Wakefield was again blessed with some good weather, and a queue of people waiting to get in. The show had returned to its original two day format, although I think the 6.00 closing on the Saturday was a bit long as a lot of the stall holders were flagging a bit by the end of the day.

Of the mainstream manufacturers Castle were the only ones to turn up, which is quite surprising really as Micro Digital had ethernet cards working and available for sale. Talking of Omega, there were only two at the show. The first was on the Liquid Silicon stand and was perfectly stable, whilst the other resided on the RISC OS Ltd stand and seemed to be forever down.

Hardware wise there was not great deal to see. Castle had the Panther which was basically an Iyonix dressed up in a fancy case with temperature gauge.

Advantage Six, had the new rugged A75 on display as well as the Unipod on sale. Unipod is a combined Parallel, USB and network connection port, ideal if you are short of space in your Risc OS machine.

Oregano Ltd were demonstrating an early beta version of Oregano, which now supports Flash 5, will support DOM and CSS2. The version on display also seemed to be quite fast, however we will only be able to tell once it is available and out in the wilds. However the decision to stop bug fixing the old version in preference of developing the new engine may well have paid off. Luckily web developements seem to have slowed to a crawl allowing RO browsers a breathing space to catch up.

Castle were demonstrating USB 2 on the stand. Much of this works, apart from hub support, but should be available shortly. There is the possibilty that this may be a chargeable upgrade. I think this understandable, as previous releases have been bug fixes designed to get the most out of the maximun number of devices. USB2 brings with it new functionality. I can't wait for its release.

The Aemulor team were not only showing off Aemulor but were also actively discussing CINO DVD, this massive project is starting to take shape, with the promise of an enhanced ADFS to allow DMA of the CD drives. This enhancement is being done in conjunction with Castle. Another project that I look forward to seeing.

APDL were on hand with a number of newly released 32 bit neutral packages, along with a new version of Drawworks which is now at version XL. Still no sign of the Wimpbasic programming language though.

Icon Technology had a new version of their Easiwriter/Techwriter software. The new version has a number of minor tweaks the most important being that it can directly load Artworks files. This is not suprising as the new maintainer of the software also maintains Artworks itself. Speaking of which Artworks had a new version released at the show. This allowed path clipping of objects. This software has regained the number 1 position in its class.

R-Comp, had new versions of WebsterXL, Musicman, Grapevine and Uniprint. They were also taking orders for there Windows based systems which comes pre installed with Virtual Risc PC.

A welcome return awaited Argonet, in the face of new controller Paul Vigay. He apparently had a manic day listening to the moans gripes, and wishes of fellow Argonetters. Hopefully we will see an improved service in due course.

Denbridge Marine were also another new face at the show and had one of the most striking displays in the show. The company were also unusual in that they weren't there to sell anything but to show a real world application of RISC OS. If you did want to buy one of their systems I was assured that you would get no change out of £100,000, and that was the cheapest package they did.

So what do Denbridge do. The company produce equipment for processing and displaying radar images for the likes of port authorities and coastguards. The equipment consists of an Iyonix currently, which has a digitizer card which captures the compressed radar data, and then transmits the image to a visual display system. The digitizer is a PCI card and only just fits into the Iyonix. Unfortunately RISC OS does not handle the frontend display, as clients tend to prefer a Linux based system, although Denbridge can supply a complete RISC OS system if required.

I asked the company what they did prior to Iyonix. Apparently they had a RISC PC with a specially designed podule which then accommodated the PCI card and bus. It was apparently unwieldy but worked.

To demonstrate the system in use they had the biggest video tape recorder that I have ever seen. The tape recorder was simply replaying the raw radar data, which Iyonix was decoding and displaying on a projector. The software is capable of tracking individual boats, and this was demonstrated by tracking a motorboat at 24 knots.

Resolution was exceptional with the software even displaying reflected data off wave caps.

I asked whether Linux had been selected for a reason over Windows. The answer was surprising as it has nothing to do with any anti Microsoft feeling, nor due to it's reliability. The reason for Linux, is that the display softwares source code, has to be held by an independent body, so that should Denbridge ever cease another company can immediately take over. This also applies to changes to the OS that are needed.

This stand was a real eye opener and goes to prove that RISC OS is alive and well in the commercial world, and that it is capable of meeting any challenge thrown at it.

MathMagical Software is another new name on the scene. The company has been formed by Martin Hanson a teacher of 13-18 year olds. A couple of years ago he was able to equip his classroom with some very cheap Risc PCs. He decided to look at what could be done on the machine, and TurtleChalk was born.

This software written in Basic V, provides an integrated environment allows the user to explore Turtle graphics, the world of graph plotting and Palindromic Sums. The program is single tasking with its own specialist interface, and Martin has spent two years developing the software. You can enter equations (yuk) or turtle commands, and watch the result appear on screen. Some may think that the time of the single tasking program has gone, however I think that this approach does have its merits, as it removes all distractions from the user, and forces them to concentrate on the task in hand. The program did seem attractive to one visitor, who kept coming back to play with the version running on an A6.

The program will of course run on all current RO machines and emulated machines. The software from the brief look that I had looked simple and fun (if you like maths!) to use. Certainly the reappearance of one visitor seemed to bear out its attractiveness.

The program is aimed at both school and parents. For the very reasonable price of £25 you can have a years subscription which also includes a workbook to get you going.

I can't finish without mentioning the psychedelic green fur liberally placed around the stand. It certainly stood out.

Another new face at the show was Paul Reuvers of X-Ample. On sale were copies of HID, and block drivers for the 2 serial port for Iyonix. Paul was showing off HID with the latest joystick protocol, working. The joystick controls are completely compatible with the old Acorn Joystick module. All that is needed are some games to make use of them. Paul is looking at dealing with inputs from graphic tablets, but apparently they seem to use a very bad implementation of the USB protocol.

Moving away from HID Paul was able to say that work on Impression-X continues. It is slow work, but he has received lots of help from Computer Concepts. The software is well documented, but it is very hard work, going through some one elses code. He is currently unable to say when the new version will be available.

Paul has also developed a new tracing program called Tracer Professional. This was not quite ready for release at the show, but it will be available shortly. The program works on mono images, and seems to produce draw files with very few objects. The program is also unusual in that it actually shows you what has been traced, and what it is working on. The price will be £49.

The stand also had a display giving brief descriptions of some of the other software projects that X-Ample have produced. This includes Medix, a program developed as a medical database capable of holding all of a patients records including current prescriptions. Cablenews, is a news broadcasting program which allows you to edit and produce your electronic newspaper. The final piece of software is Cuemaster, a professional teleproompter for the tv studio.

For the cryptologists amongst you, he had on display an electronic Enigma machine kit. This consisted of a small keypad, and the various cable links. The software is so good (it is able to mimic anomalies in the real machines) that Bletchly Park sell the kit in their gift shop.

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