Oregano - dunno. It fetched pages and displayed them, which was about as far as the demo went while I was there. I guess we'll see.

If it makes you feel better, it would be very hard to use with no floppy

No need for a 32-bit ADFS then!

Andrew

Phoebe has a faster data bus than a kinetic RPC (66MHz, I cna't remembers what an RPCs is), the graphics proceesor is faster (at least that's what I think the VIDC is!). Hopefully when Omega arrives we'll see at least this sort of performance if not better.

That's no faster than a Kinetic!!

The RAM speed is set by the SA (which can work no faster than 66MHz) even if you had 100 or 133MHz RAM the ARM would still be limited to 66MHz. So that means when accessing RAM (only) the Kinetic and the Phoebe are AS FAST.

HOWEVER (big BUT coming on) the I/O from the StrongARM on a Kinetic has to go through the OLD (slow) RPC Openbus. On the Pheobe no such problem exists - you talk to I/O at near 66MHz over a 32bit bus - in short Pheobe WOULD be a LOT faster doing Input/Output than Kinetic. Doing purely "in cache/RAM" stuff both would be the same (if you're lucky enough to own a Kinetic 300 then your in RAM/Cache processing would be (around) 30% faster it's I/O would (however) still be a LOT slower than Pheobe (probably 2 to 4 times slower in fact)).

What we need are quicker replacements for the IOMD and VIDC (particularly the IOMD) - Pheobe shows it COULD be done. Maybe someday.....

Then again do the likes of POSsum, Optima, Solo, STB's et al. constitute a viable market?

Phoebe suffered precisely because it failed to address enough of the remaining viable niches, and so failed to attract investment.

PM/ROL appear not to be making that mistake again.
Though with Select they made a different mistake - if its narrow machine support had been pre-announced, hopes would not have been raised unralistically high and its initial release would have been much better received.

Though with Select they made a different mistake - if its narrow machine support had been pre-announced, hopes would not have been raised unralistically high and its initial release would have been much better received.

I find it odd that you keep assuming there will be no version of select supporting the other machines. It makes sense that priority should be given to supporting the hardware used by 95 percent of RISC OS users first. Would you have prefered ROL to make everyone wait?

Though with Select they made a different mistake - if its narrow machine support had been pre-announced, hopes would not have been raised unralistically high and its initial release would have been much better received.

I find it odd that you keep assuming there will be no version of select supporting the other machines. It makes sense that priority should be given to supporting the hardware used by 95 percent of RISC OS users first. Would you have prefered ROL to make everyone wait?

I find it odd that you have misread my posting. ;o) I assume nothing about what there *will* be, only about what *is/was*. You are perfectly correct about priorities and about not waiting. I would have preferred ROL to make everyone *aware* that the first release would be for certain platforms only, when they first announced its details. Er, or did they and we all missed it?

[Edited by guy at 09:09, 25/10/2001]

I find it odd that you keep assuming there will be no version of select supporting the other machines.

Why is it odd when the MD of RISC OS Ltd told me to "Forget it" for my RiscStation? Further mumblings suggested it wasn't even on the cards.

It would be fun to try, but first someone needs to obtain a copy of that multitasking version of replay that would work on a RPC (then give me a copy too)

I have had a copy of multitasking Replay on my RiscPC for about 4 years! I assumed that everyone had it?!!

Maybe I had it through dodgy channels but to the best of my memory I think it came from Acorn World 97.

Peter.

I know, just for balance, if my Omega arrives before you say it doesn't, I'll eat that!

I wonder if Dave Atkins has eaten the prototype, and the long wait is whilst it works through his system...

That is the most likely explanation I've heard to date... :O

Also posting something like this
<blockquote>
Taken from Microdigital.co.uk newsroom:
Please bear in mind that the site has been designed primarily for viewing with RISC OS browser's later we will address the compatibility issues associated with other operating systems, especially those which claim to be some kind of industry standard.
</blockquote>

None of the three most used web browsers in the world (IE, Netscape, Opera) could display the pages properly and from my simple test only one of three RISC OS browsers could. I told them of this and they actually come up with this as a reason for their poor HTML!

Come on Microdigital - you're becoming very difficult to take seriously with silly mess-ups like this.

However, that would make an interesting new year's resolution for you, and one that I'm sure would draw a large audience. You could even charge for tickets and donate the dosh to ROL or another charity

Well, we had the PC demolition at Acorn World, so why not the Acorn mastication?

P.S Anyone read the news item on Microdigitals website? Perhaps they could us John's services...

If you mean this news item:

Regarding the emails we have received from hardened users, we accept that our design layout breaks all the norms and we hope they recover from the shock. Perhaps they might take into account someone always has to be the first otherwise machines like the Mico and Omega would never have been developed.

It is more of a disgruntled policy statement, but that aside, I would agree that they could indeed use the services of anyone who actually understands what "news" is.
What a shambles to post a multi-paragraphed waffle about "Image processor fact sheet" on a so-called news page! Surely a news item should announce the availability of this information and provide a link to the whole blerb.

To provide an analogy, it's like putting the news on the cover of a magazine, and not just the headlines. Pah! Fools

What a shambles to post a multi-paragraphed waffle about "Image processor fact sheet" on a so-called news page! Surely a news item should announce the availability of this information and provide a link to the whole blerb.

I must say, I found it hilarious to read this without any introduction to the "Image processor". Is it a future product, is it in production or maybe just a product idea? You'd have to read the entire fact sheet just to find that out It's not until you start reading the "Performance" part that you get an idea that at least one of those has been built but it doesn't give you any more information than that. Do they have one processor in either Alpha or Beta state? The "current implementation operates at 100MHz" line could mean either of those or even that they've started producing them and selling.

If the website wasn't seemingly based on static HTML pages I'd guess that this was posted by mistake.

Also posting something like this

Taken from Microdigital.co.uk newsroom:
Please bear in mind that the site has been designed primarily for viewing with RISC OS browser's later we will address the compatibility issues associated with other operating systems, especially those which claim to be some kind of industry standard.

None of the three most used web browsers in the world (IE, Netscape, Opera) could display the pages properly and from my simple test only one of three RISC OS browsers could. I told them of this and they actually come up with this as a reason for their poor HTML!

Come on Microdigital - you're becoming very difficult to take seriously with silly mess-ups like this.

Was the {wow} Phoebe {/wow} running a fully multitasking version of replay then?

And after reading about the glaring euch-ness of Oregano 2, does anyone know if it will allow text selection and save out as drawfile options yet? Cos if not I'm STILL not buying it.

If it's not out in the next month, I'll eat my Risc PC.

Next month being December. So you've really given yourself 2 months there, you sly devil

However, that would make an interesting new year's resolution for you, and one that I'm sure would draw a large audience. You could even charge for tickets and donate the dosh to ROL or another charity