There's an interesting article up here with Steve Furber, one of the designers of the BBC Micro and ARM processor. It's been linked to from Slashdot, which is where we came across it.
 
There's some background in there on the development of the original ARM designs, as well as the StrongARM and the current SpiNNaker project, an attempt to come up with a more biologically based style of computation.
 
All fascinating stuff, and especially so at the moment with the explosion of ARM-based computers out there.
 

Ever since Jeffrey Lee began work on porting RISC OS to developer boards such as the BeagleBoard and IGEPv2 there's been interest in putting a case around them to make them into proper computers. Both ports are still firmly in progress, so a finished-off A9-style computer isn't likely to appear for some time. That hasn't stopped some hobbyists having a go at making their own. This one looks particularly impressive:
 

 
There are more pics and description here on the ROOL forums. The nutBOX comes hot on the heels of Dave Thomas's lego housing for his IGEPv2 here, first reported on riscos.info.
 
There's still some way to go before the RISC OS OMAP port is stable enough to drive a general purpose computer suitable for everyday use, but in the meantime, plenty of people are having fun with what already exists...
 

RISC OS Open have announced that Castle have given the official seal of approval to RISC OS 5.16, the new version of the shared-source OS. The most prominent feature in this new version is a fix for the much-discussed year 2012 bug, where IYONIX computers would mistakenly read their real-time clock on startup if it's an odd-numbered decade.
 
The new IYONIX pc ROM can be downloaded free of charge from the ROOL site, in either flash programmer or softload form. ROOL advise that the ROM image is believed to work in softload form on all IYONIX versions of RISC OS from 5.10 or later. In flash programmer form, it should work from version 5.07 or later.
 
To avoid any unforseen compatibility issues with third-party software, it's advised to at try out the softload at least once before running the flash programmer tool. Just remember that the using the softload won't fix the year 2012 bug (and can even result in a jump to 2110) - the only way to fix the year 2012 bug is to use the flash programmer.
 
Update: ROOL have now added to the release announcement a human-readable list of the changes that have been made since the last official release (5.14).
 
Links

• ROOL announcement
• Download page, containing both the softload and the flash programmer

 

RISC OS advocate Paul Vigay, whose body was found off the coast of Portsmouth last year, left behind a list of his passwords and a note to his girlfriend saying "I love you", an inquest has heard.
 
ISP owner and crop circle researcher Paul, 44, had split with his girlfriend Andrea Louie Smith on the night of his death and was £10,000 in debt. His body was discovered in the sea in February 2009; reports showed there was no suspicious circumstances, no suicide note and no sign of struggle on Paul's body, and that he had only consumed a small quantity of alcohol. There was no CCTV footage or witnesses to the death, leading a coroner to admit that his death will remain a mystery.
 

Last week saw this year's annual Consumer Electronics Show go down in Las Vegas. The world's largest consumer technology tradeshow, it's traditionally a source for many product announcements from the major manufacturers. This year there was a lot of focus on 3D TVs, e-readers, and, most importantly for us, next-generation ARM-powered goodies.

 
 

Version 2.5 of web browser NetSurf is set to be unveiled at this year's Wakefield show - but its developers warn this could be the last release for the platform. The new version has a rewritten CSS engine to improve its ability to display web pages correctly, should be faster at processing web pages, and boasts big improvements to the way the freely available software caches pages and uses the computer's memory.
 
But as the developers of the open source browser no longer have the time to maintain the RISC OS port of NetSurf, it's likely that future improvements to the program will not make it into the RISC OS port - and automatically generated builds of the software are expected to stop if these new enhancements break the RISC OS-specific source enough to stop it compiling.
 

One of the frustrating things about being a RISC OS user, is its lack of support for commonly-used video formats, other than its own dedicated Replay system.
 
A few attempts have been made to remedy this situation, but, until recently, they have come to nothing.
 
In the mid-1990s, Innovative Media Solutions produced a range of Acorn readers for PC-format, educational CDs, such as Microsoft Dinosaurs and Dorling Kindersley's The Way Things Work. These readers included dedicated versions of ARMovie, which could convert the CD’s AVI files to Replay format on the fly.
 
Unfortunately, the work that IMS had done, did not result in the release of a souped-up version of Replay, which could play all Quicktime and AVI movies, despite the fact that RISCOS Ltd seem to have done some work in this area about five years ago.
 
But now, with the release of the open-source applications, Murnong and FFMpeg, by Chris Martin, things have started to take a turn for the better.
 
Although RISC OS still does not have a proper media player, which can play all the common video formats, we do now have the next best thing - an application that can capture a YouTube video stream as it arrives, and convert it to an MPEG file, which can be played using KinoAmp.
 
 

Happy new year! The votes have been counted and we're pleased to announce the winners of The Icon Bar Awards for 2009. Thanks to everyone who took part and congratulations to all the nominees on the shortlist.
 
And here are the results:

• Best commercial product
  Winner: PostScript 3
  Runner-up: ArtWorks 2.9
• Best non-commercial product
  Winner: NetSurf
  Runner-up: GCC
• Best new development
  Winner: RISC OS Open on BeagleBoard
  Runner-up: Tie between Micro Men & V-Pod!
• Best show
  Winner: Sophie Wilson at Alt Party 2009
  Runner-up: ROUGOL

Read on for more details, including our two Special Awards for significant and lasting contributions to the RISC OS community.