Castle Technology

Castle Technology Limited

Type	Private
Industry	Computer hardware Computer software
Founded	June 4, 1993 (1993-06-04) Colchester, England
Founder	John Ballance Jack Lillingston Peter Wild
Headquarters	Cambridge, England
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jack Lillingston, Managing Director Peter Wild, Operations Director John Ballance, Technology Director
Products	Iyonix PC RISC OS RISC PC
Divisions	Tematic
Website	Castle-Technology.co.uk

Castle Technology Limited, named after Framlingham Castle, is a British computer company based in Cambridge, England. It began as a producer of ARM computers and manufactured the Acorn-branded range of desktop computers that run RISC OS.

Following the break-up of Acorn in 1998, Castle Technology bought the rights to continue production of the RISC PC and A7000+ computers under the Acorn brand. Castle Technology later released the Iyonix PC in November 2002, the first desktop computer to use the Intel XScale microarchitecture and then bought the rights to the RISC OS Technology from Pace in July 2003.

History

Early history

See also: Acorn Computers

After Acorn withdrew from the desktop computer industry in 1998, Castle Technology acquired the rights to produce the A7000, A7000+ and RISC PC using the Acorn brand.

2001-2008: Iyonix PC

The Iyonix PC (codenamed Tungsten) was developed as a set-top unit (STU) in secret by engineers at Pace's Shipley campus along with a 32-bit version of RISC OS 4 (known as RISC OS 5). When management discovered the project the campus was closed.

Castle Technology acquired the proposed designs and the original engineers from Pace to further develop the Tungsten into a desktop computer. Robert Sprowson, the original hardware designer, declined to join Castle Technology and so Peter Wild was recruited.

The Iyonix PC was released six months later. Although it was well received, it was not designed for long-term production and therefore used some components that were near obsolete when it was released.

A problem for the Iyonix PC was that it used leaded components which were outlawed with the adoption of Directive 2002/95/EC in February 2003 by the European Union. However, by this time Castle Technology was financially troubled and could not afforded to re-engineer the Iyonix PC without the leaded components. The remaining Iyonix stock were passed to Iyonix Limited which stopped distribution on 30 September 2008.

Divisions

Tematic

In 2004, Castle Technology acquired Tematic to further development of RISC OS in embedded systems.

Corporate affairs

Locations

In December 2005, Castle Technology moved its main office to the former premises of its software development division, following the migration of Tematic to a neighbouring premises in Signet Court, Cambridge.