FAST LITE beams in to Wakefield (in Bradford)

At a bit less than 299,792,458 metres per second, but who’s counting?

The Wradfold Show – aka the Wakefield Show when held in Bradford – is taking place this weekend, and RISCOSbits will be there with a number of interesting products.

In the run up to the recent Southwest Show, RISCOSbits teased out some clues as to something new in the works, and that something was launched at the show – RISC OS FAST, a custom ROM build that allows the operating system, with the aid of some custom hardware, to make use of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module IO board’s PCIe port to provide access to four full speed SATA ports.

There are a number of RISC OS FAST options on the cards, and at the show there will be several FAST LITE systems available at £349 each, featuring 2GB RAM and a 250GB SSD drive in a stylish aluminium case. If you’re willing and able to MacGyver up your own kit, on the other hand, there will also be CORE packs available for £99 – these consist of the ROM on an SD card, along with the hardware needed to access the port.

New features are planned for the system, and customers will be able to access updates to the ROM – and RISCOSbits’ Andy Marks says that the first new features will hopefully appear at the show. These should include support for SATA DVD and CD drives, and he expects to be demonstrating support for 4Kn/512e drives, which should open up RISC OS to cheaper, but larger SSDs. And in that context, Andy is hoping to be able to show off a FAST system with a 1TB filecore SSD.

If the thought of that gets you hot under the collar, you might want to cool off with an ice lolly or a cold drink – but if you want to keep a Raspberry Pi cool, you’ll have the option of a FHANTom – a software controlled Fan HAT for the tiny computer, based on the tech used by RISCOSbits in the FOURtress machine.

Anyone with a RISC OS laptop (because they’re a thing now, doncherknow) might be interested in RISCOSbits’ Desktop Dock. Priced at £45 for the show, the device allows your Pinebook (or Pro) to be connected to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, along with other USB peripherals, and it also provides an ethernet port, amongst other handy features.

These are all newer developments, but there will be stock of other things from the company, including the Pi Harder Lite, FOURtress Lite, and PiRO Noir. There will be a selection of stylish cases, such as a glass-effect one for the Pi, wooden multimedia system cases with USB ports on the front, and more.

There will also be EDOS USB and EDO/SD dual boot systems for the Raspberry Pi 4, allowing you to easily choose between RISC OS or Linux, depending on what you need to do when you’re using the system.

And for those at the back who haven’t kept up, the show will take place this Saturday at the Cedar Court Hotel, Bradford!

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