Archived Announcements from
Castle Technology Ltd

The announcements on this page appeared exclusively in previous issues of Foundation RISC User. You may return to Castle Technology's main page.

From issue 2

Castle Technology Ltd is delighted to announce a range of exciting new products which are due for launch at the Wakefield 2000 Show.

Oregano
Oregano is a brand new Web browser, developed originally for the Network Computer (NC) by Oregan Networks and now adapted for RISC OS. Although there are already a number of Web browsers for RISC OS, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, Oregano will offer users support for a range of features which are currently unavailable to RISC OS users. What's more, Oregano will be by far the fastest Web browser available for the platform: an important factor for users of earlier machines, and those without StrongARM processors. Oregano's features include:

The Kinetic Risc PC
If you have recently been wondering whether to buy a new Risc PC, the time to do so has definitely arrived! Over the last year, Castle has been working on the Kinetic Risc PC, a redesigned version of Acorn's Risc PC which fits in the traditional and highly acclaimed Risc PC case but which is significantly more powerful.

One of the recognised bottlenecks that limits the speed of current Risc PCs is Acorn's IOMD chip, which accesses memory at a maximum of 16MHz. The Kinetic Risc PC removes that bottleneck and allows the StrongARM to access memory at up to 66MHz: slightly more than four times the previous maximum speed. Moreover, the Kinetic Risc PC will come with 128Mb of ultra-fast SDRAM preinstalled for maximum performance. Extra levels of performance are achieved by copying the contents of the RISC OS ROMs into SDRAM at start-up: this allows the ROM modules to work at the fastest possible speed.

The Kinetic Risc PC allows the 233MHz StrongARM processor to show its true colours, and for processor-intensive and graphical-style operations (which are not dependent on the physical performance of other hardware such as hard drives), the Kinetic Risc PC is expected to deliver a real-world performance of two to three times the speed of a traditional 233MHz StrongARM Risc PC.

Despite the dramatic performance increase of the Kinetic Risc PC, there are no known compatibility issues with either software or hardware; compatibility should be identical with any other RISC OS 4-based StrongARM Risc PC. So, if you were considering a new Risc PC (or even if you weren't!), the Kinetic Risc PC is definitely the model to buy.

The Kinetic StrongARM Upgrade
Existing Risc PC owners need not feel left out: at Wakefield 2000, Castle will also be launching the Kinetic StrongARM Risc PC Upgrade, which will endow older Risc PCs with many of the benefits of the new Kinetic Risc PC. The upgrade card is expected to ship with a 233MHz StrongARM processor and 64Mb of on-board SDRAM for maximum performance. A variety of trade-up options will be available, so even owners of StrongARM Risc PCs with RISC OS 4 will be able to enhance the performance of their machines significantly. Equally well, an original ARM6-based Risc PC with RISC OS 3.5 will be capable of being transformed into a Kinetic StrongARM model with RISC OS 4. Contact Castle for the full range of upgrade options.

Press releases
The following press releases are Castle's preliminary announcements about the above products. Note that the descriptions above were produced especially for Foundation RISC User, and go into much more detail than the press releases.

New RISC OS Browser, dated 3rd May 2000
New RISC OS Computer, dated 3rd May 2000

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