i.M.here

[intercept.transmission]
i.M.here

RISC OS London Show, St Giles Hotel, Feltham 2014

i.aM.eXpecting.you
[.]

Witness the arrival. All will be revealed.

I.M.Weasel?

Great. You’re a “Gray” and you are planning some obscure form of world domination.

As a citizen of this crapsack planet, please, take it. Feel at liberty to annihilate any American agency with initials for a name, anybody who thinks that blind devotion to ancient mythology makes them better than others, those who believe their opinions are more valid because they have money, and lawyers everywhere.

Alternatively, kindly relocate me to another planet. One that isn’t broken.

Thanks,

Concerned citizen of Earth.

Rick… Planet RISC OS here we come :)

A better link for the show

Great. You’re a “Gray” and you are planning some obscure form of world domination.

Gray and Britannic. Dr Who, to be short :)

Won’t this IMX thingie (we arrived too late for the presentations) also be on CJE Micros stuff?

Tennant: An announcement from the ‘Heart’ will be coming soon ;-)

Tennant – I very much doubt it, I’m afraid. This project is the result of commercial “real world” development of RISC OS and hardware, which I’m afraid hasn’t involved CJE. I’m not sure why Chris is suggesting otherwise.

I’ve talked at length in the past about how we at R-Comp and Partners are investing in building machines, community, projects and RISC OS investment. This has always been key to how we’ve pitched and developed ARMini, ARMiniX and so on. This is very much the culmination of that, and is made possible by the faith our customers have shown in our products historically. I’m sorry if you’ve been led to believe otherwise.

The new hardware is exactly that – new hardware. It has capabilities and options that weren’t possible on previous systems. It contains technology and content unique to the “Project Partners” (a group of about 7 companies across Europe working to make this a reality).

Now, I realise this is starting to sound very “exclusive”, and that’s not at all the case. This is a new baseline for all RISC OS users. However, we’ll likely have favourable terms for people who have supported our development in the past and made it possible for us to get here. I hope that doesn’t sound off-putting – we simply wouldn’t have got this far if it weren’t for our existing customers, and it’s natural for us to acknowledge their support. However, anyone can join that “club” – including CJE customers. All you need to do is join our “PandaLand” Support Scheme or similar for Pi/Beagle (which have helped quite a few CJE customers already). I can explain more, privately if you wish.

We’re actively looking to involve as many people as possible in the new i.MX6 developments, as for the first time since Iyonix, we have a pure-ARM computer with high performance across the board. That said, this is a project in which several of us have invested in making happen, and it is therefore being handled accordingly.

Short version – I guess what you’re seeing here is the difference between our philosphy re ARMini/X and CJE’s. We’ve always developed these computers as part of a larger future, involving and supporting multiple companies. An ARMini has never just helped R-Comp, but rather benefitted multiple companies within the RISC OS scene. With the i.MX6 project, the number of partners have grown further, and this has helped raise the bar again. However, at the present time, CJE are not amongst those partners, I’m afraid.

I’ll try and get a web page up shortly explaining much of this in a clearer form. At the moment, there are still elements under NDA which I’m not at liberty to talk about. This was very much a “first unveiling” at the show, albeit one with live working hardware, that users could get hands-on and play with after the talk. Indeed, it was quite pleasing that the prototype unit stayed upright and solid until the close of the show, with no crashes or problems observed (at least, not by me!).

It is already, I’d say, in a comparable state to where we launched ARMini and ARMiniX, but a little more gestation time will help deliver the best product we can.

I’m not sure how my posting could be intepreted as us being involved in the iMX! For the record we aren’t. Our next generation RISC OS computer will have a next generation CPU:-)

Our next generation RISC OS computer will have a next generation CPU:-)

Whoa! Those are fighting words. Has RISC OS War 2.0 just begun? ;-)

I think the competion is between ‘will have’ and ‘now has’.

Or maybe CJE is hinting at their 64 bit conversion of RISC OS almost being ready to unveil…

Rick – goodness me, I hope there are no more “RISC OS wars”! The scene has shot itself in the foot too many times going down that route. Competition (as opposed to wars) is generally healthy for the market, and for the customers, although it can still take its toll on those involved.

RISC OS is so much healthier these days than it was (say) 10 years ago – let’s hope that continues to flourish :) That healthiness can be attributed to the work of all the current companies and enthusiasts, not just one or two. If just one RISC OS-show-exhibitor vanishes, we’ll all feel it, and have done something wrong.

Well said Andrew. I have dealt with your company as well as CJE and you both have helped me immensely in my journey into the RISC OS world. Competition is healthy and I hope to buy from you both for a very long time!

Tennant: An announcement from the ‘Heart’ will be coming soon ;-)

Ooooh! :o

Rick – goodness me, I hope there are no more “RISC OS wars”!

Note the smiley to help with the level of sarcasm in my post.

Yes, the scene is a lot better now as we not only have the source code for the operating system, we also have some talented people maintaining it and helping to target it towards modern day hardware. Personally, I think the biggest single change was the implementation of RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi – a functional machine that is surprisingly capable given its spec, costing about the same as taking a family to McDonalds…
That Canonical decided to target Ubuntu towards ARMv7 (the Pi is ARMv6) is, frankly, their loss. People in the Linux world took to Raspian instead. And RISC OS? We’re there too. Perhaps a steep learning curve for people used to Windows semantics, but if we pick up a few converts along the way, this isn’t a bad thing.

I’m not sure how my posting could be intepreted as us being involved in the iMX!

Because that’s exactly what it implied?

Or to be slightly realistic, rather than “salesy” – I suspect the “next generation” cpu, is in fact the two generations old CPU. aka the A15, rather than the three or four generations old A9.
The generation of the CPU is not really that exciting, unless we are talking about a quad A58 (say 3-4GHz) with 4GB of ram and full RISC OS support for the cores and 64 bit OS.
I’m sure that will get knocked up real soon…

What is really nice about the iM is the dedicated Ethernet channel and SATA support, I’m really in two minds whether to get one or wait for an A15 board.
I’m really tempted to get an iM then get an A15 board later….both sound damned good.
iM for Xmas and A15 at Wakefield show, perhaps?

IIRC, the Gigabit Ethernet on the i.MX6 maxes out at slightly less than 500 Mbit/s under Linux (which is due to internal chip bus speed limitations, again IIRC). So while certainly better than 100 MBit/s via USB, it might not be as fast as OMAP5 (or IYONIX pc) Gigabit Ethernet.

OMAP5 has S-ATA, too. And additionally USB3.0. The i.MX6 platform has a lot of different boards available, while there is only one OMAP5 boardcurrently available. But we will have to wait for more details from R-Comp, which i.MX6 boards will be supported and if their RISC OS port will be part of the open source RISC OS offerings – after all, the Castle commercial license allows for much delayed source feedback.

Hopefully we will find out more details soon. Going by the datasheets, the OMAP5 platform will offer much better performance, but platform usefulness depends on much more than raw performance.

BTW: IGEPv5 has Gigabit Ethernet via USB2.0, which makes no sense to me, I always thought that OMAP5 has native Gigabit Ethernet.

BTW: IGEPv5 has Gigabit Ethernet via USB2.0, which makes no sense to me, I always thought that OMAP5 has native Gigabit Ethernet.

What a shame. IGEPv2 had dedicated Ethernet hardware, and it always felt very fast.

i.M.at ROUGOL this Monday, 16th Feb :-)

http://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html