About this Site
    Welcome to New Century, a site set up to provide information, links, and resources for RISC OS, the operating system developed by Acorn Computers Ltd. This website was set up partly as a project to mark our 5th anniversary of using the RISC OS platform, but as well to inform people about RISC OS and Acorn. If you've never heard of Acorn Computers, or remember them vaguely from primary school, read the Wikipedia article to find out more.


News
    For regular, up to date news visit the Google Groups RISC OS discussion board - "comp.sys.acorn".



    Thirtieth anniversary of Acorn Computers5/9/2008
    Thirty years ago this year Acorn Computers Ltd was founded in Cambridge, England by Hermann Hauser and Christopher Curry. The company was set up on the 5th of December 1978 and was originally called CPU Ltd (Cambridge Processor Unit). One of their first projects was a microprocessor controller for a fruit machine, for Ace Coin Equipment (ACE) of Wales, then in January 1979 they launched a 6502 based microcomputer system, which was the first product of Acorn Computer Ltd.
    To celebrate Acorn's Thirtieth anniversary, ex-members of staff along with key influential people, including Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, are attending a celebratory party to be held on Saturday the 13th of September 2008 at Cherry Hinton Hall, Cambridge. The whole event is supported by ARM Ltd.



    RISC OS South East Show31/8/2008
    The Surrey and Sussex Acorn User Group have announced the seventh RISC OS South East show. The show is to be held at Guildford College in Guildford, Surrey on the 18th of October 2008. The show will be open from 10:00am - 4:00pm and admission will be £5. More information is available at http://www.fillin.co.uk/seshow



    Facebook on RISC OS4/6/2008
    I currently have a StrongARM RiscPC and browse the internet using NetSurf. Out of all the sites I visit, I have noticed that the Facebook Home page takes the longest to load, taking around a minute to fully load. For Iyonix and A9home users this is probably less of a problem due to their computers being faster and are able to run browers such as RISC OS Firefox at acceptable speeds. A solution I found to this is to use the Mobile Facebook site; http://m.facebook.com/. The site is not as 'pretty' as the normal site, but seems to function ok.



    'Infinity' RISC OS theme19/5/2008
    New Century has released a new RISC OS theme. The theme is called Infinity, and changes the look of the RISC OS window tool sprites, and the iconsprites. The theme is designed for 32k or 16m colour desktops. Versions have been made for both RISC OS 4 and 5, and the theme is available to download from the 'Downloads' button at the top of the web page.
    Here is a screenshot of the theme on RISC OS Adjust, at 1024 x 768 resolution and 32,000 colours. Another one can be found here, but this time at 800 x 600 in 16 million colours (my RiscPC is unable to go above these resolutions due to VRAM limits).



    Website updated6/5/2008
    I have updated the website and corrected a few errors that were highlited on google forums. The website text now has better contrast with the background. Also information errors have been changed. The website will not unfortunately work properly in Fresco and Oregano due to the website using CSS to describe the font face.



    Its all go!1/5/2008
    The new RISC OS theme is almost ready. We are also going to release a RISC OS software CD which will contain a large collection of freeware software as well as information and resources. It will cost the postage needed to post it, or alternatively, if you live outside the UK or dont want to pay postage, we can email you an Archive (zipped folder) of the CD. We are also going to get an email address for the website, which will allow people to contact us for support on RISC OS related issues.
    Another idea, but this is only an idea, is to provide a CD with a freeware RISC OS emulator on, and obtain permisson from Castle Technology (the owners of RISC OS) to bundle RISC OS 3.1 or hopefully 3.7 with the emulator on the CD, for a fee, which will go to Castle. This will allow people to experience RISC OS on their Windows PC's and hopefully get some people interested, similar to the RISC OS on Linux live CD project.



    Wakefield RISC OS Computer Show this Saturday22/4/2008
    This saturday, the 26th of April, will be the 13th Wakefield RISC OS Computer Show. The location is the Cedar Court Hotel, just off junction 39 of the M1, south of Wakefield.



    New RISC OS theme coming soon to New Century18/4/2008
    I am developing a new GUI theme for RISC OS, that will change the look of the window 'tools' etc. The theme will hopefully be released in about a month and is in its advanced stages. The theme will work with 32,000 Colours, but really requires 16million Colours to look decent. The idea of the theme is that it will hopefully break away from the dull greyish 256 colour themes exist, but will not be too bright and colourful, and so will hopefully be able to be adoped by most users with modern RISC OS computers. More to follow...



    BluRay on RISC OS16/4/2008
    The first BluRay discs have been burnt on RISC OS by developer Steffan Huber, who also develops the software !CDVDBurn. The discs have been burnt using an LG BluRay drive on an Iyonix running RISC OS 5.13. The full story from Drobe is here.
    Also don't forget RISC OS Wakefield 08 on the 26th of April!



    The End for Netscape15/4/2008
    It has just come to my attention that the Netscape web browser has been discontinued. The browser, which at one time had a market share of over 90%, has been discontinued by AOL, the current owners of Netscape. Support for the browser ceased on the 1st of March 2008, but it is still available to download from the Netscape site.
    History: Netscape was first released in 1994 by a US firm called Netscape Communications Corporation. During the mid 1990's, it had over 90% market share of internet web browsers, but by 2007 it had less than 1%. When Microsoft started to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows (the first version being IE 3 with Win95), Netscape began to loose ground rapidly, until by 2003 Microsoft had virtually ran Netscape into the ground. In 2004 the Mozilla Foundation revived Netscape, and used their browser engine (Gecko) in future releases of Netscape.
    The full story can be found here from the BBC website. The Netscape browser can also be downloaded from here.



    Updates soon...19/3/2008
    I'll soon get round to updating certain aspects of this site, such as adding more links to sites such as the NetSurf site, as well as making a list of recommended software. I also will try to upload more downloads, as well as the file for Internet Explorer for Mac, which Drobe wont let me upload because the file is appaently too big (7.2MB).



    RISC OS Southwest Show Today.23/2/2008
    Today is the RISC OS Southwest show, held in north Somerset, in the UK. All the usual RISC OS dealers will be present, and entry is free.
    I was hoping to go, but unfortunately the venue is in a large hotel in the middle of nowhere, and the public transport links to the area have much to be desired!



    Toshiba discontinues HD DVD format20/2/2008
    Toshiba have recently discontinued their HD DVD disc format, ending the standards war between them and their rival, Sony, with their Blu-ray format. The 'standards war' began in 2006 when Toshiba released their HD DVD format, and soon after Sony released their rival Blu-ray format. Toshiba say they never meant to start a standards war between them and Sony, and the final tipping point came when many Hollywood movie producers decided to release movies only on Blu-ray formatted discs. Blu-ray is also incorporated into all of Sony's Playstation 3 consoles, of which there have been more than 10 million sold so far, compared to around 1.5 million HD DVD players.
    The full story can be found on the BBC news website here.

    Older News...


Portions Copyright 2007-2008 New Century Computing.