If you’re on certain social media websites, you may have noticed a couple of polls run by RISCOSbits recently. These formed a part of the company’s research and development, as they decided exactly which direction to take for some new kit that was in the works – and that new hardware can now be revealed:
There are two shiny new toys in the range, both of which are ‘companion’ systems designed to work alongside existing RISC OS computers – with one version of one of the two machines actually intended for use inside an existing FAST system from RISCOSbits.
That’s ECOS11 in its internal form, with an external version available as well called ExCOS11 – but more on that later.
ECOS11 is a Windows 11 system, and brings Microsoft’s operating system and the wealth of software that runs on it to the fingertips of RISC OS users. Like other members of the ECOS family, it comes as a compact device device that will fit neatly inside your FAST computer, with your access to it being from within RISC OS.
It features an Intel Alder Lake-N97 CPU, with four cores and four threads, running typically at 2.0GHz, with a turbo speed of up to 3.6GHz, as well as 12GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD drive (with an option to upgrade to NVMe storage – up to 2TB). It also has Gigabit ethernet, Wi-Fi version 5, and Bluetooth 5.x. As such, it is a perfectly capable little beast, and connects neatly to the FAST motherboard – and will also fit inside many other ITX cases.
The out of the box configuration from RISCOSbits allows seamless file sharing with RISC OS, making it easy to access files from either system, with no messing around transferring them via another method, such as a USB stick, or purposefully transferring them across the network from one to the other.
There’s support for emulating RISC OS on the Windows device, with a variety of options available, meaning it can be used as a means to run older applications and games that no longer work on modern 32-bit systems, whether that’s due to hardware changes or OS changes.
And as mentioned above, there’s also an external version – ExCOS11 – for people who would like the benefits of a compact Windows 11 computer set up for use with RISC OS, although in this form it can also be used as a stand alone system.
ECOS11 is priced at £199 fully configured to the spec described above – but check out the ECOS page on the RISCOSbits website for other options.
The second companion system announced by RISCOSbits is the ECOfile. Most easily thought of as a RISC OS-friendly network attached storage device on steroids, but the system is much more than just a NAS.
Based around ECOS5 – the Raspberry Pi 5 compute module member of the ECOS family – ECOfile has support for multiple SSD drives to provide storage for other computers on the network. The key point to note, though, is that while an ordinary NAS device would typically only offer limited additional facilities over and above storage itself – often via a curated set of applications – ECOfile is a fully featured computer, running a full desktop Linux, so can be used as such, either across the network from another computer (such as your RISC OS one) or as a standalone system.
Its base specification is a 2.4GHz ARM-based CPU (it’s based around a Pi compute module, after all) with 8GB RAM, 1TB SSD storage, 1Gbps ethernet, dual band 5GHz wi-fi, 6 USB ports, and two 4K HDMI ports. It comes pre-configured as a print server, usable from RISC OS, and just as ECOS11 it comes with emulation solutions allowing you to run older RISC OS software on it.
RISCOSbits’ Andy Marks says that they trialled configuring it as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disc) storage, but concluded that it wasn’t the ideal solution, explaining that duplicating data across multiple discs meant reducing the amount of available storage while also reducing performance, so has opted not to offer it in this form, suggesting there are better ways to back up your data.
On the other hand, you can add optional cloud access, allowing you to access your files from anywhere you have an internet connection.
ECOfile is priced at £249 for the spec described above, with other configurations available.
Both ECOS11/ExCOSS11 and ECOfile are available for immediate dispatch.
