usb on an acorn RiscPC

i have been trying to work out if a risc pc will for fill my requirements, one almost certainly being usb support.

only way im gonna sus it is gonna be buy one, the iyonix ones go for nearly £300, to expencive for an experiment, tho i know they do have usb.

my question is can i put a usb card in to an old acorn risc pc? on the 3.7 OS?

presumably if it comes with a OS CD i can install the operating system on a bigger hard drive, whcih is presume is a normal IDE hard drive?? are they easy to install?

Ralph

ok i have been ont he net researching most of the day (while not working), and found the the OS is stored on ROM, so i guess i can put in any hard drive and it will just work? is there a max size which it will read and is it still a normal ide drive?

still trying to work out if theres a usb card available for the acorn?

Ralph

USB expansion cards are expensive: http://www.stdevel.co.uk/products/unipod.html Your only other option is to try and find one on eBay. Why do you want USB anyway?

For hard discs – yes they’re standard IDE, though there are limits on the size, depending on OS version. If you’re going to pick up a RiscPC on eBay, try and get one with OS 4.0 or above and with a StrongARM.

Adam

ok i have found an iyonix rise pc for sale, 128megs and 40gb, anyone know if its got a strong arm? or what version of OS? fairly sure it already has usb. chap selling doesnt seem to know anything about it.

where i want this project to go i will need usb for a touch screen, volume control and probably a webcam,usb memory stick if poss. wireless network if poss?

many things really.

Ralph

The Iyonix does not use a StrongArm but an Xscale 80321 chip that is a derivative of the ARM/StrongArm family.

The version of RISC OS will be version 5.xx and can be found by booting up the machine , clicking the mouse menu button when over the Blue Iyonix oval on the bottom bar and then following the Info menu option in the resultant menu window.

Wireless network can be achieved by using something like a Ethernet adaptor i.e Buffalo WFI-TX4-HP5 and the Iyonix’s ethernet port.

Early models of the Iyonix only had USB1 though you could purchase an upgrade and certainly it was included in the paid for OS upgrade to RISC OS 5.13.

where i want this project to go i will need usb for a touch screen, volume control and probably a webcam

Don’t forget – this is a minority platform! There’s no guarantee you’ll find drivers for some of the USB devices you’re interested in.

Adam

im very aware it will be a challenge, but the reward of getting rid of XP would be fantastic.

to be more precise i have a mini ITX pc in my car with an 8inch touch screen, volume control knob on the dash an play/pause/fwd back tracks etc on the dash, an is wired in to alarm/ignition so it turns on/off with being alarmed/dissalarmed and plays/stops the music with the keys being turned.

mostly i only use it for playing mp3’s (it never skips an is much more functional than a cd player), however i have a little program i wrote fot calculating fuel consumption of every tank full of fuel, an has many other uses like playing videos.

XP is just a very big an complicated operating system for something which should be very simple, but my options are very limited, also the older look of risc would be much better as its a 1989 car anyway!

Ralph