Date: Tue, 14 APR 1998 11:04:36 +0100 (BST) From: Dave Walker Subject: Acorn Developer News 14/04/98: Phoebe availability, Developer Conference, Conference CD, Phoebe / Ursula Spec Review To: isvquery@acorn.com Resent-Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 11:01:46 +0100 (BST) Resent-From: regdevs@acorn.com Resent-Sender: regdevs-request@acorn.com Hi folks... Acorn Developer News 14/04/98 There's some Earth-shattering bits and pieces in here, so you might want to have a coffee first...! Unfortunately this email has been delayed (it was intended to be written and sent last Thursday) owing to a somewhat unexpected hard disc failure on my RISC OS box, but much persuading of the drive to spin up and catalogue, and much backing up to the net and restoring to a new drive (followed by much jumping up and down on the dead drive) has resulted in the loss of only about ten relatively unimportant files. Phew! If you don't have a solid backup strategy yet, I suggest you get one yesterday (or sooner, if you can arrange it). Anyway, on with the news... Phoebe Availability ------------------- Once IOMD2 moves from being hosted on an FPGA to being hosted on an ASIC, we intend to build around 100 Phoebe preproduction prototypes to be made available to developers for purchase prior to the main Phoebe launch so that development and testing may be carried out in earnest. Purchase will be strictly limited to one Phoebe prototype per registered developer. The cost to a developer for one of these prototypes (which will be hardware equivalent to a production machine) is, in common with the rest of the developer price list, to be a function of the RRP of the final production machine; as the Sales drones have yet to finalise said RRP, I can't give you a price on these boxes yet but will do so as soon as it becomes available. I've been told that pricing information will start to become available in May / June, and that developers will be given a larger discount on this first Phoebe than is usual. On a production Phoebe, a large number of the OS components are intended to be softloaded, so even though the OS as supplied in the firmware on the preproduction hardware is unlikely to be the final build, all OS components will be incrementally patchable in software. There will therefore be no difference in module version numbers or functionality between a final production machine and a preproduction prototype with softloaded patches. Developer Conference -------------------- We pretty much have a date, and if we like the look of the place (we're off there this lunchtime to check it out), we'll have a venue. If all goes to plan (ie if Jonathan and I like the place), the conference will be held on May 5th in the Kaetsu building at New Hall College in Cambridge. Much of the conference will centre around Phoebe / Ursula, although there will also be an update on our progress with Java and (hopefully) details of our thoughts on future RISC OS development toolkits. More information will be forthcoming as and when it becomes available, and once we have the date and venue set in stone I'll invite you to email our admin people to book your places. Unfortunately http://www.newhall.cam.ac.uk/ doesn't appear to have a map detailing how to get there, so I'll have to play with Draw a little. Developer Conference CD ----------------------- In the meantime, I'm in the process of building a CD to be distributed to developers who attend the conference, in much the same manner as was done last year. I know that this is incredibly short notice (as I have to freeze the disc image and send it off for duplication by the end of next week at the absolute latest), but if you have any demos or other useful bits and pieces which you'd like other developers to have access to, please send me (dwalker@acorn.co.uk) details by the end of this week.... Phoebe / Ursula Spec Review --------------------------- This will be going ahead tomorrow. The venue is the Hollywood meeting room at Acorn House (see http://www.acorn.co.uk/acorn/company/directions/ for where to find us), and if you need to stay in the vicinity overnight I recommend a peek at http://www.theaa.co.uk/hotels/ . Kickoff is scheduled for 10:00 with a quick intro from me, to be followed by reviews and discussions of the Phoebe hardware with Pete Fox, the Ursula kernel with Mike Stephens, device drivers with Tim Roddis and William Turner, filing systems with Tim Roddis (again) and Simon Proven, and Wimp topics with Ben Avison. There's no formal agenda or timetable; I'm intending to keep things open-ended so that points arising can be discussed to your satisfaction without throwing timings off. Everything is being kept delioberately informal, and there's a small buffet booked for lunch. See you there! Cheers, -- Dave Walker, Engineering Support Manager Acorn Computers Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1223 725233 Acorn House, 645 Newmarket Road Fax: +44 (0) 1223 725333 Cambridge, CB5 8PB, United Kingdom WWW: http://www.acorn.co.uk/