History
The Iyonix originated as a secret project by Pace engineers in connection with development of set-top boxes (STBs). Pace had a licence to develop RISCOS Ltd's OS sources for use in the STB market. The Iyonix was developed under the code name Tungsten and uses RISC OS 5, which is a version of RISC OS that supports ARM CPUs with 32-bit addressing modes. The sources and hardware design were subsequently acquired by Castle, who developed them into the final product. Castle continued to keep the project a secret, requiring developers to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Information was distributed to such developers via a confidential section of the website. Customers were occasionally able to buy the computer as a bare bones system for self-assembly.
After speculation on the usenet newsgroups, a website for the hardware was spotted in mid October 2002. Units first went on sale in December 2002.
Castle ceased production of the Iyonix after the July 2006 introduction in the UK of the RoHS Regulations. The design was not compliant and Castle did not redesign the Iyonix. Sales continued for over 2 years, via a newly established company, Iyonix Ltd, which enabled Castle itself to circumvent the regulations.
On 25 September 2008, Castle announced that production of the Iyonix had ceased and that new units would no longer be available to order.
Read more about this topic: Iyonix PC
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