RISC OS

There's no doubt that the Iyonix is now a fully established member of the RISC OS landscape, although it will never have the same appeal and perhaps not the longevity of the machine it was desinged to replace, the RiscPC.  In terms of most consumer electronics products, 3 years is a very long time to go without there being a new model.  Of more relevance, Macs and PCs undergo regular revisions, even if that might only be the lastest marque of a given component. 

True, there have been minor changes to the Iyonix graphics cards, and some OS updates; and of course as an essentially enthusiast platform, there's only so much we can expect..

The competition

For RiscPC replacements, the alternative to the Iyonix is now firmly established: VirtualRPC, rather than the disappointing (as a product) Omega.  There is of course no modern native mobile RISC OS computing platform, and despite the various problems with VirtualRPC (which I'll be discussing in a later article), it offers a clear alternative for many.  I don't consider the A9 a valid alternative at this time, because of its status as only ready for developers.  Out of these options, the Iyonix overall is still the fastest except perhaps on the very highest specced PCs.

The Price

The price reductions of the Iyonix have certainly helped its uptake.  At 1299 GBP, its initial price in 2002 attracted enough hard-core enthusiasts, but was still very expensive as a replacement machine, even though it compared favourably with the original RiscPC price.  One major difference in the pricing of the RiscPC was its upgradeability - allowing punters to buy a base spec machine, and then allowing upgrades when and if they were required.  The integrated Iyonix system requires buyers to get it all in one go.

Perhaps recognising the price, Castle have offered a range of deals, bundling monitors, new case designs, DVD writers and other options.  And now, due to some combination of cost in production, price of components, competetive price reductions and other business reasons, a basic model Iyonix will set you back a somewhat more affordable 800 GBP.  Clearly this is still more expensive than most PC + VirtualRPC price combinations (both having had price reducutions themselves), but it makes the machine accessible to a much larger RISC OS audience. As always, there are people who complain it is still too expenise.  No doubt these people would still complain if it were free.

The OS

Despite some of the improvements in the OS, especially in the first two years, RISC OS still has a number of frustrating bugs in its 5.09 version, which has not been updated since May.  (RISC OS Select's last release was around May 2004 by comparison).  Many of these are deficiences in its behaviour compared to its divergent twin, Select, such as problems with CDFS (like its lack of full long filename support), ShareFS and some other networking funnies and a handful of low-level OS bugs which have apparently simple fixes.  Several people have expressed frustration with Castle's lack of development, although others remonstrated by pointing out that they really have done a great deal.  Certainly for the moment, much of their current work remains invisible to the casual user, and further frustration is sometimes felt over lack of known future direction of RISC OS, which Castle aquired ownership to after the Iyonix's release.

I expressed my own related concerns about proper engineering practice in a previous article.

Expansion

Despite 2 free PCI slots, and on some models, back planes for fitting podules, the options for internal expansion of the Iyonix have been limited.  The only PCI card to have software developed for it outside of Castle has been Simon Wilson's work on a TV card expansion, and lack of development of 32-bit software for podules, particularly lack of SCSI support beyond the archaic Acorn SCSI 1 cards is reflected in newer Iyonix case options, which don't have room or metal work for the 50 GBP backplane.  Indeed, the cube Aria case wisely lacks even a floppy drive, as is true on modern Macs and many PCs.

Most of the expandibility of the Iyonix has come from USB devices, with the rise in popularity of USB storage, especially from digital cameras and portable USB storage.  However, the latter devices highlight 2GB limitations in parts of the RISC OS filing system as well as limitations in accessing FAT formatted filesystems.

The Future

Predicting future machines is always dangerous, and I won't try here.  If Castle is to release a newer machine, it will still have to justify it in terms of issues I named when discussing porting RISC OS to new ARM architectures. A new Iyonix board will require substantial changes to the existing hardware design, as even other XScale processors in the IOP family have many design differences.  Fortunately, they are very similar software wise, and should only need trivial changes at the very low-level.  Other OS changes made be neccessitated by other device changes brought about by hardware changes made to fit with a new processor.  And of course, it will have to make financial sense. Even if there was an ARM processor which gave a justifiable jump in speed, Castle might consider 3 years too soon for the sometimes conserative RISC OS ethusiast market to bear.  My personal bet is for the middle of 2006 for new hardware from Castle.