also German messages have
been added and bugs fixed.
<http://nettle.sourceforge.net/>
- ShowJGEG v1.05
Simple JPEG carousel program. Now handles screenmodes with Y eiger=2
(even X eiger=2) properly.
<http://users.argonet.co.uk/users/jdp/downs.htm>
<http://www.westcairn.net/>
- StopCaps v0.04
A tiny module which prevents the Caps Lock key from working unless Alt is
pressed at the same time, to avoid everything going upper case if you
accidentally hit Caps Lock. This version is 32 bit friendly.
<http://www.pod51.demon.co.uk/Software/>
- Sunfish v1.00
Excellent image filing system based NFS client for RISC OS. After many
months of testing Sunfish is now considered stable, and has been reported
to work with a variety of different servers. It has flexible configuration
options, and can transfer large files over twice as fast as LanManFS in
some situations. The latest version includes a simple GUI to help create
mount files. Full source code is supplied under the GNU GPL.
<http://www.alexwaugh.com/internet/>
- Thumbcat v3.3
An image catalogue application. New features include HTML export, album
within album, and improved skins. Bug fixes.
<http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mripley/software.html>
Club News
Upcoming meetings
- ROUGOL (London), 19th April - Informal / hardware evening
<http://rougol.jellybaby.net/>
- SASAUG (Surrey/Sussex), 19th April - Dave Holden, APDL
<http://www.poppyfields.net/sasaug/>
- SAUG (Southampton), 19th April
<davehigton@dsl.pipex.com>
- RONWUG (North West), 21st April
<http://www.ronwug.org/>
- WROCC (Wakefield), 5th May - Mike Cook, "Walking with Technology"
<http://www.wrocc.org.uk/>
- WAUG (Wessex), 8th May
<http://www.mfraz.freeserve.co.uk/waug/>
- DARC (Derbyshire), 10th May
<http://www.darc-comp.org.uk/>
- EAUG (Essex), 11th May
<http://www.wattys.fsnet.co.uk/eaug/>
- LAUG (Liverpool), 11th May
<http://www.italia.co.uk/laug/>
- NKACC (Kent), 13th May - Home networking, wired and wireless
<http://nkacc.roundel.net/>
- Wakefield 2004, 15th & 16th May
<http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/>
- RISC OS Expo 2004 (Netherlands), 19th June
<http://www.bigbenclub.nl/>
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