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This month we are delighted that Andrew Rawnsley will be joining us from R-Comp towers to talk about their latest hardware and software releases.

We will be starting with a look at the latest developments with NVMe and the block device drivers. Then Andrew will go through the many features of the multi headed Hydra machine, which has recently gained new head options. That leads nicely onto ...

The newest members in their range of machines are the 5idekick and pi5erve. Neither of these are native RISC OS machines, as they both use the Raspberry Pi 5 compute module which is a 64bit system, but are instead designed to supplement an existing RO setup. However, by using Timothy Baldwin's RISC OS on Linux developments, it is also possible to use both 5ystems to run RISC OS applications faster than ever before.

The 5idekick is a small form factor machine running Linux that can be controlled from your RISC OS desktop to run things not available for RO, such as Firefox or LibreOffice, and access Pi hardware devices. Files can be shared between the two environments, or cut n paste used for transfer between applications. The pi5erve has all the features of 5idekick and adds multiple SSD drives to form a RISC OS friendly NAS with RAID security.

On the software front there were many releases at the RO North show earlier this year, including the latest versions of PhotoDesk and MessengerPro, and updates to games such as Heretic and Hexen for modern hires platforms.

All in all, lots of 5tuff to cover!