Castle and Cino joint development

14th May 2004

CASTLE AND CINO JOINT DEVELOPMENT

In the true spirit of RISC OS co-operation Castle Technology Ltd, have
joined forces with Spellings Computer Services Ltd to develop a new
version of ADFS. This new version of ADFS will allow faster transfer
of data through the RISC OS filing system, ADFS, whilst consuming much
less CPU resources.

Of particular importance to Spellings Computer Services is that this
new version of ADFS will allow the required flow of data from CD and
DVD drives. This will allow DVD movies to be played back through RISC
OS, in real time, from DVD, CD ROMs and other media.

Neil Spellings, managing director of Spellings Computer Services Ltd
said "I am delighted to work with Castle to provide the first RISC OS
DVD player. The work we are undertaking will free up a lot of valuable
CPU resources which are needed for decrypting and decoding the video
and audio data. The product is destined to be called Cino and should
be available later this year".

Jack Lillingston emphasized Castle commitment to developing RISC OS.
He said "this collaboration is an example of the large number ways
that RISC OS receives input from a wide range of sources. We wish the
Cino project all the best and know that this new version of ADFS will
benefit all RISC OS users."

Castle manufactures the IYONIX and X100 pc range of RISC OS computers.
They feature XScale processor technology with ultra fast 200MHz DDR
RAM, PCI expansion, UDMA100 hard drives, Gigabit networking, PC style
graphics card, USB connectivity, full software suite etc. The IYONIX
pc is able to display a wide range of screen resolutions, up to 2048 x
1536 pixels and benefits from virtually silent operation due to the
low power XScale processor. The top-of-the-range IYONIX pc features a
massive 512MB of RAM, 120GB hard drive and a 52 speed CD re-writer.
Both of these RISC OS computers are available from just £1249 plus
delivery.

The IYONIX pc, was the world's first XScale desktop computer, and is
available now for immediate delivery.

Spellings Computer Services Ltd are the premier web hosting and domain
registration company in the RISC OS market. They are also the team who
brought Aemulor and Aemulor Pro to the IYONIX pc.

More information from:

Jack Lillingston
Castle Technology Ltd
Ore Trading Estate
Woodbridge Road
Framlingham
Suffolk
IP13 9LL
Tel 01728 723200
Fax 01728 727427
web http://www.iyonix.com
email sales@iyonix.com

Neil Spellings
Spellings Computer Services Ltd
PO Box 2654
Purley
Surrey
CR8 1ED
Telephone: 0870 765 0870
web http://www. spellings.net
email sales@spellings.net




Notes to editors

The current CD/DVD access in ADFS uses PIO modee and blocking I/O.
This mean the CPU is heavily involved in transferring data from the
CD/DVD drive, and that RISC OS cannot do anything else whilst waiting
for data to arrive from the drive. This project will look at
implementing DMA access to the drive, and providing a non-blocking
interface to ADFS which Cino, and other applications and parts of RISC
OS, could then use to speed up their own transfers and use less CPU in
the process.