News nybble: Elesar brings serial and parallel ports to the Pi

Hats off to Elesar – and on to the Raspberry Pi, since this is a HAT! Details are now available about Elesar Ltd‘s mystery product that was expected to be launched at the London Show – the S&P HAT for the Raspberry Pi. A HAT is a standard for Raspberry Pi expansion boards, and is an acronym that expands to ‘Hardware Attached on Top’, while the S&P part comes from Elesar, and stands for ‘Serial and Parallel’. In other words, it’s an add-on board for the Pi that provides the…

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News nybble: Titanium + DDE = October offer from Elesar

My calculator doesn’t seem to like that calculation, but it’s definitely right. Following last month’s offer of five games for the price of none when purchasing a Titanium motherboard, October sees another piece of software up for grabs from Elesar Ltd when purchasing their flagship product. This time, the offer is for a free full copy of RISC OS Open Ltd‘s Desktop Development Environment. The DDE (which is how it’s known to its friends) is normally priced at £50 including VAT, and includes a C compiler, ARM assembler, GUI resource…

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The clock is counting down for Windows 7-based RISCubes

The problem with needing both a Windows or MacOS computer system as well as a RISC OS one is space – two computers take up more valuable space on your desk than just one. A good emulation of one that works on the other is a neat solution to this, because it means you can have just the one computer, but reap the benefits of both platforms. This has always been where VirtualRiscPC has shown its worth, offering a very strong and just about seamless emulation of the RiscPC computer.…

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4D introduces USB mouse interface for older RISC OS machines

Modern RISC OS systems tend to come equipped with a number of USB ports, one of which is normally used to connect the mouse to the computer. However, this wasn’t always the case – USB was first introduced in the mid-1990s, and the Acorn Archimedes first appeared in 1987; Acorn didn’t have the option of USB, and instead designed the Archimedes, RiscPC, and all the variants, to use a quadrature mouse. The BBC Micro, of course, is an older computer again and in its case, if you had a mouse,…

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The REALLY big news from Wakefield revealed at last

Imaginations were fired up thanks to all the excitement! In the run up to the Wakefield Show, which took place a couple of days ago, it became very clear that there was going to be some big news. Something was kicked off shortly before the event, and it seemed likely there would be an announcement of some significance about that at the show. However, I am led to believe that there has been some disappointment, not only from people who attended but also from people who didn’t and who have…

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News nybble: Poll to name RISCOSbits’ new product

One thing you will often hear in the RISC OS world is the mantra that people need to ‘get involved’ more – indeed, if you watch the video of Rob Sprowson’s Southwest Show talk on behalf of RISC OS Open Ltd, part of the talk is about just that: How you, the ordinary RISC OS user, can get involved. Well, here’s another way: RISCOSbits is launching a new product at tomorrow’s Wakefield Show, and is running a poll to decide on that product’s name. There are three options, ÜBER, BÜRP,…

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News nybble: Raid your wallets for a RAID drive

New product from R-Comp at the Southwest Show this Saturday! With a nod towards the potential hurdles setting up network attached storage for those less technically inclined, and another towards the need to have good backups (which many people to this day still fail to do), R-Comp will be launching a two disc RAID mirrored storage solution for RISC OS users on Saturday. Bundles will be available consisting of the RAID solution, and SafeStore 2, the company’s backup software. Related to this, the company will be announcing disc partitioning support…

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News nybble: RISCOSbits reaches for the bottom…

…with the Absolute ZeRO! What do you get if you take one Raspberry Pi Zero, add an expansion board to provide an ethernet socket and two standard USB ports, and throw in a 16GB microSD card with a fully licensed RISC OS ready to run? The answer is the Absolute ZeRO – the latest product from RISCOSbits. Limited to one per customer until further notice, the Absolute ZeRO costs £42.99 plus P&P (or £32.99 plus P&P without the RISC OS card – but who in their right mind would want…

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