Wakefield 2000 Report

Richard Hallas brings back pictures of the future from Wakefield 2000

A magazine that appears at only quarterly intervals cannot hope to report exciting, breaking news from an event that happened over three months ago! Other magazines, newsletters and Web sites will already have relayed the most important information that this report contains. Nevertheless, there were some significant happenings at the Wakefield 2000 show, not least some previews of exciting and powerful new hardware, and so it seems well worth covering them here. What follows, therefore, is a personal report of what I saw on the Saturday of the show, complete with the pictures that I took on my Olympus C-800L digital camera. (Click the thumbnail images in this article to view the photos at full-size.)

Five alive Wakefield 2000, the Wakefield Acorn Computer Group's fifth annual show, took place on Saturday and Sunday, 20th and 21st June, at the now-established venue of the Thornes Park Athletics Stadium, Wakefield. The weather was kind: amply warm enough, but not excessively hot and sunny as has occasionally been the case in the past. As usual, the show was extremely well attended by the RISC OS third party developers, with all the big names present and many smaller developers too. For the first time, the show was opened officially by the Deputy Mayor and Mayoress of Wakefield, Councillor and Mrs Don Hitchen. Expectations for this particular show were high, as it represented the first anniversary of the arrival of RISC OS 4. A year ago, we were all still reeling from Acorn's recent suicide, and although there were plenty of people around at Wakefield 1999 to show their support for the platform, there were few new products. In fact, perhaps the only really major new launch at least year's show was RISC OS 4 itself. Wakefield 2000 was different; the market has now come to terms with Acorn's absence, and a good percentage of users have upgraded to RISC OS 4. The operating system is available in a stable state for hardware manufacturers to incorporate into their new machines, and so, partially as a result of this, new hardware was one of the main focuses of Wakefield 2000.

Thornes Park Athletics Stadium Overview of the hall Looking down over the Castle Technology stand

Hardware

Castle's Kinetic energy The biggest hardware launch of the show was the new Kinetic Risc PC from Castle Technology. Although Castle had revealed details of its new machine a little before the show to select individuals, to all intents and purposes the Kinetic Risc PC was a surprise launch at Wakefield. As a result, Castle's large stand was a constant mass of people vying to find out how fast this new breed of Risc PC actually ran. Despite the fact that it still uses a 233MHz Revision-T StrongARM, in common with Castle's other models of StrongARM Risc PC, the use of SDRAM memory and other technologies incorporated into the new Kinetic machine allow it to run at around three times the previous StrongARM speed for certain operations. Also available from Castle was the Kinetic upgrade card for existing Risc PCs, which allow even the earliest models of Risc PC to be brought up to a par with a new Kinetic model in terms of speed. Issue 2 of Foundation RISC User had a preview of these new products, which can be located on Castle's news page.

The Castle Internet Café featured Oregano and the Kinetic Risc PC Castle's large stand occupied the entire near-end of the hall and was always busy

MicroDigital and RiscStation: partnership and laptops Not to be outdone, the other hardware partners were also showing off both real new machines and intended projects for the future. In addition to its existing range of Mico computers, MicroDigital had an intriguing-looking object tucked away at the back of one of its stands; it looked suspiciously like a laptop computer, though not like any laptop I'd ever seen before. In fact, it turned out that this laptop was a special, hand-made mock-up: the DIY case on show would not reflect the real machine. Unfortunately, as the computer wasn't actually working, this meant that there was nothing concrete to see, but David Atkins assured me that there were no technical reasons why the laptop would not be produced. This was a relief, because it was largely technical difficulties, and the problems in obtaining certain parts, that caused the promising-looking Interconnex Peanut laptop to fail to appear over a year ago. Rumours abounded that RiscStation was also working on a laptop, although I could find nothing on their stand that related to it, and that the RiscStation laptop would be in colour whereas the MicroDigital one would (initially, at least) be in monochrome only. Apparently MicroDigital's plan was to target the education market with an affordable grey-scale RISC OS laptop, and perhaps produce a higher-end colour version a little later, with a suitably higher price. However, this is where hindsight is of benefit. It now transpires that the MicroDigital range of laptops will not be produced in isolation after all; a memorandum of understanding (for which a press release is available) was signed between the two companies, to the effect that they will work together, sharing technologies in order to produce the laptop, and presumably other products, as a joint effort. So the new RISC OS laptop will be coming from the RiscStation stable. Apparently work is progressing on it well, and it is nearing completion. A picture of the prototype is available on RiscStation Ltd's news page. RiscStation's stand also contained two expansions to the company's existing range of desktop computers: the NetWORXHD is a version of the previously hard-disc-less NetWORX machine with a 2Gb hard drive fitted, whilst the R7500Lite+ is an enhanced version of the R7500Lite with a bigger hard drive and four times the RAM. Precise specifications are again available on RiscStation's page in this magazine. RiscStation's stand also contained some colourful concept cases and a preview Evolution motherboard behind a glass panel. The Evolution had originally been intended as an ARM7500FE-based PCI computer system, but RiscStation and Simtec have upgraded the specification to use the StrongARM instead. By looking at RiscStation's news page in this issue once again, you will see that the specifications have been solidified somewhat compared with previous issues. But the final rabbit (or should that be opossum?) to be pulled out of RiscStation's hat was the POSsum, an affordable Electronic Point Of Sale (EPOS) system comprising an R7500 with bar code scanner, magnetic scanner, cash drawer and till roll printer at a price that's more affordable to small retailers than traditional systems. Given that these machines can be networked together easily, RiscStation has a good chance of being able to find lucrative business in a new and professional market. Good luck to them! POSsum was due for launch on 29th August.

Piles of MicroDigital Mico computers A hand-tooled prototype laptop RiscStation expanded its range with the R7500Lite+ and the NetWORXHD InSite Internet kit and Scorcher CD-writer systems Colourful concept cases

Millipede and Cerilica at the atomic centre Looking further ahead to powerful hardware that's still some way off, Millipede Electronic Graphics was present to show off its Imago motherboard. Although this was still not in a state to run RISC OS as such, it was capable of running a mock-up to demonstrate the quality of its screen display. So, an Imago Risc PC was present on the Millipede stand, hooked up to a Sony Trinitron monitor with an impressive resolution of 2048×1536 pixels, and was running an extremely attractive, rock-steady image in full colour. The icon bar was a remarkably shallow ribbon at the foot of the screen when viewed at such a high resolution! The large and impressive background image occupying the rest of the screen could also be panned around extremely smoothly with the mouse. This graphic display certainly looked the part; designers and DTP practitioners will love it! And finally on the new computer front, the biggest surprise of the show was undoubtedly the announcement that Cerilica would be the first company to produce a new computer based around the Millipede Imago motherboard. The Nucleus occupied a stand all on its own at the very centre of the hall (appropriately enough, given the computer's name) and provoked a lot of interest; though, at first glance, not everyone was sure that what they were looking at was actually a computer! The Nucleus was, in a word, striking. Looking back at the heated arguments surrounding the bright yellow fascia of Acorn's Phœbe two years ago (which I personally rather disliked, though not nearly as much as I disliked the name!), I wonder what sort of reaction Acorn would have got if it had attempted to introduce a computer that looked like the Nucleus. Visitors were unable to make up their minds about what it most resembled. A toaster? An electric fire crossed with a deep-fat frier? Or was it a Blue Peter-style DIY attempt at a copy of the Apple G4 PowerMac design? I don't think that a consensus was reached, but opinions were certainly divided about it. Whatever your reaction to its looks, though (and I have to say that I personally rather liked it, despite its appearing a little home-grown), there's no doubting that it'll be a powerful machine, and Cerilica has an interesting approach to it. They are intending from the outset that it will be a low-volume, build-to-order product with an appropriately high price, and the case will, to a large extent, be adaptable to the customer's requirements. So the choice of colour scheme and perhaps even the dimensions of the case will be up to you, the buyer, in addition to decisions about what combinations of drives and other peripherals you'd like to fit inside it. As a personal aside, I'd like to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by the Nucleus for a number of reasons. The first is the name itself: when Acorn was trying to decide what to call its successor to the Risc PC, it asked Clan members for their ideas, and my own suggestion was "Nucleus" because it was short and memorable, implied power, centrality and importance, and also harked back to Acorn's old habit of using atomic particles for the names of its computer. The second reason was the choice of colour scheme for the computer. Purely by coincidence, though with unquestionably impeccable taste, Cerilica had chosen the exact same colours for the Nucleus's case as I had already picked for this very Foundation magazine: mainly dark blue and gold, with a splash of red (in the case of the Nucleus, the big red power button on the top). So is there any wonder that I liked the machine? It was almost as though I'd designed it myself! Regrettably, though, I'm extremely unlikely to be able to afford one: the price is expected to start at an absolute minimum of £2000 for the machine alone, and that's excluding the large and expensive monitor that will be needed to take advantage of its superior screen displays, not to mention extra drives and so on. But Cerilica will be aiming this machine at new markets in graphic design and publishing, not at the traditional Acorn market (though obviously RISC OS enthusiasts will be more than welcome to buy one if they can afford it). Better displays in our sights For the less affluent among us, a more realistic path to better screen displays was also being demonstrated for the first time at Wakefield: John Kortink's ViewFinder graphics card. Unfortunately I managed to fail to notice this at the show myself, and only heard about it afterwards, but it does sound very promising. This new video card, distributed by CJE, incorporates an ATI Rage Pro 3D Turbo chip-set which provides much larger screen modes than current RISC OS machines can normally handle, as well as accelerating many graphical desktop operations. A flicker-free 1600×1200-pixel display in 32-bit colour ought to be more than adequate for most people, and the ViewFinder can go to even higher resolutions (in fewer colours) if your monitor can cope with them. Given that it supports all the old screen modes as well, and costs a mere £220, the ViewFinder sounds like a real bargain.

Richard Jozefowski (left) of Millipede Cerilica's Nucleus Nucleus: no-one paid any attention whatsoever to the 'Do not touch' signs The rear of the Nucleus, complete with integral screwdriver Acorn aficionado Gordon Taylor (left) with Millipede's Richard Jozefowski (middle) and Cerilica's Simon Birtwistle (right)

Software

Electronic paper-folding and browser skirmishes Castle managed to top the bill for new software launches as well as new hardware products by releasing the first RISC OS version of Oregano, its new Web browser. RISC OS already has a proliferation of Web browsers, so the release of yet another one may seem a little strange but, given Oregano's history, its arrival actually seems quite logical. In fact, Oregano is a product of Oregan Networks Ltd, a former developer of RISC OS desktop applications which now specialises in products for the emerging Internet appliance market. Oregano is, in effect, one of the spin-offs from the NC market that Acorn promised us we'd see, even though the nature of all the markets concerned have changed dramatically since Acorn was around! Be that as it may, Oregano attracted a lot of interest at the show, as it supports JavaScript, cascading stylesheets and 128-bit SSL secure transactions from its very first release. It's also very fast, claiming to be the fastest browser available for RISC OS. A demo version is present on this CD; to try it out by viewing this magazine (with a custom FRU browser 'skin'), just Ctrl-double-click on the RunMe application and click the Oregano icon in the resulting window. (You can choose other demo browsers here, too: WebsterLT and Fresco.) As usual, R-Comp had a range of new products and, not to be outdone by Castle's launch of Oregano, they included a major new release of WebsterXL. This feature-rich browser now, like Oregano, includes support for 128-bit SSL, together with speed improvements, much-improved table, frame and form support, better handling of JavaScript and a brand-new user interface. On the subject of browsers, Warm Silence Software's stand featured a number of browser-related items such as new plug-ins for sound and SVG files (the new Web-friendly vector graphic format) and Peter Naulls' Chockcino Java software. Like R-Comp, Warm Silence's catalogue of products covers a wide range of subjects, and as usual their stand was very busy throughout the show. Compilation CDs abound R-Comp Interactive also had its usual wide range of entertainment titles, including the launch of the new TBA Classics games compilation CD comprising six games, source code and other utilities from the now-defunct TBA Software. Another compilation CD that was on sale at the R-Comp stand (and elsewhere) in the absence of BEEBUG Ltd was my RISC User ...in a Nutshell CD, commemorating the end of life of Beebug's respected magazine. The original set of limited-edition Nutshell discs has now sold out, but copies on CD-R may still be bought from R-Comp, and include some minor revisions. Unfortunately the second issue of Foundation RISC User, which had been prepared in time for release just prior to the show, was delayed by production problems. In fact the CDs themselves were duplicated in time, I am told, but they were sent to the wrong place, and the inserts were not printed until long after the show in any case. Issue 1 was on sale, though, and RISCOS Ltd did a brisk trade in RISC OS 4 upgrades and Manuals CDs. A further new CD launch was DrawWORKS New Millennium from iSV Products, containing the latest edition of the powerful Draw add-on together with tons of clip-art, fonts and other utilities. This cannily-titled disc is the successor to last year's DrawWORKS Millennium, and neatly sidesteps the issue of whether the Millennium is associated with the year 2000 or 2001. Cross-platform support Softease was present and demonstrating its new Textease Studio suite of utilities, which now includes a spreadsheet. This most impressive piece of software takes spreadsheets into new territory in terms of ease of use. Textease Studio will also soon be expanded to include a database as well, although this is still not quite ready. The interesting thing about Textease is that it's now a cross-platform product, with versions available for both PC and Mac as well as RISC OS. Despite the fact that Textease's new spreadsheet component arrived first on the PC, Softease's Geoff Titmuss assured me that this did not mean that Softease's enthusiasm for RISC OS was waning. Quite the contrary; as the man behind all of Softease's products, Geoff is a confirmed RISC OS enthusiast, and intends all cross-platform releases to be simultaneous in future. This is good to know, as Softease's innovative products have proved immensely popular in education, and the fact that the same files can be used not only in all the Textease components (Textease itself plus the spreadsheet and database) but also across all three platforms is a real incentive for schools to keep using RISC OS equipment. Also, of course, Textease is at its best when used under RISC OS, as it benefits from RISC OS's superior user interface and font handling. Also of interest to users of multiple platforms is Icon Technology's EasiWriter family. These products seem to be developed at a remarkable rate, with ever-improving support for Web technologies, not to mention the ability to load an expanding range of Microsoft Word documents. Given the prevalent use of Word on the PC and Mac, this is another crucial piece of software if you wish to use such files under RISC OS. As for producing documents for use on PCs and Macs, PDF files are a common means of document exchange, and Cerilica had this niche sewn up with its acquisition of RiScript Pro. This was available in a new version at the show, and sold out on the first day. For users looking for more direct compatibility with other platforms, Aleph One was present at the show. As well as its traditional range of PC cards, the company is now branching out into Linux with a version of ARMLinux (Red Hat distribution) on CD that's directly bootable on a Risc PC. Closer to home But staying in the RISC OS market, lots of old stalwarts were present as ever. APDL, for example, was demonstrating David Pilling's new Impression file loader for Ovation Pro, whilst Spacetech had the latest digital cameras from Olympus. The RiscStation Village provided stands for several smaller developers, including The Really Good Software Company, which released a new version of Notice Board Professional, and Chris Morison, who had a new version of Organizer. There was additionally a charity stall with a wide range of bargains to be had, and a games arcade sponsored by R-Comp, with machines on loan from RiscStation. The latest beta version of Vantage was also released at the show. Perhaps the full release will make it in time for the arrival of Nucleus!

R-Comp, with a major new release of WebsterXL RISCOS Ltd's spacious stand RISCOS Ltd: Rons in glass cases and FRU-2 covers on the walls, but neither for sale! RISCOS Ltd programmer Justin Fletcher (left) with Java-man Peter Naulls Argo Interactive, with its Internet services Paul Beverley (far right), having a lonely moment on the Archive stand David Matthewman of RISC World APDL, selling and demonstrating many products, including Ancestry+ and Ovation Pro with its new Impression file loader The games area Cerilica's open-plan stand, complete with multimedia keyboards, RiScript Pro and late-beta Vantage

Summary

My feeling was that last year's Wakefield show was very well attended but contained little to see that was actually new; whereas, by contrast, Wakefield 2000 had a lot more new releases, but didn't attract quite as many people to see them!

But it was still an excellently-organised and well-attended event, even if the numbers weren't quite as pleasing as last year, and going by what the exhibitors said, it seems that the punters were more than happy to let the moths fly free from their wallets!

So, well done to all concerned with the organisation of the event, and I look forward to next year's show. Maybe there'll be some even more exciting new hardware to see in a year's time!