According to their previous news item they'd have samples of their new motherboard in April (although they've announced the showing of the hardware for Wakefield in May). This is a rather tight schedule, but MD must be reasonably sure they can reach it hence their announcement.

They're also welcoming the press for some sort of viewing prior to the show in May (this is the sort of 3rd party review I've been asking for since November). So the best of luck to them on the launch and (hopefully) the imminent release of Omega.

[Edited by tfountain at 08:57, 19/3/2001. Fixed formatting]

Regards

Annraoi

Anyway that last comment isn't meant to knock them as they haven't promised delivery.

I wonder if they will they block articles that find something wrong with the Omega. I'm not implying that they will, although the event is 'invite only'.

Chris (speaking purely personally)

Does anyone remember what the timescale for RO 4.5 is supposed to be? I'd hate to buy one of these new machines and then have to spend another £100 on an OS upgrade.

I think Summer 2001 was mentioned in RISCOS Ltd.'s annual report, but I could be wrong.

It's definitely promising and welcome news. I guess I'm really going to have to get to Wakefield this year for a look see. The only thing which concerns me is how much longer people will have to wait for machines after Wakefield. By showing it I wonder if they mean "show" or "in production".

Anyway that last comment isn't meant to knock them as they haven't promised delivery.

Agreed !

I think Lee they will probably just "show" and provide some indepth information on their technology. After all they will now have REAL hardware and that is likely to promote further sales.

As to when actual deliveries will start its in the lap of the gods. Judging from MD's news pages their first batch of PCB's are slated for APRIL then the first chance for MD to test a fully configured board would be late in April (probably only 2-3 weeks before the show).

That is an ambitious timeframe, I personally doubt if the hardware will be on volume release by May (only because a good deal of testing (and good luck) is required).

It is difficult (read as "Expensive" ) to field repair or patch motherboards, I am pretty sure that MD will want to test and test several prototypes before mass production starts. Perhaps with reference to Sendu's comments they may wait to launch with ROS 4.5 in any event (as after all both events will be very close timewise). I would guestimate we might see first orders out to people in late June or July (assuming all goes well).

Here's hoping !

[Edited by ams at 17:32, 19/3/2001]

[Edited by ams at 17:39, 19/3/2001]

Since the FPEmulator in RISC OS is 32bit, I would assume the probability of a major speed boost for MP3 encoding exists.

Does the fact that they say "DUAL" imply that the XScale daughter board will be available at launch?

Since the FPEmulator in RISC OS is 32bit, I would assume the probability of a major speed boost for MP3 encoding exists.

xScale is purely 32 bit, in addition how its cache behaves is different from StrongARM so possibly some patching and OS changes would be required. That's a job for ROL and the work done there will benefit anyone wanting to implement xScale (or ARM10) support (ie., Microdigital, Millipede and (possibly) Castle).

The MP3 speed boost may need the assist of the VFP (Vector Floating Point) processor of ARM10. Having said that, the enhanced memory speed on the SA equipped Omega (and Imago) may allow some improvement - but this will be heavily dependant on how the codec is written.

I also note Intel have announced new libraries to support enhanced I/O multimedia on xScale, perhaps there's a nice MP3 codec sitting in there somewhere.