Wakefield's regular meeting returned for 2023 with the January meeting (a week later than usual for January). It was a Zoom meeting with Andrew Rawnsley to update us on his wide portfolio of activities. There was a good turn out with 30-40 attendees for most of the time.

The main focus was on the PineBook Pro with R-Comp and RISC OS Developments featured.
 
Andrew always like to show something new and he had a USB-C gigabit adapter using the TCP/IP stack showing how easy it is to make use of new BSD drivers. USB-C port now works on PineBook Pro. Sound still not working on PineBook but everything else looking good and lots now in use.
 
PineBook Pro is based on RK3399 which is the top 32bit ARM chip on the market, so runs RISC OS fast and has a number of other nice features built-in. There was a guided tour of the machine. It can take a USB CD-drive or CD images. HID has been updated to support gestures. The machine has 4 gigs of free memory. Iris runs without issue and benefits from the fast machine and memory. PineBook Pro is using Neon based acceleration routines which could be cross-ported to other machines.Networking is all plug and play. PineTools is included which offers easy VNC support. Machines are in stock from 499 pounds, including VAT. Machines can also run Linux.
 
Andrew also reminded us of the other machines R-Comp has available and talked about ideas on multi-core and 64bit solutions. 
 
XAT now owns PhotoDesk and R-Comp produced an update with is on PlingStore. Work is ongoing on version 3.20 and a manual update with more material on technique and how to use the software. There is an excellent free program if you need to process raw files called rRAW.
 
Recent free upgrade on FireWorkz and a nice demo of using it for tables in other applications such as Ovation Pro.
 
Lastly there was a RISC OS Developments update - ROD stack updated, new Iris release and general release of PinBoard 2 due this month.
 
As usual, there was also the usual general conversation on many topics, including the availability of rooms for the Wakefield Show and the WROCC back catalogue.
 
Details on all meetings (and email address to ask for a Zoom link) can be found on the website