The Wakefield Show is almost here

It’s where the discerning RISC OS user will be on Saturday, 21st April.

It’s now only a little over a week until this year’s Wakefield Show takes place – so let’s take a quick look at what’s in store for you, the discerning RISC OS user in question.

Getting some important details out of the way first, the show will take place at its regular venue:

The Cedar Court Hotel,
Denby Dale Road,
Calder Grove,
Wakefield,
WF4 3QZ.

The hotel is a mere stone’s throw from junction 39 of the M1 – if you’re coming via the motorway you should turn left at the junction if you’re Northbound, or right if you’re Southbound, and you will see the entrance to the hotel almost immediately. For those not driving, there are also bus stops on either side of the road very close to the hotel entrance, with a handful of buses that head to and from the city centre and appear to stop a not unreasonable walk from both Wakefield Westgate and Wakefield Kirkgate railway stations, some closer than others.

The show is open to the public from 10:30am until 4:30pm, with an entrance fee of £5.00 for adults. Children aged up to twelve years, accompanied by an adult, can get in for free.

The organisers currently have twenty three confirmed exhibitors, all set to demonstrate their various wares to you on the day, covering all the usual range: There will be hardware and software a-plenty, both new and old, as well as magazines and user groups – and, of course, the show provides an opportunity to help a worthy cause by way of the charity stand.

One of the user groups is, unsurprisingly, the one that organises the show – the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club – and, just as they have done for the last few years, the group will be running a prize draw, with this year’s first prize being a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with an Ident CE case, and an Amazon gift voucher for whoever comes second.

The chance to get some handy hardware for the price of a prize draw ticket aside, your more general – new – hardware needs will be covered by R-Comp, CJE Micro’s, and RISCOSbits; between them, they should have something for everyone, whether what you want is a full blown, fast computer, something with a witty name, or something more general.

If your interests involve hardware that might not be out of place on afternoon antiques TV shows, you will also be covered, with a number of exhibitors showing off retro hardware – including, er, well, Retro Hardware, who design and manufacture accessories for older, 8-bit systems.

There will be software on display for that same older kit with the likes John Dale and the Flax Cottage Educational Archive, a Wakefield Show regular. If you have any old educational software to add to the archive, John will gratefully relieve you of it at the show.

New software, of course, is well covered. The latest version of the operating system will be available for the Pi from RISC OS Open Ltd (who are drawing ever closer to the release of RISC OS 5.24), along with the ePic cards – also the latest version of the OS for the Pi, but with a good selection of software alongside it – and the development tools, amongst other things.

There is a new game in the works from AMCOG, in the form of a first person shooter that puts the player in a whole world of hurt, facing off against the undead. Tony Bartram has just put out a call for beta testers, so hopefully it will be available to purchase on the day – if not, it will certainly be available to see and try out – and AMCOG’s other games will also be available to buy, individually or as a collection.

Another collection that will be available will be Soft Rock Software’s, featuring a selection of the company’s old budget games, a work-in-progress rewrite of one of these, and applications such as WebChange. For anyone who has previously had the APDL Soft Rock Software Games disc, this is in many respects an updated version of that.

Sine Nomine will be showing off the latest versions of a relational database relational database Impact, as well as – unsurprisingly – RiscOSM, which now benefits from contour data for much of Europe, and is able to calculate a ‘gradient profile’ for routes drawn on the map.

And if maps are your thing, then satellite navigation may be of interest to you as well – so Chris Hall will be demonstrating his SatNav software and GPS units. However, Chris will also be selling a genealogy application, FamTree, which can build a family tree from source data stored in a directory tree.

If that little lot doesn’t whet your appetite, bear in mind I’ve simply cherry-picked from the full list of exhibitors, as found on the Show website – take a look for yourselves, keep an eye out for announcements as the show grows closer still, and see you there!

Related posts