*********************
QL
CLUB
INTERNATIONAL
*********************
ISSUE 100
JUNE 1997
M.A.KENNEALLY
EMAIL.106114,710 COMPUSERVE.COM
MIKEKENNEALLY1@COMPUSERVE.COM
ALL SOFTWARE SENT TO THE CLUB IS ASSUMED TO BE PD UNLESS
OTHERWISE STATED AND WILL BE TREATED AS SUCH.
QXL2 WITH A PACKARD BELL ATTACHMENT
2XQL'S,1X3.5 DISC DRIVES,TRUMPCARD,CANON BJ4100 COLOUR
PRINTER.
DEAR ALL,
WELL WE FINALLY MADE IT!
100 ISSUES AND STILL GOING STRONG,WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
BACK IN THE MISTS OF TIME,THAT WE SHOULD STILL BE HERE?AND
WITH SO MANY OF THE ORIGINAL GANG,MARTIN WHEATLEY,FRANK
MERRISON AND MALCOLM WHITE TO NAME A FEW.
WELCOME TO THE READERS OF QL TODAY,I DO HOPE THIS IS AS
ENJOYABLE TO YOU AS IT HAS BEEN FOR US OVER THE YEARS,AFTER
ALL WE ARE JUST A BUNCH OF VERY ENTHUSIASTIC AMATEURS,WHO
LOVE THIS SYSTEM,LONG MAY IT REIGN!
I SHOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO THANK ALL OF
YOU FOR YOUR HELP AND ADVICE OVER THE YEARS,EVEN THOSE OF YOU
WHO ARE ALWAYS SAYING THAT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO CONTRIBUTE BUT
QUESTIONS.THOSE QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED AND WE ALL LEARN
SOMETHING TOGETHER.
MY PERSONAL THANKS TO GRAHAM LUTZ FOR HIS HELP IN
SETTING UP THIS MONTHS DISC.I HAVE THE EASY BIT TO DO,WHILE
GRAHAM HAS DONE THE HARD WORK.
ALSO LET ME REMIND EVERYONE AND I MEAN
EVERYONE,INCLUDING THE QL TODAY READERS,ABOUT THE IRISH QL
SHOW,TAKING PLACE OVER THE WEEKEND AFTER OUR BANK
HOLIDAY.MORE DETAILS ARE TO BE FOUND IN DARREN BRANAGH'S
LETTER.ALL OF YOU THAT ATTEND SHOWS IN PLACES SUCH AS
EINDHOVEN AND AMERICA AND OTHER SUCH VENUE'S,THIS IS A BIT
CLOSER TO HOME AND EASIER TO GET TO,SO DON'T MISS IT.
TO THOSE MEMBERS WHO HAVE WRITTEN,BUT NOT SENT A DISC
BECAUSE YOU WILL GET IT WITH THE QL TODAY,THANKS FOR YOUR
GOOD WISHES.
AS YOU ALL KNOW,I WILL BE AWAY FOR THE AUGUST EDITION.SO
GRAHAM HAS VOLUNTEERED TO DO IT.SO MAKE A NOTE ABOUT THAT AND
I WILL REMIND YOU ALL NEXT MONTH.
I THINK THAT'S ABOUT IT FROM ME,NOW TO START GETTING
READY FOR THE NEXT 100 ISSUES!
MIKE.
Michael Kite
14th June 1997
Equipment: Gold Card; QL Minerva 1.97 mk.1; Hermes; Two
3.5" Disc drives; One 5.25 Disc Drive; Philips colour
Monitor; SERMouse; Seikosha SP-1000AS 9 pin printer Epson RX
80F/T+ 9 pin printer with parallel port and added serial
port. 486 PC with 540 meg hard drive: The PC is only used for
things which are compatible with the computers done at work.
Hello everyone, I would like to wish the club and its
members a happy 100 anniversary and big thank you to MIKE for
all the work he puts into the club.
Six months ago I was given a incomplete 386 PC which
one of my colleagues at work got working for me. It was
connected to the epson printer through the parallel port and
would also print through the serial port from the QL. The PC
has now been up graded to 486 using some parts unwanted by my
work colleagues, a hard drive brought from a supplier after
it had been back to the manufacture for repair but was
replaced with a new one and eight meg of memory new. When I
got the 486 PC back it worked all right until I tried sending
a drawing to the printer but it will not print from the PC
now. After a lot of checks including connecting it to one of
the companies inkjet printers were it worked alright. I came
to the conclusion that the parallel port must have failed on
the Epson printer as the QL still printed through the serial
port alright.
Still not happy that it could have gone wrong between
unplugging it to reconnecting it to the up graded PC. I
removed the added in serial board and hay presto it printed
alright.
So it would seem that the newer PC,s are much less
tolerant than the older ones?.
NORMALLY WITH A PC YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PRINTER DRIVER
WHICH YOU LOAD FROM DISC.BUT GETTING AN EPSON DRIVER CAN BE A
BIT OF A PAIN.ALL YOU NEED TO DO NOW IS TO GET A QXLII TO GO
IN IT AND YOU WILL HAVE A DECENT MACHINE!
Well thats all for this 100th anniversary thank you for
everything
Mike Kite.
#!
Martin Burke,
15th June, 1997.
Dear Mike and Friends,
JM version + Trump 768 + twin 3.5" disks, Philips CM8833
colour monitor (under repair) and its Tandy twin, 8056
printer, Epson RX80 F/T, and Brother HR10 daisy-wheel
printer; PSION3a, Z88.
On the matter of Malcolm's problems, surely the most
likely cause is some problem with his disk drives. Has
Malcolm tried sending disks to anyone else? The fact that
Frank has had some problems may indicate that it is not that
easy. I think I have only ever had one problem not being
able to read a QLCI disk and that was about a year ago.
As regards the 100th edition and in case it is of any
benefit - or just interest - to anyone, I include two
programs of my own. The purpose of these programs is to list
the directories of several floppies so that the contents can
be compared. (Currently every "volume" I have is replicated
on four disks, three on the boat, the fourth in Birmingham
(and switched with the "boat number 3", every so often). I
think I borrowed bits from elsewhere in order to do what - or
almost what - I wanted. Somebody in QL supplied with other
means of doing similar tasks.
"DIR_LIS_SUFF" is a superbasic program that reads disk
directories and can add them to the same file in RAM.
"DIR_LIS_ED" is an EDITOR command (Digital Precision's
program) which sorts the file into alphabetical order, so
that all copies of each file (on each disk) are listed
together and it is easy to spot if any are out of date or if
there are other discrepancies.
"DIR_LIS_EDIT_NOTES" is essentially the same file but
with explanatory notes (this being too large for a sensible
command file). I believe much of this could be done easier
via QPACII (and other ways) but this is the way I did - and
do -it.
I have not run and edited the programs to ensure that
they are consistent and make sense and they are in no way
fool-proof. But if anyone thinks they have merit and/or have
some use but need clarification, let me know.
Yours,
Martin Burke.
#!
#!
John Southern
Email: tarragon@dircon.co.uk
tarragon@cix.compulink.co.uk
Main Equipment :-Net 7- Aurora, SGC, Hermes, Minerva
1.96, Qubide 1.53, ED drives. Syquest.
Dear All,
Well Mike congratulations to yourself and Margaret
for finally tying the knot. Also Congratulations to all on
the 100th issue of ClubQL ( Although I think I remember
Frank and Martin saying the first issue zero was paper only
).
Martin :- In the current issue you asked about
transferring from PC to QL. Okay to get information from a
PC to a QL either
1) Use SMSQ/E on the QL and so you can read PC disks.
2) Use Xover on the QL so you can read PC DD formatted
disks
3) Use Discover on the QL so you can read PC disks
4) Connect via a serial link and simple terminal
software. Probably the easiest to do.
5) Send to a BBS on the PC then download on the QL.
Colin B :-In the current issue you asked about the Z88.
Yes the Zpower pack is still sold for the Z88. It is a six
AA battery holder with one dummy battery so you can fit five
rechargables into it. It is still for sale at Rakewell's who
stock just about everything for the Z88.
Frank M:- Sorry to here about your QL and parts. I
assume this was due to some power spike through the printer
lead. I do however switch the printer on seperately either
before the QL or after and it seems to make no difference.
Should we be looking out for something in particular?
Dennis :- Yes,you are correct I too am fed up of waiting
for the colour drivers for the Aurora.
Occassionally I buy 'disk drive head cleaning kits' for
work. These consist of a floppy disk with the actual disk
replaced by an abrasive cleaning disk. These disks vary in
abrasiveness from being very like plastic pan scourers (
Taiwanese ( no company name )) to almost blotting paper
texture ( Fellowes computerware ). The expensive part
however is the cleaning fluid that you put on these disks.
The fluid goes on the disk, then you format the disk so the
drive head gets rubbed clean. Rather than pay a small
fortune for the fluid I got our lab to tell me what it is ..
Isopropynol ( Iso-propyl alcohol ) which is readily available
from the local pharmacist in huge ( comparitively ) amounts.
I know the next is off topic but it is all knowledge...
Also found out that quote marks work quite well on PC's. On
a QL you can enclose commands within quote marks. For
example:- ex RAM1_Ungif;'-W RAM1_test_gif' On a PC you can do
similar For example to create a shortcut in Win95 to My
Documents you use :- "c:\My Documents\"
I have spent the last few months building Pandora cases.
These are steel rectangular case designed by a small team as
the best compromise for their needs. It was not intended by
the designers as a commercial venture and the cases are most
certainly not everyone's ideal. They look very square with a
front face that is as wide as a 5.25" disk drive, and also
the same height. The length is three times the length of a
5.25" disk drive. Our main design aim was for something that
we could carry but also pile papers, drinks, children's toys,
food, hot soldering irons etc.,. onto the top of, without
them falling off. I also wanted some connectors at the front
so I did not have long cables all over my desk, This was
compromised by the need to have some at the back. Six
prototypes where built using Meccano for the main case frame
to see what was the most suitable. Using specialist PSU's we
could make the case as wide as a 3.5" floppy and about 8"
long and some 4" high, but this was not designed for
everyone. I still have the plan of this version but the
version made allowed me enough access often enough to play as
much as I wanted. Commercially I could never imagine it
selling more than the three it was designed for. ( Somewhere
out there are 21 QL users who wanted the same ). As with any
project there are always problems to overcome and the
discussions over trivial things such as the colour of the
case etc.,. took up many an evening. QL black was settled on
( those that have seen my 'British Racing Green' QL or
Jerry's 'Battleship Grey with go faster flames' will know
that I may not always be the best judge of colour ). Some
things seemed obvious such as putting the I2C socket at the
front so I can plug in devices as and when I like. ( The
three designers all have I2C ). At the time no one knew of
any expansion plans so we decided to have a 5.25" bay free
for expansion. Rather than make the case taller I decided to
run this free space all the way through the case,so I also
have a free 5.25" bay at the back. Maybe someone will
produce a CD_ROM drive interface for the QL one day ?
Having done all this and the Gilpins making the cases
they decided to make some extra as a Manchester QL Group
venture. To help them I agreed to make up cables at cost and
if absolutely necessary fit them. I would prefer people to
go to Ron Dunnett for cables and fitting as he does this as a
business, I am only trying to help where necessary and my
time is limited. Ron's cables all work and apart from the
ROM connector I would recommend them all. The ROM connector
is not ideal for me ( But for everyone else it is perfect )!
Overall it has been fun and I have seen a lot of peoples set
up's. Would I do it again... Yes but maybe in DayGlow
Yellow.
BELIEVE ME I HAVE SEEN THEM AND HE HAS DONE A STERLING
JOB ON THEM,BUT DAYGLO YELLOW?,WELL MAYBE DAYTONA YELLOW.
Does anyone know how to use the uQXL emulator for UNIX
boxes. While running under Linux Jerry has been unable to
correctly link in an image of TK2. The image was copied from
an original ROM in a basic QL using
sbytes mdv1_TK2_rom,48*1024,16*1024
In uQXL the reset on the QL emulator shows the CARE
toolkit indicator at the top of the screen but the command
TK2_EXT is not understood. How should the ROM image be
linked in ?
Does anyone know if a corrected version of the I2C
drivers are available yet to work under SMSQ/E ?
In the current issue Jerry asked
>On the new Aurora board are two serial ports supported
?
Yes they are except they are actually both wired the
same rather than one DTE and one DCE device. As the
difference is really only a swop between RxD and TxD there is
no problem making the correct connection.
Does anyone know of an easy way to find where TK2 is in
memory on an Aurora with SGC ?
In Sinclair QL World March 1989 ( the one with a drawing
of a car piston on the cover ) Open Channel page 10 under the
title HAPPY the following was written...
Further to the letter in the October issue of QL World
from W.G.Johns about the user group he was starting, I
thought I would write to tell you how it is developing. I
was a new user when I bought my first copy of QL World. That
was 12 months ago; since then I have met Bill Johns many
times and spent many happy hours on his QL.
The club has now expanded to about 40 to 50 members from
all over the world, with a wide selection of interests, all
of which are of interest to myself and many other people who
do not understand the jargon of experts talking to experts.
So we try to help in a simple way.
We also have a newsletter which we try to send on a
regular basis; it is sent on Microdrive. We managed to get
the first issue out in time for Christmas.
Anyone interested in participating in the newsletter,
even people who know what they are talking about, will be
made welcome.
Apart from the number of members I think the ideals are
still valid.
MARCH 1988,HAS IT BEEN THAT LONG?AS FOR MEMBERS,I HOPE
WE REACH AT LEAST THAT MANY EVEN NOW,ITS A PITY THEY DON'T
WRITE AS WELL.
Does anyone have a copy of Notebook by ILD Datasystems ?
As a final note what is the copyright concerning the QL
ROMs. uQXL and the Mac emulator use JS ROM images so I
assume that these are now public domain, or at least freely
copyable. I assume Minerva in all it's forms is copyrighted
and chargeable but what about other ROMs such as JM, MGE,
MGG, MGF etc,. if these are freely copyable does anyone have
a full set ?
That is all for this month,
John
#!
Jeremy Davis
Email : microdrive@geocities.com Web #1 : Web #2 :
http://eensgi2.leeds.ac.uk/~eenph/teletext
133MHz Pentium PC, Linux V2.0.30, uQLx, Parallel Port
Zip Drive.
Hello!!
Long time no hear!! So Mike 100 eigh? Have you got
the telegram from the Queen yet?
NOT YET JERRY,BUT TONY BLAIR IS TRYING TO MAKE ME OLD
AND GREY BEFORE MY TIME!
I'm very much on edge at the moment as I am waiting
for my final degree results. Over the past three years I'm
sad to say,I had my priorities wrong; concentrate on studying
and ignore the QL! Never mind I've finished now and can get
to my QL. One problem though.... I don't have a QL!!!!! In
September 1995 my parents moved down to darkest Cornwall so I
gave all my QL bits to Colin Murphy and Nick Golby to
basically give away to whoever wanted it.
Computers have now become powerful enough to simulate
electronic circuits, so now rather than get my hands dirty
doing lots a laboratory experiments as part of my degree, I
have had the task on simulating numerous circuits. This
involved a lot of time stuck in front of a computer at the
university, rather than stuck in front of the bar at a local
pub. Something had to be done about this so I bought one of
those naff PC things with Windozzzzzze 95 on it.Only mind, so
that I could sit in front of it with a pint of beer at home,
rather that at university without a beer.
My final year project "Teletext On-Line" involved
putting British TV teletext on the world-wide web . This
involved grabbing the teletext out of the air, sending it to
a computer and programming the computer to convert it into
the world-wide web programming language. The computer program
that I had to write had to work on a PC and a supercomputer
that ran an operating system called UNIX. Whilst writing the
program I found the things that it had to do was either
impossible or very difficult to do under MS-DOS, and very
very easy to do under UNIX. The more of my project I did, the
more I began to hate MS-DOS and Windows 95, and love UNIX.
About this time I spoke to Colin Murphy and he told
me there was a QL emulator for UNIX. Well that was it, I
deleted 99% of Windows95 and put Linux the UNIX operating
system for PCs on my PC and downloaded off the Internet uQLx
the QL emulator for UNIX. So I now have a QL!!! I have only
kept a tiny part of Windows95 so that I can play games like
MDK and Quake. Yep in my opinion all that Windows95 is good
for is playing games on it.
The good thing about uQLx is that it enables QDOS to
access all the PC devices, so I can use the CD-ROM (dir cd1_)
and the parallel port zip drive, a 100MB floppy disk drive
that plugs into the parallel / printer port (dir zip1_).
With Club QL being sent over the Internet to some
people, they ask questions via e-mail rather than writing a
letter as they will get a much faster reply. I was asked
recently how to compile uQLx. Well those of you that know
nothing about UNIX will find this rather difficult to
understand however I will try to explain it as easily as
possible....
The one and only good thing about Windows95 is that
it is easy to install. Linux however is quite difficult. If
you term yourself as a computer novice DON'T install Linux!
Stick to your old trusty QL. Most QL programs that you can
get come already compiled so you don't get to see their
source code, ie. the SuperBasic or C program. With Linux most
programs given to you in the form of the source code, in
other words the un-compiled program. You have to compile the
program yourself to make it work. So firstly uQLx needs to be
compiled; type....
mkdir uQLx "make a directory" cp uqlx.zip
uQLx "copy the .zip file" cd uQLx
"change to the directory" unzip uqlx.zip "unzip the
zip file" (Linux is case sensitive so type the commands in
exactly as above)
This makes a directory called "uQLx", copies the
uqlx.zip file to the uQLx directory, sends you to the uQLx
directory, and unzips the uqlx.zip file. Next.....
make "compile version #1" make xaw
"compile version #2" make docs "create the uQLx
manual"
This basically compiles uQLx. There are two version that
just look different to each other, they work exactly the same
though. Next...
textedit .uqlxrc
This will bring the file .uqlxrc up in a text editor for
changing. Change the ROMDIR ... line to....
ROMDIR ~/uQLx/romdir/
Next change the DEVICE ..... lines to point to
different directories or disk images. To find out how to
create disk images read the documentation that comes with
QLTOOLS. Next copy the changed .uqlxrc to your root
directory....
cp .uqlxrc /root
Now you can finally run uQLx....
qm "run version #1" or qm-aw
"ruin version #2"
YOU MUST HAVE BEEN THINKING OF ME JERRY,'RUIN'YES THAT'S
ME.PRESUMABLY YOU MEAN 'RUN'.
And that's it..... What you must remember Linux is NOT
for the computer novice so don't worry if you didn't
understand a single word of the above explanation. Also for
those more experienced users out there this explanation was
written to be very basic, I know it could be explained in far
more detail.
Well I've just about finished everything I can think
of writing. Just two more things....
#1) Anyone know of any ridiculously well paid
graduate digital electronics jobs 'cos I need a job!!
NOT OFF HAND MATE,BUT THE WAY YOU KEEP COMING UP
SMELLING OF ROSES,WHO KNOWS?
#2) I don't know if Colin Murphy or John Southern has
said anything but I've just got engaged to Rebecca. She may
be a northerner but I won't hold that against her. :-)
I HOPE COLIN KNOWS ABOUT THIS,I SUPPOSE LONDON IS NORTH
OF CORNWALL?CONGRATULATIONS,EEH!YOU CAN'T BEAT A NORTHERN
LASS.
Jeremy Davis
DarrenBranagh
Rep. Of Ireland. 10th June, 1997.
QL & COMPUTER GEAR INCLUDES: 2QL's one JS and one
Running MINERVA v1.97, Miracle Trumpcard, Microvitec CUB 653
Monitor, Twin NEC 3.5" DS/DD Drives & Twin Miracle DS/DD
Drives both joined by a Miracle Disk Adaptor (flp1_ to
flp4_), 150+ Disks of Software, Epson EPL4000 Laser Printer,
Serial 8056 Thermal Printer, Brother M-1109 9 Pin Dot Matrix
Printer, Joysticks, SERmouse, Tandata 3 stack Modem, American
Megatrends 386 Power PC, Zenith Minisport 286 Laptop PC,
Cambridge Z88 Laptop, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K +2a, Sinclair
ZX81, Partridge in a pear tree, and two stone of unwanted
weight to loose since Xmas (!)
Dear Mike (& gang),
CONGRATULATIONS MIKE !! A VERY HAPPY CENTENARY TO YOU
ALL !!
What an amazing achievement. I bet 100 months ago when
you started you never dreamed you'd be still doing the
Magazine today - Congratulations from Myself and Hilary - I
still think that with the iminent launch of the Goldfire and
Miracles new project, the Ultra Gold Card, soon to be started
upon, not to mention Jeremy Reeves Sound Card for the QL, the
future of the QL is still very much alive and the best is yet
to come. Congratulations Mike !!!
I'm actually "flying blind" for this letter, because at
the time of writing, my copy of QL99 hasn't arrived - its
usually here on or around the 13th-14th of the Month, (it
takes a while to get here from the UK) so I can't comment on
Last months mag - If I'd have waited for QL99, I'd have
missed the June 15th cut-off for the QLtoday cover disk with
my letter - so here it is.
ACTUALLY IT WAS JULY THE 15th DARREN!
I've included some progs on this disk to help the disk
go with a bang - 4 to be exact. They are as follows:-
FREQUENCY_FINDERS_BAS : A simple program to facilitate
in the finding of (a) how many letters and words in a file
(b) the most frequently used letter(s) and (c) print them out
in a useful table. It will work on all text files (Quill,
Perfection, Plain Txt, etc.) not to mention Superbasic
programs.
FILENAME_EDITOR_BAS : I wrote this a couple of months
ago when I got Simon Goodwins DIY Toolkit disks from Ron
Dunnett of Qubbesoft. On these disks, the filenames of all
the programs are preceeded by Volume numbers, eg.
VolD_VIEW_DISK_Bas. This is great for identifying which file
belongs to what volume, but useless if the BOOT file for that
prog is looking for VIEW_DISK_Bas and not
VolD_VIEW_DISK_Bas!! Therefore this program will delete any
given string from the filenames on a disk automatically - it
saves you having to use RENAME for all of the files on the
disks - saving time - as its all done in one foul swoop.
EXTENSION_ELIMINATOR_BAS : Basically the same as the
filename editor, but this one removes the extension from the
filename, eg. the file JOEBLOGGS_TXT would become JOEBLOGGS.
LOTTERY_PREDICTOR_BAS : Written on a rainly day, when
I'd nothing better to do!! Basically uses a string of text
rendered by you (such as a lucky proverb, etc) and selects
lottery numbers based on the input. I had to rewrite this
just now, as the UK lottery is different to the Irish one -
we get 12 numbers for `1, whereas yours is 6 for `1. you lot
also have 7 more numbers to choose from. mind you, our lotto
rarely gets beyond `2 million, the biggest was a few weeks
ago - `6.3 million.
As always Hilary helped with these - and a couple were
written totally by him - I just put in the bells and whistles
and a lick of paint!!
Well, thats my lot - I'm probably missing a heap of chat
from QL99, but C'est la vie. As sure as Murphys Law reigns,
I'll probably recieve it in the post 3 minutes after I mail
this!!
HAPPY 100TH MIKE - DOES THIS MAKE YOU FEEL OLD ????????
Darren.
Dear Mike,
There! I just new it! I post the blasted disk including
my contritution to QL100 without having recieved QL99 yet,
and what happens? the QL99 disk turns up in the letterbox an
hour or so later!! Maybe the fact that its friday the 13th
has something to do with it!! I'll post this additional
contribution to you via SWIFTPOST Mike - it guarantees a 2
day arrival in the UK.
Anyway, I forgot to mention one very important thing :-
The date and venue of THE FIRST EVER SOUTHERN IRISH QL SHOW.
Its all happening this August - Saturday 30th, to be exact -
in THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY HALL, LARAGH, CO.WICKLOW. It
promises to be a great day out - and as that weekend is also
a Bank Holiday here - it should be a nice holiday, too. With
the Launch of the Goldfire Card from Ron Dunnett expected
around that time, it may be a very surprising show! Q-Branch,
Tony Firshman, Stuart Honeyball of Miracle, and others are
already confirmed as attending. B&B's etc. are available -
but please book early! RIGHT THEN! WHO'S COMING?
SORRY DARREN I WON'T BE I'M AFRAID.I LEAVE FOR THE SOUTH
OF FRANCE ON THE 27th.SO I'M AFRAID I SHALL HAVE TO MISS THIS
ONE.BUT HOPEFULLY THE OTHERS WILL ATTEND.LET ALL QL USERS
EVERYWHERE ATTEND THE 1st IRISH QL SHOW AND SHOW THE OTHERS
WHAT THEY ARE MISSING.HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT ADVERTISING IN
THE IRISH PRESS,MAYBE YOU CAN ATTRACT SOME MORE IRISH QL
USERS,YOU NEVER KNOW THE PRESS MIGHT LIKE TO DO A FEATURE ON
IT!
O.K. - Now to answer some queries from QL99.
Firstly Mike's opening letter - I agree with you mate. I
think its a great idea having QL100 on the Cover Disk of
QLtoday - hopefully a few people in the QLtoday fraternity
will also join the ranks of QLCI - the more the merrier. I
belong to both groups - and I wouldn't be without either of
them - so heres a raging welcome to all the QLtoday readers
reading this - Your all very welcome!!
COLIN BASKETT: With regards to your power problems with
the Z88 - I use mine with Lloytron rechargeable batteries -
with no problems - along with a Uniross Charger I bought from
Argos - Cat. No. 982/1644 - costing `9.99. Mike was spot on
suggesting Argos - they're great for stuff like this. I also
use the Z88 in the car a lot, so I got an in-car Multi Volt
adaptor also from Argos - This can be set to 6 volts @ 500mA,
via a slider switch, and then powers the Z88 direct from the
Cigarette lighter of the car! this costs only `7.50 - Argos
Cat.No. 982/5475. They also do a multi-voltage mains adaptor
for `10.75. (I happen to have the Argos book handy - I've
just ordered the girlfriends Birthday present from it!)
FOR A MINUTE THERE I THOUGHT YOU WERE ON COMMISSION!
Speaking of Girlfriends - Congratulations to you Mike on
your recent Marriage - 6 months ago I'd have thought you were
mad - but It now looks like I'll be doing the same thing next
year!!
THANKS FOR THE CARD DARREN,MUCH APPRECIATED.
BTW, Mike - did my programs on last months disk help
with your formatting problems? Maybe the fact that your
having problems formatting is linked to the problems Dennis
and Malcolm had reading the disks you sent them? Possibly
your Disk drive heads need a clean??
I HOPE NOT MATE,THE DAMNED THINGS ONLY 6 MONTHS OLD!IT'S
QUITE POSSIBLE THE PROBLEM STEMS FROM THE FACT I AM USING A
PC DISC DRIVE TO FORMAT QL DISCS.
PAUL McPHERSON : Paul was asking a few questions in his
letter. Firstly, useful TIFF and JPEG programs for the QL -
there are a few. Jonathan Hudson wrote a TIFF/GIF program and
it was on the first QLtoday cover Disk - this has been
superceded be a newer, faster prog called UNPIC. It can
convert pics in mode 4,8, to GIF,TIF,PCX, and PBM. Its
available from PD libraries and Jonathans Web Page - the
address of which I just can't find at the moment. For JPEG
pictures, there is JPEG<>GIF, available on disk SJPD51 from
S.Johnson. I have this somewhere, and I'll stick it on the
disk if I can find it. There are loads of others too - Carlo
Delhez's UNGIF and ENGIF, for example.
Paul also asks what an Aurora is - Its a new
motherboard-replacing Graphics enhancement card for the QL -
It uses larger screen resolutions than the standard 512x256
of the QL, up to 1024x768 I think, and when its colour
drivers arrive, will have advanced colour capabilities too.
As for the Goldfire the prototype is due soon - it will
now be able to support up to 256MB RAM, using conventional 72
pin simms of the IBM PC. A 33mHz Goldfire should be 4-5 times
faster than a SGC, at about 30 million instruction per
second. Apparently it will be L-shaped too, but will be
usable with a standard QL or Aurora. Ron Dunnett hasn't
decided yet (at time of writing) whether or not to use 33mHz
chips or 40mHz ones.
MARTIN BURKE : To answer your query on Quill being
"SMASHed" by Graham D. Lutz, SMASH is indeed a clever
compression and decompression program - I've just written a
review on this program for QLtoday (the issue that QL100 will
be attached to) so watch out for it. SMASH is included on
this disk - simply EXEC flp1_SMASH, and follow the on screen
instructions. It only works on EXECutable programs, by the
way.
Well, thats my lot. Happy 100th aniversary to you all
especially Mike for all his hard work over the years.
And remember -
_______________________________________________________
THE FIRST IRISH QL SHOW EVER !!!
IRISH AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND - AUGUST 30TH, 1997.
AT THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY HALL, LARAGH, CO.WICKLOW.
IRELAND.
LESS THAN ONE MILE FROM HISTORIC GLENDALOUGH - ONE OF
THE BIGGEST TOURIST ATTRACTIONS IN IRELAND !!!
MANY QL TRADERS AND PERSONALITIES WILL BE THERE ON THEDAY.
_______________________________________________________
CONTACT DARREN BRANAGH ON (+353)404 45319 FOR FULL
DETAILS.
So I hope to match many of the names to the faces!!
All the Best,
Darren.
Ireland.
Dear Mike,
Fraternal best wishes on your centenary (oo'er,
shouldn't say yours, should I? - I mean the magazines - don't
want you aging before your time Mike!!)
Mind you, its all thanks to you. It must make you feel
tremendously proud of the whole thing.
I'm still having Gold card and drive problems - I'm
using Darrens second QL at the moment and his spare drives -
so I'd better go, or he'll start charging rent!!
regards, and very best wishes,
Hilary O'Kelly.
Malcolm White
Dear QL'ers.
I can hear a lot of you saying "Who's he!!"
When I rang Mike a few weeks ago they had to pick him up
from the floor, and it took 2 hours for him to come round.
Sorry Mike, and QL'ers for the long delay in having anything
to do with the Club, I know it has been a long time, but I do
not seem to have a minute to spare these days. I keep trying
to get time to write to the Newsletter, but never make it.
I WAS LOOKING THROUGH SOME OF THE OLD NEWSLETTERS THE
OTHER DAY MALCOLM,AND I DIDN'T REALISE YOU HAD BEEN WITH US
SO LONG.YOUR FIRST LETTER WAS IN ISSUE No.2 A LONG TIME AGO
NOW MATE.
Anyway, enough of my moans. Needless to say I have had
to start tapping the keys because I need help. I have
recently got hold of a 'load' of QL items which might be of
interest to other QL'ers. My equipment now is:
QL (ver JS) with SPEM keyboard wired in.
SANDY double disc drive.
FP power reducer. (this does keep the QL much cooler,
although I have never had any problems in this area).
CUB colour monitor (653)
Winchester Hard Disk (big and somewhat noisy fan)
Smith-Corona TP1 Printer
Brother M1109 printer (my original)
2nd QL (JS) - with, I think, a membrane fault.
Bessie (my wife) is using a QL (JM) with Miracle
Expanderam (512k) and Care QJump, along wth Miracle twin disk
drives and a Philips colour monitor, but no printer. As often
happens in family life, daughter (married with twins) has
'obtained' my old equipment.
Now the problem section: The Smith Corona TP-1 printer
has no instructions or manual. Can't make it work!!! (I
have tried various baud rates and it was originally used with
the equipment I now have).
ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THESE PRINTERS?
Miraculus Winney V2.02 (1989) Hard disc: This appears
quite good when connected in, contains a lot of the old users
files, and loads TASKMASTER (one of my main progs). Using
HOME FINANCE, another very important prog to me, (which
normally loads without any problems) will only go to line 200
of the boot and gives 'out of memory'. Line 200 (the last)
is "aRESPR(512):LBYTES flp1_hf_ldr,a: CALL a".
IF YOU ARE LOADING FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE MALCOLM,ALL YOUR
FLP'S ARE GOING TO NEED CHANGING TO WIN'S.ie FLP1_ BECOMES
WIN1_,RUN IT THROUGH A CONVERTER.I'VE TOLD YOU BEFORE LOSE
TASKMASTER AND START USING QPACII OR XCHANGE,BUT I CAN HEAR
YOU NOW,I KNOW YOU LIKE TASKMASTER BUT YOU ALWAYS SEEM TO
HAVE PROBLEMS WITH IT!
Along with all this I now have a complete QL manual
(spare), text87 master prog (disc) and QL Project Planner by
Triptych Publishing (1985), with manual.
If anybody can help in getting the Corona printer and
hard disk operational, I would be very grateful. Some of the
equipment I will possibly dispose of once I have decided what
I wish to keep.
Another old problem I have tried to overcome many times,
but never succeeded. The Brother 1109 has many fonts, which
can be printed out on start up as a demo. How can these
fonts be selected, either before commencing printing or, if
possible, while actually laying out letters, posters, etc on
word processing (Quill). I can do this in ProPub or Line
Design, but it is so slow.
IF YOU LOOK BACK IN THE OLDER ISSUES OF THE
NEWSLETTER,YOU WILL FIND A LETTER FROM KEN IN
ASHTON-U-LYNE,HE EXPLAINS HOW TO DO THIS AND GIVES A
PRINTABLE DEMO,DON'T ASK ME WHICH NUMBER,AS I HAVE NO IDEA,IT
SHOULD BE AROUND ABOUT ISSUES 25 TO 40.
You will gather from this that I am NOT a techniical
QL'er. My main programme is Abacus, sometimes Archive and
Easel. Being treasurer for three societies Abacus and Home
Finance are in regular use, usually with Taskmaster.
MAYBE NOW JEREMY HAS FINISHED UNIVERSITY AND WHILE HE IS
WAITING FOR HIS FIRST JOB TO MATERIALIZE,HE CAN FINISH OFF
HIS EASEL PROG FROM WAY BACK!
There we are, or I am, lost in the midst of QL 'bits and
pieces' - please help if you can.
Malcolm.
A BIG P.S.: Have just received a letter from Mike -
Congratulations on the 100th Newsletter, and a big "Thank
You" to Mike for all the hard work he has contributed over
the years. Nice to be in touch again.
M. (13.06.97)
18th June 1997
Dear Mike,
Thanks for your letter - yes, long time no see.
Congratulations to all on your 100th issue, and good
wishes for the future.
Being retired I don't get PC's thrust at me, and so I am
contentedly running my QL's, which suit me quite well.
I've one fitted in a drop-front desk downstairs for
general use, and another upstairs coupled with the
printer(s), which also gets used for some 'tinkering'.
I'm only at Trump card level (on both), but I may go
Gold if a bargain opportunity presents itself! I've also got
three other not so good QL spares.
I've a lame duck Philips monitor which overheats and
blows its thermal fuse unless I keep a blower on. A little
'waisting' creeps down the side borders, probably something
drifted out of trim, and if this gets too significant, then
the fuse goes. Has anyone a manual?
I've also a Cumana twin disk drive with Mitsubishi units
which loses the directory on writing; reads quite OK though.
Any clues, anyone?
At present programing is limited to odd short routines
for little jobs, mostly printing. I did make use of Timo
Sala's statistical maths routines a year or so ago to help a
doctor with analysis of medical records for a paper; it went
very well until he went above the 250 record limit! We still
prepare and print an A5 size monthly church magazine, on a
rota with two other teams. This is straight text without any
flashy DTP stuff; if they want that then they will have to
go elsewhere, as I just don't want to set off on a vast new
learning exercise.
LINEDESIGN IS A VERY EASY TO USE PROGRAM,JUST FOR
SITUATIONS LIKE THIS!
I've cycled since childhood days, both utility and
leisure, the latter off tarmac on byways, "green lanes" or
tracks for preference. How I would welcome a full suspension
bike for this, not an expensive rugged one for downhill
racing.
I've always favoured hub gears for cleanliness, ease of
maintenance, and ruggedness in the face of the inevitable
brushwood off road. To cope easily and gently with steep
hills around town, and on all terrain I have been giving a
lot of thought to wide ratio gears, and have been in contact
with other like-minded cyclists.
I realised that more gear stages would be required, and
worked out a novel arrangement, making a model in plastic
gears to prove the principle. There are a lot of constraints
on choice of gearwheels in the conventional planetary hub
gear. QL to the rescue! A program was set up to calculate
the gearset, given the controlling gear sizes, and list the
ratios obtainable. My aim had become an overall span of 7:1,
with as even steps as possible. Eventually I discovered a 9
speed design with overall ratio of 7.05:1, and practically
equal 27.7% steps (normal 3 speed 33.3%).
I was then able to model this with Viewpoint 3D
draughting program, and produce a perspective ilustration to
accompany my specification.
The QL is an active part of my life, and I'm stil a
Quanta member.
THIS IS WHAT COMES OF BEING AN ENGINEER BRYAN,THE MIND
NEVER RESTS!
Bryan A. Horstmann
Colin Miller
Dear Mike and Fellow QLers ( and PCers and whoever else
answers Mike's plea !),
I am delighted to respond to your letter re QL Club
International's 100th Anniversary issue,Mike. I know the QL,
like me, is getting long in the tooth - but 100 already ????
Anyway I put away my Zimmer frame for a few mo's to add
to the fun !
At present I own a Cyrix 150 PC with 16 mb memory and
all the usual bits - not yet a modem so I am not e-mailing
anyone (thinking about it though). I also invested in a
Honeyball QXL card in the hope that I might be able to
continue a bit of QLing as well. This has proved to be a
great disappointment (as SH'ball appears to tacitly admit).
As Mike knows - and he has spent many hours with me - setting
the thing up is not for nerds such as I am. Qpac is still a
nightmare and apart from feeling ripped off price wise I
wonder if it would have been better to have waited forthe QPC
which has at least got SMSQ/E and, I understand, Qpac built
in. Anyway I am loathe to put out another tidy sum so very
little QLing is done. About the only thing I do, and I do it
regularly, is to play LonelyJoker - very relaxing.( I
originally bought a PC on the basis that it would provide
improved graphics - to use it along with the, then,
forthcoming QXL card)
WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR SET-UP
COLIN.WE HAD IT WORKING TO A CERTAIN EXTENT,MAYBE GRAHAM WILL
VOLUNTEER TO COME OVER ONE WEEKEND TO SORT IT FOR YOU,OR
PERHAPS JOHN?
Not that a PC is the answer to a maiden's prayer. All
that long winded starting up, and finding one's way around
are tedious at times. But it does offer some good programmes.
I wonder at the comparison of say Serif with Linedesign ?
Serif's manual is an excellently written document - about the
easiest computer instructiion manual I have come across in my
limited experience - and the program is a doddle to use. It
is also not all that expensive. I found it far easier to use
than Linedesign. But then I was always an unsophisticated QL
user - with little or no knowledge of programming.
THE REASON YOU PROBABLY FOUND IT WAS SO EASY TO USE
COLIN IS BECAUSE,TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES IT IS
LINEDESIGN!BUT BY ANOTHER NAME,THE STRUCTURE AND LAYOUT ARE
ALMOST IDENTICAL,SO ARE A LOT OF THE COMMANDS AND SCREENS.
And that is probably the rub. Whilst I await all the
brickbats to descend on me-there is a world of difference
between the average QL user and PC user. The one is an
enthusiast for computers per se - the other, to my mind wants
a contraption (sic) to do certain things in an uncomplicated
way. I am not sure whether the latter is achieved - suffice
it to say that whenever I mention the QL in the computer
world no one has ever turned their nose up. It is just sad
that it went down the wrong road - otherwise it might have
provided for everyones needs as the PC has tried to do.
Perhaps Bill Gates has a lot to answer for.
I wish all you QLers the very best. May the QL long
continue, with your enthusiasm. I will always be at and on
your side.
To everyone - A Happy Anniversary - Long Live the QL
Colin
Terry Williams
26/0697
GEAR: 2 JS QLs, 1JM QL,SGC,GC,TRUMPCARD,TWIN EHD
DRIVES,TWIN HD DRIVES,TWIN DD DRIVES,14", QMIMI MOUSE, GOLD
STAR COLOUR MONITOR , 9"SONY TRITRON MONITOR, 12" FERGUSON
GREEN MONITOR, SPECTRUM 48K WITH TELETEXT ADAPTOR
Greetings All!
Message from "Q": My wonderfull attachment has the
advantage that while using two QL's it is possible have the
second keyboard one in front of the other, operating the one
by knee, and the other normally with my 'digits'. I used to
get tied in knots wondering why the text was not scrolling
then finding I was using the wrong keyboard!!
IF YOU ARE USING YOUR KNEES TERRY,YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE
TO GET A BIGGER KEYBOARD!
Dennis Smith: Thanks for the QPAC2 tips. I can now use
the 'Stuffer Buffer' to select a file from the FLP and
transfer it by using 'ALT SPACE'. I can also use the TK2
double underscore when DIR,ing from basic thereby selecting
all the aba quill etc files but do not follow how to do this
from the QPAC2 files menu. It looks as though I will have to
go back to the manual!!
All the best!
Terry
Email : dilwyn.jones@bbc.co.uk
23.6.97
GEAR: Aurora SGC system with DD+ED drives, JM QL+Gold
Card and 2xED drives+2xDD drives, ALT-286 Laptop+QXL and Zoom
modem, Pentium PC (currently half dead yet again, see below)+
QPC, various printers.
Dear Mike,
Sorry I missed last month's contribution date, but
thanks for sending QL99 by email anyhow.
Please, please, everyone, no more messages telling me
how to get channel 5 on satellite TV. I've well and truly got
the hint that it's on Channel 63, 10.916 MHz (H) on Astra 1D
by now. As I've got an older Pace receiver, I needed the
0.5MHz frequency shifter to be able to get it, but I've now
well and truly got it. Nice to get a film about 9PM every
night, but not a lot else to interest me on there that I've
noticed yet. BTW, you can't get cable round here, always
assume this area is the last to get anything (apart from PC
problems, see below), though if digging up roads was anything
to go by, we should be overwhelmed with cable channels round
here by now. I once heard someone say you daren't ride a
Sinclair C5 round here as the holes in the roads are bigger
than the wheels!
THAT'S ALWAYS ASSUMING YOU CAN GET ONE THESE DAYS,AT
`800 AND A 3 YEAR WAITING LIST!I BET SIR CLIVE IS KICKING
HIMSELF.
I hope all Club QL members have now got the message that
Darren Branagh is organising a show in Laragh Village Hall on
August 30th. Quite easy to get to from the Dun Laoghaire
(Dublin) ferries, as it's in County Wicklow, roughly south
west of Dublin. I hope lots of people, like me, will make the
trip to Ireland and combine it with a holiday in that lovely
country. Anyone wanting to go via the Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire
ferry is welcome to contact me to arrange to travel together.
I'm not quite sure yet what day I'll go, and anyway my
employer probably won't tell me before August if I can go or
not, but I hope to take my car (if there's enough people to
fill it and share costs) over on the ferry, and to stay at
the guest house owned by Darren's family if I book in time!
Anyone who'd be interested in shared travel, it's easy to
find me, I'm just off the A55/A5 roads across North Wales, or
I'll meet you at Bangor railway station. I'll send a map of
where I live to anyone who's interested. I won't be making
travel arrangements until I know if enough people are
interested.
Thanks to everyone who co-operated to make the QL Today
cover disk possible, especially to Graham for his work on a
front end for the disk. Jochen Merz and I really appreciate
the work.
If anyone is fed up of tales of woe with my PC and
Windoze 95, here's the latest episode of the saga. Probably
enough to put most people off ever buying a PC! In the end,
I've decided to try to fill up Club QL with PC/Windoze 95
help requests, following the comments from Mike Kenneally and
Martin Wheatley. I think someone expert in these matters
could make a fortune by setting up an 0891 number to answer
help request calls from frustrated PC-users-from
QL-background like me.
My current PC is an Amstrad Integra PC-TV. I got so fed
up of the previous PC and all its hassles, I got rid of it,
and bought the PC-TV (P75) from Morgan Computer Company. Like
many modern PCs, it's supplied without drivers on floppy disk
for the CD-ROM, TV Tuner card etc, with Windoze 95 and lots
of other software pre-loaded. You can't reinstall it from
scratch, as you get Windoze 95 on CD-ROM and (you guessed it)
no driver for the CD-ROM so you're stuck when something goes
wrong. The theory must be that you make your own backup on
about 200 floppy disks for when things go wrong.
I HAD NO PROBLEM RE-INSTATING MY WINDOZE FROM CD,I
THOUGHT THERE WAS A BASIC LINE YOU COULD USE TO INITIATE THE
CD DRIVE?
I knew I'd have to make a backup, in case anything went
wrong. Being fairly new to Windows 95, I just couldn't figure
out how to make a backup, any more than I could figure out
why this most essential of procedures with PCs with ONLY
pre-installed software isn't clearly explained on page 1 of
the manuals. Oh no, in depth descriptions of everything that
would be way beyond an inexperienced user. No backup
instructions, no index.
To make a backup, I'd probably need about 150-200 floppy
disks, so stuff that for a game of soldiers, I thought, since
I had only about 10 floppy disks to hand at the time, so I
bought a parallel port ZIP drive, with the intention of using
it to make backups of both PCs. I installed the driversoftware,
found it worked from Windoze and out of interest
tried it from QPC. Didn't work, couldn't find the drive to
put a QXL.WIN on it, great I thought, must need the DOS
drivers, since QPC is run from DOS even in Windows 95, so I
installed them too (it wasn't too clear from the instructions
if the DOS drivers were needed with Windows or not).
Disaster. First it tried to reassign all drive names, so no
configured software would work, then using the tools to sort
it out made all drives become drive D (except the floppy) and
chaos. Managed to get the hard drive working as C again, but
no joy with the CD-ROM or ZIP drive. Oh bugger, call
Amstrad's helpline, who blamed it on the ZIP. Called ZIP,
blamed it on Amstrad. Blew a fuse by now (me, not the
hardware). Eventually got the ZIP drive working somehow as
drive D and the CD-ROM to drive E but couldn't restore the
CD-ROM to drive D as all the configured software wanted.
Grrrr!!!!
YOU CAN MAKE BACK-UP SYSTEM DISCS FROM THE START UP MENU
DILWYN,IT ONLY TAKES ABOUT 16 DISCS.
Is it me, or are all PCs like this?
Does anyone know how to reassign drive name letters? By
now, I had C: as hard drive, D: as CD-ROM and E: as ZIP
drive. I wanted the CD-ROM to be D: and ZIP E: as the
software expected. Anyone who thinks configuring QL software
is difficult ought to try a PC. Seems I've a lot to learn.
I WONDER IF YOU WANT TO RE-WRITE THE LAST SENTENCE
DILWYN,TO ME IT LOOKS AS IF YOU GOT WHAT YOU WANTED!
Anyone know the proper procedure for making a complete
windows 95 backup? More to the point, anyone know how to find
it in the instructions or help files? I'm not actually that
thick, I'm being a bit bloody minded because of the endless
days of wasted time, but it would help if PC manufacturers
would make essential information prominently available.
ON THE TOP OF THE MENU AFTER USING THE 'START'BUTTON,ON
MY SYSTEM,IT HAS A BOX THAT SAYS'CREATE SYSTEM DISCS'OR
SOMETHING LIKE THAT,AS I AM AGAIN USING IT AS A QL,I CANNOT
ACTUALLY GET TO IT YET.I HAVE JUST FLICKED TO IT AND IT DOES
SAY THIS.
Another thing which happened, which may or may not be
connected, was the sudden disappearance of its internal
modem. It used to work fine, now a lovely error message comes
up when I ask it to dial Jochen Merz for sending QL Today
material back and forth: "Insert Modem When Ready". Beat that
for a silly error message! When an internal modem is already
in place, how the hell do you "insert" it? Might take me a
while to figure that one out. Back to the Zoom and the laptop
for now I guess... Graham Buck sent me a nice article on
using QTPI, but I never got round to installing it, because I
figured if I let the PC beat me, and got used to QTPI, I'd
never make the effort to get the modem working from Windows
on those rare occasions I'd need it, and anyhow, I should
really learn the PC side of things for when I'm using it at
work.
HAVE YOU TRIED RE-INSTALLING YOUR MODEM?
Anyway, proceeded to make a backup of my PC's hard drive
onto ZIP disks, as I was getting quite panicky about its
content by now. Hah, crashed about 1/3 the way into the
backup and death of PC. Of course, there are no floppy disks
supplied with the CD-ROM drivers, no sound card drivers, no
TV Tuner card drivers etc etc. A second call to Amstrad's
helpline (on 0990-811811-Ask for Amstrad Technical Support,
it's a BT-National charge band) seems to have got it fixed
for me - they are sending me a bootup floppy disk and a
download CD-ROM to reinstall the content of the hard disk to
a virgin state (verging on the disastrous, as they say). When
that arrives, I'll have a working PC again (oh no!). Full
marks to the helpful people on the helpline, but why was this
necessary in the first place, surely it's expecting too much
of first time users to be able to work out from the
minimalist manuals how to make (and restore if necessary) a
complete backup and not provide any CD-ROM, Sound Card, modem
and TV Tuner card driver floppy disks? The point I was trying
to make is that anyone who manages to destroy his Amstrad PC
before making a backup and finds he hasn't got all the
drivers necessary to restore anything can actually get
Amstrad to send them a CD-R and bootup floppy to restore
everything when it all goes wrong. It can't cost much - why
dodn't they just supply a bootup floppy disk with the
computers and everything else on a menu driven CD-ROM, for
example.
BECAUSE ITS TOO EASY DILWYN,THINK ABOUT IT,WHEN YOU RING
THEM FOR HELP THEY TAKE YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS AND ADD IT TO
THEIR MAILING LIST.THEN THEY SELL YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS ONTO
OTHER COMPUTER COMPANIES,SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE.THEREBY MAKING
THEIR MONEY THAT WAY AND ALSO INTRODUCING YOU TO WHOLE LOT OF
NEW BUMPH THAT SOME TREE/FOREST HAS DIED FOR!
By contrast, the Aurora system has been behaving quite
well. I still get the occasional keyboard hassles from the
Di-Ren interface. That problem comes and goes and I can't
quite shake it off. The original fix of using some thick
insulating tape to prevent shorting and heating problems
under the corner of the interface PCB worked wonders, but
only seems to have managed a 99% cure. Either characters go
missing, or spurious repeated characters, or randomly
inserted 7's are the symptons. Anyone know how to clear this
up?
STOP PRESSING THE 7 KEY?OR IS THIS YOUR 'LUCKY'NUMBER?
Going to QL shows seems to have become quite an
experience now, and it is quite a novelty to come across an
original black cased QL. Every machine at Quanta workshops
seems to run QL software somehow, whether the machines be
Peter Rowell's Amiga emulator, PC and Mac laptops using QPC
or the Mac emulator, Ataris like those of Jochen Merz or Alf
Kendall, or even Jonathan Hudson running UQLX. It does seem
to be a little unfashionable nowadays to make machines not
capable of running QL emulators. How times have changed!
Bill Richardson told me recently he'd acquired a large
number of unused QL boards. Although these are quite old,
they've seen little use and he didn't know how many were in
full working order. Given the fairly low price he'll sell
them for at shows, it may be worth buying one or two just to
have the spare parts in case parts become rare as the
original QL mother board becomes older, or for installing in
a PC style case if you intend to build another system for
yourself if you can get a board in working order.
A useful little publication you can get from BT fell
into my lap recently. It's called the BT Phone Book
Companion, and it gives a lot of useful information, such as
telling you what each telephone code means. As area codes now
cover quite a wide area, it even tells you which area within
that area a number is from based on the first 1 or two digits
of a number itself. In the area where I live, 01248 covers a
chunk of Anglesey as well as the area around Bangor where I
live, so if I got a call from a number starting with 60xxxx
I'd know the caller was in Bethesda just up the road, or
81xxxx was in Beaumaris in Anglesey. It has its uses. Need to
return a call to an 0370 number from an answering machine
message? No thanks, that's a Vodaphone GSM mobile, too
expensive to call daytime. Useful for tracking down those
nuisance sales calls from double glazing companies too, then
going to visit them with a sledgehammer to rearrange their
windows.... (actually, thinking about it, I could give them
my PC to run their company and that would be the end of their
company!!!) The phone book only costs about `2.50 I think,
surprisingly. You can get an STD codes file from the QL PD
libraries, but it doesn't go into so much detail.
Another useful telephone number for HP Deskjet users
with a fax machine is 0800-960271 (free call!). This is HP
First, their Fax Information Retrieval System. From this, you
can get product information faxes, lists of their printer
control code sets and so on. Just follow the spoken guides on
which numbers to press on a tone-phone to get an index faxed
to you of the information you want from them. Some of the
faxes are several pages long, make sure your fax machine has
paper in it!!!
Mike, your HD disk problems with the QXL just seem to
add to my belief that there is a problem with SMSQ in
handling HD disks. I've reported it to Jochen Merz of course,
but opinions vary as to whether there is a problem at all and
if there is, is it due to the PC's BIOS or the way SMSQ
handles the process. Different people seem to get different
problems - I get none at all on my single drive QXL or QPC,
but both my QL systems run into problems when using HD disks
under SMSQ/E which just don't happen in QDOS or Minerva. It
will appear to use the disk OK, but will randomly just trash
the disk. The problem doesn't happen with ED or DD disks. Few
users seem to have exactly the same problem, just that they
do have problems of one type or another (in your case,
formatting HD disks). It will be interesting to eventually
find out the reason for these problems with HD disks.
IT CERTAINLY WILL DILWYN,ANYONE WANT TO BUY ABOUT 400 HD
DISCS,I CAN THEN BUY SOME ED ONES!
Dennis referred to the Aurora colour drivers, or rather
the SMSQ/E with capable hardware drivers. I'm sure we're all
expecting these, just don't expect too much software too
quickly! It will depend on the programming tool developers,
we'll need compilers able to handle the job (QLib and C68),
tools such as Easyptr and QPTR Toolkit able to handle it all
and so on. I hope that the new drivers will be useable from
BASIC so that people can at least write their own programs to
handle the new colours until the commercial and PD software
writers start releasing their new program versions.
Paul and Bob - there is a QL-JPEG converter in Steve
Johnson's PD library. There are also freeware programs from
people like Jonathan Hudson able to handle TIFF and GIF file
conversions. I think that Ergon Development's Open World
program can also handle such file conversions. Carlo Delhez's
Engif and Ungif programs are also useful for handling GIF
files.
Darren - make sure that there are some jokes in your
joke book about my PC. I could do with a laugh. Darren's joke
book isn't really the first QL joke book, as some time ago I
converted a PC package of hundreds of (inoffensive!)
Christian Jokes by Rev. Thomas Scarborough. It got converted
when I was helping George Morris in Sutton Coldfield to
convert a lot of religious material to the QL. Anyone
interested in various versions of the Bible, religious
clipart, and various general religious material could do
worse than get in touch with George Morris, as he has
accumulated quite a lot of such material. Hope he eventually
releases it for the benefit of QL users interested in
religious subjects, as it's quite a sizeable collection of
software. George is on 0121-353 8571.
Darren, I doubt that the Currah Microspeech could be
used on the QL, I used to have one of these in my Spectrum
days, and I seem to recall it did some Spectrum-specific
things in both its hardware and software, so would be pretty
unuseable on the QL. Maybe Mike Dodd would be better off
advertising for a second hand Maxtronics QTalk or a Maurice
Computers QSV400 combined QL sound and speech card, from
about 10 years ago! The QTalk plugs into a serial port, while
the QSV400 plugs into the QL expansion port. These days, if
we are to put new speech hardware on the QL, I think we'd
have to look at implementing an RS232 unit, or something to
go on the end of Minerva MkII's I2C bus. However, Jerry
Reeves is currently designing and building a small QL sound
board for the EPROM slot. This records and plays back sounds,
so a speech library could be built up for it. The device will
be available from QBranch sometime this year. There's also a
little known similar unit from Di-Ren which plugs into their
System Amadeus bus.
Colin Baskett - for Z88 information, get hold of the Z88
Sourcebook by Timothy Swenson. Darren reviewed issue 1 for QL
Today, and Tim tells us that issue 3 is now available. You
can get it from the WWW from Tim, or from Steve Johnson's PD
library. It's packed full of information.
After reading Frank Merrison's comments about ESC codes,
I decided I'd write an article about it for a future issue of
QL Today (plug plug). Never miss a chance, do I Mike?
NO YOU DON'T MATE AND SO YOU SHOULD ITS ALMOST AS GOOD
AS OURS(JUST KIDDING)
Martin Burke - 'Smashing' is a term used to describe the
action of a piece of software called SMASH which compresses
executable files so that they take up less pace on a disk.
Smash is available from most PD libraries. Darren has kindly
reviewed it for QL Today (plug plug again) so remember to
read it!
Having got so many plugs in, I'm off before Mike starts
to edit down this letter!
THANKS FOR YOUR MONETARY CONTRIBUTION DILWYN,ALWAYS
GRATEFULLY RECIEVED.
Dilwyn Jones
#! Dennis Smith,
NET1(downstairs) (installed in a mini tower) Aurora,
Super Gold card, SuperHermes, Qubide, 420Mb hard disk, 2 ED
drives, (SER3)US Robotics 14.4 modem, (SER6)3 button serial
mouse, Printers: (SER1)Star LC10, (PAR)HP 540 Deskjet, 15
inch SVGA monitor.
Operating system Minerva 1.97, SMSQ/E.
NET3(upstairs) (installed in a mini tower) Gold card,
Hermes, Qubide, 540Mb hard disk, 1 HD drive, 2 DD drives.
Printer: (SER1)Brother HR5 thermal with fax roll paper.
Operating system SMSQ/E.
Hello all,
Martin Wheatley wrote to me:-
There are many people in ClubQL who don't have SMSQ/E
and are not likely to ever be able to. I have a SuperQboard
which is below a Trump card on the evolutionary scale.
SMSQ/E may be the answer to World peace and have the cure to
the common cold but it is not very relevant to someone like
me who is never likely to be able to afford the hardware and
software upgrades neccesary to run it!
Right, well the answer - to the original question - that
I could have given might have been complex and would not have
been done, so I supplied the correct answer instead. It seems
the time is right to make a note here. Software being written
now is SMSQ/E specific and so it should be, we have all moved
on. Note the 'all' used here meaning general majority. If you
stay with old hardware you will have to stay with old
software! Martin; you run a PC, so you know that don't you?
Imagine the colours and resolution of a NEW PC on a QL, you
use SMSQ/E to achieve this. Now we have multi processors
coming, its called progress. Progress is based on previous
financial support, your financial support. Verbal support is
worthless when you come to make your next purchase during
development. And so we move on, to not do so is to become
stagnant. To all those that have not put money back into the
QL community in the past few years thanks for nothing, leave
it to the rest of us, we'll do that. Martin note; there is no
expense involved in upgrading software, SMSQ/E upgrades are
free and your old software will run on it, so no expense
there. 60 quid for a Gold Card takes care of the hardware. If
that doesn't wake a few up to the truth the next step
involves a large red hot steel poker, the choice is yours.
I CAN APPRECIATE BOTH SIDES OF THIS ARGUMENT,I TO
STRUUGLED FOR YEARS ON A BASIC SET-UP GRADUALLY ADDING TO
IT.THAT IS UNTIL ONE DAY I SAID TO MARGARET I WOULD LIKE A
HARD DRIVE,WHEN SHE SAW HOW MUCH THEY WERE,SHE SAID I MIGHT
AS WELL BUY A PC AND A QXL CARD,THANK YOU MARGARET!BUT ITS
TAKEN ME 8 YEARS TO GET HERE,NOT EVERYONE IS SO FORTUNATE.
So this is going out on the front cover of QL Today is
it?, good. Anyone requiring some plastic windows phone me on
the above number.
Project one: cancelled. This was a serial scanner for
the QL. The scanner made by HP turned out not to be a true
serial device and so was not suitable. The throughput of
115,200 bps was ok as SuperHermes can handle this.
PITY,IT SOUNDED A GOOD IDEA.
Project two: complete and in final testing. FaxeQl, a
send and receive fax front end for both Qfax and Lfax, class
1 and class 2, pointer driven. It is quite comprehensive with
all the expected facilities.
IS IT FOR SALE OR PD(THROUGH CLUBQL?)
Project three: not started.
Project four: in working prototype stage. A 'black box'
that pretends to be a telephone exchange. This is for Quanta
sub groups. One QL runs Pbox and is a BBS. Another QL on the
next table 'dials in' to the BBS and can practice uploading,
downloading, message receiving, leaving a message for
everyone, sending or receiving private files or messages and
anything else you can think of. All sub group members can
have a go for hours on end until they are confident to try a
real BBS. Not only do you receive training in comms you are
supposed to 'plug in' your own equipment and set up your
modem and QTPI to ensure that everything works ok. There is a
new version of 'Chat' the QL to QL (via Phone) communications
program. This drives QTPI during connection to ensure the
correct link is established - QTPI to QTPI. To sum up the
'Black box' can be used to test sending and receiving faxes,
Chat, logging on to a BBS and other things that are coming
along in the future, as well as YOUR OWN hardware.
Darren Branagh: Shergar and Lord Lucan, I wondered where
they had got to, does he ride the horse?
More adverts:
Come to the Notts/Derby sub group every 4th Saturday of
the month, the directions are as follows.
NEW Notts/Derby sub group
Directions
----------
The Group will meet at The Methodist Church, Mill Lane, Codnor,
Derbys. The General location is between junction 26 on the M1 and the
Ripley turnoff on the A38. The actual road is the A6007 which runs
between Ripley and Heanor. Codnor is a small town with one main road
and a row of shops. Between the shops a road leads off, this is
Mill Lane, a few yards up Mill Lane is a car park on the left park in
there. The car park is next to the Methodist Church.
Meeting times
-------------
Meetings will be held as follows:-
The 4th Sat. each Month at 1.00pm-5.00pm
Quanta Workshop
---------------
The Notts/Derby Quanta Workshop will be on Saturday 13th
September 1997 and is located near junction 27 on the M1 at
Selston, Nottinghamshire. It is intended that either Friday
before the workshop or Saturday evening to have a QL party at
the Hotel including an inexpensive meal. Join in the trifle
throwing contest followed by the PC throwing contest. My
money is on Dilwyn for this one but it could be Mike. The
monstrous amount of wine consumption contest will be held
later, favourites are Robin Barker (DI-REN and Quanta
Chairman) and Stuart Honeyball (Miracle Systems). At the end
of the evening prizes will be given for the strangest code
written that evening that still works.
THATS OK,SO LONG AS STUART DOESN'T HAVE TO CYCLE BACK TO
BRISTOL!
'til next time.
Dennis.
!##
CURRENT SET-UP :
QL with JS ROMs SUPER GOLD CARD v2.49
HERMES v2.18
DI-REN KEYBOARD i/f
SCORPIUS 90 P KEYBOARD
1 X 5.25" DISK DRIVE
2 x 3.5" DISK DRIVES 1.44MB 19 June 1997
Dear All,
sorry I haven't been in touch for a while, but various things
have kept me busy. However, I've managed to do little digging and
unearth some information that may be of interest to the other readers.
CD-ROM, EZ-DRIVE, & OTHER REMOVABLE MEDIA THINGYS
Which do you want to hear first ? The Good News or The Bad News ?
THE GOOD NEWS is that most of the items that would enable the QL to
utilise CD-ROMs can be obtained from various sources.
The most commonly used drive mechanisms are IDE devices, and I am
not aware of any reason why at least some of them can't be plugged
into QUBIDE.
If don't have - or want - a PC case, you have the option of purchasing
a separate power supply. Alternatively, you can buy an external IDE
drive, complete with case; PSU; etc, from various suppliers.
The ProWesS package from PROGS contains an HTML ( hypertext ) reader
I'm prepared to stand corrected if I am wrong, but I think that the
information is stored on encyclopedia, catalogue, and some directory
CDs as HTML files.
AURORA will enable us to view GIFF, PCX, and maybe other types of
picture file without the aid of conversion software.
THE BAD NEWS. You cannot extract data from a disc unless you have
the one thing that isn't available to QL users :
a CD-ROM ACCESS PROGRAM.
As far as I know, QXL and Q-EMULATOR for the Mac are the only
QDOS/SMS systems that can read CD ROMs. Others users are limited
to playing audio CDs ( AMIGA QDOS & QPC ), or accessing CD ROMs via
the host computer's system software.
THE "GOOD" NEWS. The Syquest EZ-DRIVE removable hard disk has been
superceded by the EZ Flyer. The new device can use 135 MB or 230 MB
media. In other words, it's compatible with EZ-DRIVE cartridges.
Iomega is planning to launch an IDE version of the ZIP DRIVE.
Another company has recently introduced the A:DRIVE, which has the
advantage of being able to read coventional floppies. This device is
also capable of storing up to 120 MB on a single magneto-optical disk.
THE BAD NEWS.
---
Syquest do not produce ( and I don't think they intend to launch )
an IDE version of the EZ Flyer.
IOMEGA won't be selling IDE ZIP DRIVES directly to the public.
You can't get hold of them unless you are a computer manufacturer.
THERE ARE WAYS AND MEANS KEN,ITS POSSIBLE I MAY BE ABLE TO HELP.
The A:DRIVE is more expensive than IOMEGA's device.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WHAT IS A QL-COMPATIBLE ?
A fellow CLUBQL'er posed this question a couple of years ago, or
thereabouts.
I provided what I thought would be the definitive answer. but there
have been some significant developments during the intervening period.
For the sake of clarity, I have divided the various systems into 4
categories.
QL-CLONE.
---------
THOR XVI - CST/DANSOFT
A QL-compatible machine which fell by the way side partly
because the luxury design put it beyond the reach of most
users.
FUTURA - SANDY
A would-be QL replacement that never saw the light of day
because the company didn't have enough resources to complete
the project.
ATARI BASED SYSTEMS - JOCHEN MERZ SOFTWARE/FURST
EXTENDED4 : QL Emulator for the ATARI 260ST; 520ST/STF/STFM;
1040ST; MEGA ST, but not the STE or FALCON 030
QVME : High-resolution QL Emulator for the ATARI TT or
MEGA STE, but not the FALCON 030.
SMSQ/E : QL-compatible Operating System that runs on almost
monochrome version. any ATARI without the aid of additional hardware.
SMSQ/E : A legal replacement for the EXTENDED4 and QVME
colour version. system software, which is based on a patched copy
of the JS ROMs.
SMS2 : Similar to SMSQ/E but the O/S is supplied on a
plug-in cartridge, and it doesn't have a BASIC
interpreter. The bundled software includes
cut-down versions of QD and the QLIB Compiler.
AURORA - QUBBESoft
Acts as a QL replacement when it is fitted with QDOS or
MINERVA ROMs; 8049/HERMES + a keyboard i/f or SUPERHERMES;
ZX8302; QPLANE; and a ( SUPER ) GOLD CARD.
QXL.
----
QXL/QXLII
Turns the Pathetic Contraption into a high-performance QL
replacement with up to 8MB RAM, and NET ports.
The performance of the operating system ( SMSQ ) supplied
with the QXL is limited by the need to be as compatible as
possible with QDOS. SMSQ/E is less compatible but it has
many advanced features, e.g.-
LEVEL 3 DEVICE DRIVERS; BUILT-IN POINTER ENVIRONMENT and
HOTKEY SYSTEM II; QBAS and FILEINFO THINGS; EVENT HANDLING
SUPERQL.
--------
These systems are based on the QL motherboard and RAM/DISK
expansions developed by CST, SANDY, and MIRACLE.
THOR 8 THOR 20 THOR 21 QXT
EXEQUTOR QUBBESoft TOWER
PANDORA
NB- Most PANDORA users have fitted their systems with an
AURORA, but the case can accommodate a QL pcb.
VIRTUAL QL.
-----------
AMIGAQDOS is a Public Domain emulator, so it has
the advantage of being the cheapest QL-Compatible.
MAIN FEATURES :
Runs on any AMIGA, including machines fitted with accelerator cards.
Automatically loads and initialises a modified copy of the JS ROMs.
Supports MODE 4; MODE 8; and the F1/F2 start-up sequence.
You can also use the AMIGA's palette to redefine the INK, PAPER, and
BORDER colours.
Q-EMULATOR 68k MACINTOSH VERSION
There are 2 significant differences between this program and most other
QL emulators. Q-Emulator makes extensive use of the filing system and
other MAC resources. You have to create and manually install a copy of
the QDOS or MINERVA ROMs.
WARNING !!! You can't copy the actual contents of the ROM chips if
your system is fitted with a ( SUPER ) GOLD. This is
due to the fact that your QL/AURORA runs a patched copy of the code
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS : Might run on some of the older MACS,
but a 68040 CPU is more or less essential.
Q-EMULATOR POWERMAC VERSION
Same as the above, except that it is designed to run directly on
POWER PC processors.
QPC A software-only emulator that enables you to
run QL software on a 486 or PENTIUM PC fitted with at least 4MB RAM.
FOR : Doesn't need any extra hardware.
Can be installed on any notebook -
including machines that are unable to accommodate a QXL card.
AGAINST : Unusable on anything less than a 486 running at 100Mhz.
UQLX
A QL-Emulator for UNIX workstations, servers, etc. UQLX will run on
at least 5 types of processor -- HP-PA; INTEL ( 486 or better ); MIPS;
PPC; SPARC -- and several UNIX implementations.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :
UNIX or a UNIX-like operating system; XWINDOWS; gcc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SLIGHTLY TECHNICAL STUFF: what the XXXX is a .....
QL-CLONE. The clones are based on 3 totally different
concepts :-
1>. Design and built a new machine from scratch.
Don't use any QL components.
2>. Colonise the ATARI ST.
3>. Devise a new motherboard and video/system controller.
However these systems have 1 thing in common. They seek to replace
the QL with better hardware.
QXL. The QXL card is a fast QL clone that uses the PC
as an I/O sub-system.
SUPERQL. QLs that have been modified to such an extent
they bear little or no resemblance to the original in terms of their
appearance and capabilities.
VIRTUAL QL. A Virtual QL is a QL-compatible which doesn't have
any electronic, electrical, or electro-mechanical, components. It is
simply a software package that enables us to run our favourite programs
on "alien" hardware.
As far as the host computer is concerned, the Virtual QL is just another
application. The user sees an environment that mimics the real thing
with varying degrees of proficiency.
The main difference between Virtual QLs & most other QL-compatibles
is that they use the host computer's system software to communicate
with the outside world.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
!##
THANKS KEN,THAT IS I THINK THE FIRST TIME ANYONE HAS
EVER EXPLAINED TO ME THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SYSTEMS AND
I COULD UNDERSTAND IT!
Mr G. Wright,
21/6/97
Dear Mike,
It was a great pleasure to hear from you though it's not
for the first time as we did receive a Christmas card from
you and your family, you should have received one from us BUT
as my database keeps on going down because of the trashy
label programme I have it sometimes gets names and birthdays
wrong. Next Christmas I keep telling myself everything will
work fine. Famous last words...
NOW HERE'S A VOICE FROM THE PAST,I FOR ONE WAS SORRY TO
SEE YOU LEAVE FOR A PC GORDON,BUT WE DO COVER SOME PC NEWS,SO
MAYBE WE WILL SEE YOU RETURN.
I have nothing to do with the QL now and don't even
possess one anymore, QXL cards I am also without and anyway
my PC is now so full of cards for CD's , Scanners, and
Backup drives that it won't hold more without yet more
expense because as you well know PCs eat money . I do miss
the QL and the people I used to know especially Club QL but
times do move on and I can only say it was a pity the people
in Club QL didn't really want PC owners in with QL owners
when I was in the QL scene. How things stand now I don't know
but I still feel that a door closed is rarely opened and
though I fully realise that people who own only one type of
machine, ( i.e. the QL ) will only want to talk about that
machine. I still personally think it better to have club
members for whatever reason. After all no one is going to
keep writing in if everyone else avoids their subject. Anyway
the QL has gone the QXL there is no room for and I live with
my IBM 486 SX25 which used to have a 170 Mb hard disk and
now has 1.5 gb, the memory has been extended from 4mb to
16mb, there is a colour scanner, a CD and a JAZ disk for
backups and storage of graphic files. It still has Windows
3.1 as I don't think Windows 95 will be with us long. I have
seen three names of people who have some how or other come
across QLs either by ' pass downs ' from dads who no longer
use them or through ' car boot ' sales . Either way I've
written off to them giving your name and address and can only
hope they joined your merry band because that's one of the
memories I have of it.
YOU COULD STILL WRITE TO US MATE,YOU NEVER KNOW YOU
COULD ANSWER PC PROBLEMS!
It really is good to hear you're still going , should I
have ever doubted it ? and I do hope your 100th issue will be
something special. I would appreciate a copy of that
particular newsletter if you don't mind and I'll do what was
the ' norm' and send a disk with jiffy and address. Are you
charging for your services yet ? the whole of the PC
fraternity is and as for value for money they don't have a
clue.
NO MATE ITS STILL FREE AND HOPEFULLY SHALL REMAIN SO.
Tommy Thompson suffered a heart attack ... April I think
it was. He seems to be as OK. as anyone can be at his age (
74 ish ) no more driving and from what I hear he has great
difficulty walking and as for computing I think he will be
giving it up for good, he tells me he hasn't used his PC for
months now. His QL was passed to his daughter some years
ago.
SORRY TO HERE ABOUT TOMMY,IF YOU SPEAK TO HIM,WILL YOU
PASS ON OUR BEST WISHES.
I am still into gardening though I do find it hard going
at times , especially at this time of year when once again I
have grown and put in 730 bedding plants and veg on top of
that. I don't know if a picture of our cottage will come
over when I save this in ASCII , PEACH TEXT , and RTF
NOT INTO XCHANGE I'M AFRAID.
Health wise I now have a new plastic ankle which is an
improvement on the old one as it functions perfectly but
swells up the more it's used and then it becomes very
painfull. My heart took it upon itself to start beating at
three times the normal rate and though I spent 10 days in
hospital they couldn't slow it down so I had to have it '
stopped ' with an electric shock and restarted with the old
electric paddles, that seemed to do the trick as it's now
back to normal. All in all I'm not too badly off and there
are certainly a lot of people around that are in a bad way.
PROBABLY AT THE THOUGHT OF LOSING YOUR QL AND USING A PC
INSTEAD!
I trust and hope you and your family are well and that
work wise you are doing OK. Once more thankyou for takingthe time to
write and I do wish you all the best with your club. I really do mean
' your club ' because without you it would certainly have wound up by now.
Yours Gordon.
Hi Mike
Its good to hear from you again. Hope you and your
family are keeping well. Is it really the 100th issue. Nine
years have just flown by. I've followed the QL scene through
the net and remember some of the old familiar names. I still
get adverts from various QL sources. My own QL is still
working, lent out to my 12 year old niece who uses Quill for
doing her homework. I struggle with WordPro, Windows 95 ,
just get by with 16mb of memory, and have I really filled a
1.2mb hard disk? How did we manage with double disk-drive and
540kb of memory. That's progress I guess. I keep in touch
with Phil by phone. He reached a PC via a AMIGA 1200, I think
he's still got a couple of QL's. I've got his email address
here psimp39677@aol.com althrough recent email has been
"returned to sender" so he must be having trouble with the
account. Any chance of sending me the 100th issue by email. I
can get a copy to Phil if his account is still down.
NO PROBLEM KEN,ITS NICE TO HERE FROM YOU AGAIN MATE.I
SEE YOUR HOUSE IS UP FOR SALE,THINKING OF MOVING AND NOT
LETTING US KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING?
Cheers
Ken(Birch St)
FROM:INTERNET:steiner@nettz.com,
INTERNET:steiner@nettz.com TO:(unknown), mikekenneally1
DATE:29/06/97 09:32
#!
Richard Herland
29.06.97
Email: the_rector@uofh..com
Gear: Amstrad ALT-286, HP Deskjet 320, PC Xchange,
MS-DOS 6.0, Windows 3.1, Word 2.0 and Excel. Plus lotsa QL
clobber here in London waiting to be up-graded to QL II. Plus
a Toshiba T1900C 486 25 mhz laptop, 4MB RAM & 120MB HD and
US Robotics Sportster Vi 14.4K modem.
Hi, From the Alps -- to Mike and All the Gang!
And........HAPPY 100TH!!!!
Mike -- It's truly amazing, what you've done over the
years -- 8 or so of them!
Hats off and 3 cheers.
It makes perfect sense that, to celebrate the Great
Event, people are jumping out of airplanes and getting
married --- just as precipitately (if there's a pun there,
it's intended.)
AT LEAST MY CHUTE OPENED,SPIKE HAD HIS HAIR FLATTENED!
On July 1, when the 100th Newsletter appears, I'll be
drinking a toast to the NEXT 100 ISSUES.
All the best,
Richard of Merano
P.S. Mike, you might put a date on this, milestone,
issue. Who knows, to we Brits the First of July could become
as important at the Fourth!
P.P.S. Dilwyn -- I have a 286 Amstrad with a duff
battery. I bought it from John Hall in that condition 3 years
ago, suggesting that, even with the best of care, they don't
last very long. However, I have a mate in London who has
recently abandoned his 286 Amstrad. When I return I'll
inquire as to the condition of its battery.
FROM:Eifion Bedford, INTERNET:eifs@thenet.co.uk
TO:(unknown), mikekenneally1 DATE:20/06/97 16:45
Hello.. ( I sent you this a few days ago, but
looking at your letter again, I've noticed the '1' at the end
of your email name. Apologies if you've already ready read
this......)
NO MATE I DIDN'T GET IT,BUT ONLY BECAUSE I LENT MY
SET-UP TO GRAHAM LUTZ,SO HE COULD TRY OUT THE FRONT-END ON AS
MANY VARIABLES AS POSSIBLE.
Thanks for the letter regarding the 100th issue
of Club QL International. I'm afraid I did lose touch with
you at the beginning of last year: I had a bout of depression
and somewhat lost touch with everything for a while. I don't
really use a QL anymore. I upgraded my Amiga 1200 to a 4000
and then upgraded it to a 68040 which the AmigaQDOS emulator
doesn't seem to like. (I did, however, manage to get a QL
emulator working on an emulated Apple Mac running on the
Amiga). I've also turned to the dark side and bought a PC as
I need one for an Open University course I'm starting in
February. It's a 120MHz Pentium and it sucks :-)
I'M SURPRISED AT YOU MATE,YOU HAVE ENOUGH OF UNCLE
CLIVE'S STUFF TO START YOUR OWN MUSEUM!ALL YOU NEED TO DO NOW
IS PUT IN A QXL OR QPC AND YOU CAN HAVE A DECENT MACHINE
AGAIN!
Anyway, yes, I'd love to receive Club QL
International via e- mail. -- Eifion Bedford
MMX technology? I prefer MCMXXX technology!!
FROM:"Spike", INTERNET:u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk
TO:MICHAEL ANTHONY, [106114,710] DATE:28/06/97 11:35
Andrew Halliwell
E-mail: u5a77@cc.keele.ac.uk or
u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk or
u5a77@elec.keele.ac.uk or even spike1@cyberspace.org
(Yes, I get one e-mail account per course + the
standard one everyone gets, and you get get free ones via
telnet.....)
ALRIGHT BIGHEAD,WE CAN ONLY USE ONE AT A TIME!
Gear: 968K Trump card QL with enhanced Toolkit II
(built in atr device driver for reading/writing ST/PC
discs), Minerva MKI v1.97, Qubide with 40Meg hard disk,
twin DD floppies, pointer enviroment, Star 24 pin printer,
Speccy 128 with multiface 128, Enterprise 64 (not currently
working), and various bells and whistles.......
Greetings all... Long time no see/hear/read
etc...... It looks like I might start to receive CQLI
again now. I haven't seen one since about QL95 because
Mike lost a lot of his data in a crash, including my e-mail
address.... (Now that you have it Mike, could you use
the 3rd one, @elec, because it's curently being unused
much, so there's plenty of room....).
And now, the news..... Thanks again to those who
sponsored me for the parachute jump in April. It happened,
it was brilliant, and I'm going to do it again. In the end,
I raised close to 250 pounds. I've passed my first year,
so will be continuing with the degree. (It wasn't with
flying colours, but it'd been a bad year for me....[that's
my excuse and I'm sticking with it... ;-) ]) Right now,
I've got a summer job packing tacky seaside toys and gifts.
Still, it'll pay off my overdraft and I may EVEN be
able to afford a SuperGold card! YES! (Or, if I wait
'till september, maybe even a GoldFire card!!!)....
And now on to matters QLish.... On one of the
newsgroups, it has been mentioned that Mr Tebby has now
finished two of the colour device drivers for aurora.
One with 32000 colours, and one with 2 million. I imagine
these two will only work with the emulator QLs, because
I'm pretty sure the aurora only has a 256 colour
capability.... I hope I'm wrong. A QL capable of
matching SVGA or True Video colour would be fantastic....
On a more mundane note, I've been considering thinking
about possibly trying to convert a simple Spectrum game
to the QL. This would involve dissasembling a speccy game,
taking the resulting assembler, and converting it to 68000.
Then of course, there's the problem of screen formats and
so on... Anyone got any suggestions (or helpfull hints)?
NOTE: Make it a 16K game to start with.....
YES,USE SPECULATOR OR ONE OF THE OTHERS.ALTHOUGH IT
WOULD BE A GOOD EXCERSISE,JUST TO SEE HOW DIFFICULT IT WOULD
BE.
This month, I've included a zipped file. It is a
recursive copier, which means it SHOULD be able to copy
from nested directories, which can be a problem for people
using the Level II device drivers. Very good for backups,
hopefully. (I've not had a chance to check it out yet...)
PROBLEM,THE PROG DID NOT CONVERT OVER AS YOU WISHED
SPIKE,BUT I SHALL BE E-MAILING YOU TO TELL YOU
ANYWAY.HOPEFULLY YOU WILL SEND IT LAND MAIL!
Right... And now, on with the show..... MIKE!
Congratulations... (I kept forgetting to say it over the
phone...) I agree with your sentiments about the QL Today
cover disk. It's going to be a VERY effective way of
drawing in some new blood into our friendly little crowd.
However.... I think I'd disagree with you about "A lot of
people move from the QL to the PC". They might BUY a PC, but
I think most QLers know a good thing when they see one and
either Keep the QL, or upgrade to one of the Emulators
(QXL/QPC). After all, who wants to be forced to use a
machine that DEMANDS that you have at least 8 Megs of RAM to
be able to do ANYTHING? (And if you have Win95, that's about
right.) Also, the PC is a hotbed of badly written,
bloated, bugridden pieces of so called 'software'.
(Coincidentally, a lot written by MicroSoft). The QL on
the other hand is still quite capable of running on less
than 1 Meg (Although you might need about 4 if you want to
do something REALLY flashy....) To summarise, anyone
who totally abandons QDOS/SMSQ in favour of certain other....
"operating systems" will most likely regret the change. I
admit, I might be temped to buy a PC. BUT, and this is a
VERRRY big but, the first thing I would do when I got it
home would be FORMAT the hard disk, erasing all virus like
constructs (such as Win95), and install a nice, unix-like,
FREE operating system known as Linux.
YOU KNOW THATS THE ONE THING THAT SURPRISED ME,ON
WINDOZE 3.11 THEY HAD A ANTI-VIRUS PROG,YET ON WINDOZE 95
THEY DON'T!
Anyway, enough of my anti-microsoft rantings,
and on with the letters....
Malcolm Robert appears to be suffering from
corrupted disk syndrome.... This one is tricky, but there is
obviously a cause or two. 1) Mike... Do you put stickers
on the envelopes that you send out with "Do not xray" on
them? X-Rays do erase disks and even corrupt EPROMS. If you
don't, then I'd imagine his envelope passes though a royal
mail depot where security is a higher priority. Maybe they
deal with a VIP or two, and all packages are examined?
THIS IS A POSSIBILITY AND HE IS LOOKING INTO IT AT HIS
END.
2) Maybe in transit, the disk has to make a shortdetour through a
parallel dimension in order to get to
Malcolm..... (Or have I been watching too much Startrek???
FROM THE SOUND OF IT MORE LIKE 'THE OUTER LIMITS'
3) There MAY be something wrong at his end. Disk drives
that are out of alignment can cause problems. One drive
that's slightly out in one direction would still be readable
to the vast majority of people, but if someone disk was out
in the other direction, then the error of the two drives
would add together. This is a possibility....
4) Malcolm. Where do you put your disk when you're not
using it? DO NOT put disks anywhere near electric motors,
loudspeakers, or anything that is magnetic. This is a MAJOR
cause of disk wipe. If you're still not sure, take a compass
(of the direction finding type, not the circle drawing
type), and walk around your house, putting the compass
near where you put the disk. (Including the doormat and
letter box... Y'never know.) If the compass swings away
from north, look where it's pointing, and there's
your problem....
Personally, I think No:2 is most likely.... :-)
Martin Wheatley: You talked about a web
page.... I think it's an interesting idea myself. It might
not be interesting to the majority of the list, but it could
be another way of attracting new blood. (I'm beginning to
sound like a Vampire: The Masquerade player....) There
are a lot of people interested in the QL out there with
Internet access, and there are quite a few web pages. Ron
Dunnet, Tony Firshman and a lot of other QL people all have
pages dedicated to thier products. If it works for them,
maybe it would work for ClubQL. Now, I know for a fact
that it is possible to get Web pages for free, because I
know a few someones who have. And if it doesn't cost
anything, it can't hurt, can it? The way I'd do the web
page thing is to introduce everyone on ClubQL, and have
maybe 5 back issues of ClubQL on the page, updating it once a
month by adding the new issue and deleting the oldest one.
(It doesn't HAVE to be interactive. It just has to attract
attention).
THERE YOU GO SPIKE,WELL VOLUNTEERED.WE LOOK FORWARD TO
YOUR EFFORTS WITH ANTICIPATION.
Martin, I totally agree with your responce to
Dennis Smith. That's the attitude the majority of PC
programmers seem to have. Can't run the software,
improve the hardware. Dennis. Saying things like "I use
SMSQ, so it's easy" is very unhelpful. I LOT of the people
here, myself included don't EVEN have a Gold Card, let
alone SMSQ. Martin. Now for the helpfull bit. There
are several programs and extensions out there that can
handle PC disks without having to upgrade to SMSQ. Off
hand, the ones I can think of are: Xover: A PC/ST to QL
(and vice versa) disk reader/writer. It's by Digital
Precision, and chances are, if you don't have it, you'll
know someone who does. It can also be found on the Digital
Precision disks for Media Manager Special Edition,
Solution?? PC Emulator (I think) and Conqueror PC
emulator. In general, it's easy to use, but not as easy as
the other things available. Such as..... Enhanced
Toolkit II ROM: This has lost the SDUMP routine, which I
liked, and replaced it with a new device driver, atr. The
command to activate this is simply atr_dev, and after
that, all you have to do is replace flp with atr when you
want to do something with a PC disk. e.g. dir atr1_,
wcopy atr1_,flp2_ and so on. I'm not sure where this is
available.... Someone know? AtariDOS_rext: Not as
convenient as atr_dev, but much more convenient than Xover,
this is a loaded extension which adds some new commands
to SuperBasic. Commands include Qcopy, Icopy Idir and
Iformat. Qcopy copies TO the QL from a PC disk, Icopy
copies TO an IBM (PC) disk, Idir does a directory of the
PC disk and Iformat explains itself... I *think*
atariDOS_rext is public domain.... But I'm not too sure
on that... Anyone?
Mike apparently wrote something about SKY 1 and it's
Star Trek day... Well.... Here's how us earthbound
people can create a Sky 1 trekkathon emulator. All you need
is a video recorder, and a little patience. What you do is,
record Star Trek (the original) on Fridays, Star Trek
Next Gen on Wednesdays, StarTrek Deep Space Nine on
Thursdays and Star Trek Voyager on Sundays.... Do that, all
on the same tape, play them back during the Sky TV trekkie
time slot on saturdays and you have Version 1.0 of the
emulator. If you want to make it more authentic, then you
need Version 1.5 which requires 2 video recorders, so
that you can add in adverts and previews every 10 minutes.
(Remembering that the first advert break is about 15
seconds afetr the title sequence.....) And there y'go...
A Sky 1 Startekkathon emulator.....
WHAT ABOUT THE 4 HOURS ON SUNDAY,AND THE 2 HOURS EVERY
DAY AT 5 AND 11?
Frank Merrison... "Is a card plugged into a PC,
still a QL?" Of course it is Frank. If it runs the
software and operates under QDOS or SMSQ, it's a QL.
Think of it this way.... When the QL was released, it's
specification was comparable to a PC at the time. Similar (or
better) graphics capability, similar RAM, MUCH better
operating system, etc for less than 1/3rd the price.
Now, the PC has grown... Sort of.... But it's STILL
1970 style technology at the heart of it. Just imagine
what the QL would be like now, if Uncle Clive had kept
supporting it. It would not be recognisable. (It might
have maintained a modicum of compatibility, but I doubt
Sinclair would've gone to the stupid extremes of
IBM and the other PC manufacturers....
Dennis Smith.... You mention the Aurora Card....
I've recently seen something posted to a newsgroup
stating the Tony Tebby has now finished two of the colour
device drivers, for 32000 and 2 million colours....
Now, I'd heard that the Aurora was only capable of 256, which
means that the drivers so far are for the Emulators, and not
the QL itself. (I hope I'm wrong though, and the aurora CAN
handle that amount of colour.... It's about time the QL was
capable of beating the PC in graphics...) You also said
something that I sincerely hope you're wrong about.
"Hopefully the meeting will see the unvieling of the
GoldFire add-on card for the aurora" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's the bit I seriously hope you're wrong about. What
is the point of releasing add-on cards for the aurora? There
would be NO market for them. If the GoldFire is going to
replace the SuperGold Card, then it should be capable of
expanding a standard QL. Otherwise, I can't see him
selling very many units. (I know I can't afford a GoldFire
AND an Aurora, and I'd prefer to get GoldFire than Aurora
to start with if it was a choice between GoldFire and Super
Gold.)
Paul McPherson... You were asking about JPEG and
TIFF readers on the QL... Now, I have seen a TIFF reader in
the ngv FTP site. When I checked it out though, it was only
capable of handling black and white TIFF files. No colour.
As for JPEG... I don't think that'll be worth looking into
until the Colour drivers are finally available. You see,
JPEG is a kind of enhanced, compressed GIF file. GIF files
can be read with UnGif, and are only 8 Bit images. JPEGs
are 16 Bit images, and at the moment, GIFs stretch the QL to
the limit as far as stippling can go.... "What on earth
is Aurora?" was another question.... To which I'll answer
"Have you been on Mars for the past few months?" ;-p <<
Smilie with tongue sticking out..... The Aurora Card is a
replacement motherboard for the QL. You swap a few chips
from the old board and it's about a the size of the
microdrive bay on the size of the QL. With this
board, a Super Gold Card and SMSQ, the QL suddenly has the
capability of doubling it's graphics resolution, and when
the Colour device drivers are finally finished for it, it
will grant the humble QL the ability to have COLOUR! Not just
4, or 8, or even 16, but 256 (or more?). The other colour
modes will still be available, I imagine 256 mode will force
a lower resolution. Possibly the current 8 Colour mode
resolution. (Although it might just grab a bit more RAM and
use higher resolutions.... Wait and see I suppose.... Bob
did a Tandum Jump? I did a Static line jump in April. I'm
hoping to continue with it and eventually (after maybe 6 more
jumps) do a full solo skydive myself..... What's it feel
like? (I only got about 3 seconds worth of free-fall...)
Darren Branagh.... Making the Currah Microspeech work with a
QL....? It's an interesting idea, but I very much doubt
it's be practical. It was, after all, designed for a
Spectrum, which is Z80 based. (A completely different CPU
architecture.) Or were you talking about salvaging the bits
and rebuilting it in the QLs image? I dunno, I've missed
out on about the last 5 Club QLs....
Martin Burke... Smash, is I beleive, a nice little
compression routine specifically for executable programs.
What it does is, it smashes (similar to zipping) a program,
compressing it, and then tags itself onto the file. So, if
you want to run the program you just execute the
compressed file, which automagically decompresses the
program and then runs it. I think.... (Correct me if I'm
wrong....)
Well.... That just about looks like it's the end for
now.... Hope this QLToday thing's a success....
FROM:"Spike", INTERNET:u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk
TO:MICHAEL ANTHONY, [106114,710] DATE:27/06/97 16:42
Re:the euroenglish silly I promised.....
snippety snip
Subject: FW: Ve huf vays tu mek yu tok...
The News Standard has received this bulletin fresh from
our Brussels based News Service...
The European Union commissioners have announced that
agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred
language for European communications, rather than German,
which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations,
Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had
some room for improvement and has accepted five-year phased
plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft
"c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with
joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only
will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one
less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond
year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This
will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling
kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated
changes are possible.
Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters,
which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al
wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag
is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such
as replasing "th" by z" and "w" by v.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from
vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be
aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten
styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil
find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
-- Neale Hind neale@easton.demon.co.uk
--- Insanity is hereditary http://www.easton.demon.co.uk/
--- You get it from your children
BRILLIANT,HOW TO GET US TO SPEAK GERMAN OVERNIGHT!
------------- |GCv3.1 GCS/EL>$ d---(dpu) s+/- a- C++ U
N++ o+ K- w-- M+/++ PS+++ PE- Y t+ | |5++ X+/++ R+ tv+ b+ D
G e>PhD h/h+ !r! !y-|I can't say F**K either now! :( |
------------------------------------------------------------
FROM:"Spike", INTERNET:u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk
TO:MICHAEL ANTHONY, [106114,710] DATE:23/06/97 13:05
Re:The FTP directory
UTILS
Up to ql
Jul 4 1996 Zip File
acp2e4.zip 40Kb Dec 11 10:22 Zip File
aref2.zip 85Kb Dec 11 10:22 text/plain
aref2rea.dme 4Kb Jul 4 1996 Zip File
bjcdump.zip 50Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
BlackHole.lzh 4Kb May 31 00:29 Zip File
cdisk16b.zip 27Kb May 31 00:29 text/plain
cdiskrea.dme 8Kb May 2 1996 Zip File
Dbas.zip 211Kb May 2 1996 Zip File
DbasUpdt.zip 17Kb Nov 7 1996 Zip File
ddql.zip 11Kb Nov 7 1996 text/plain
ddqlread.txt 260 bytes May 2 1996 text/plain
Dhrystone.lzh 14Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
Doctor4.lzh 22Kb Jan 8 10:45 Directory
ghostscript May 2 1996 Zip File
GRABIT430.zip 79Kb Jul 4 1996 Zip File
gzip124.zip 313Kb Nov 7 1996 Zip File
hdql.zip 11Kb Nov 7 1996 text/plain
hdqlread.txt 260 bytes Sep 23 1996 Zip File
hist1v27.zip 23Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
History123.lzh 13Kb Sep 23 1996 text/plain
histv127.txt 336 bytes May 2 1996 Zip File
Indent18.zip 99Kb Jul 4 1996 Zip File
infozip.zip 285Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
MathBench.lzh 21Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
MCRON107.lzh 2Kb Sep 23 1996 Zip File
memv.zip 4Kb Sep 23 1996 Troff-me
memvread.me 810 bytes May 31 00:29 text/plain
pex30.txt 721 bytes May 31 00:29 Zip File
pex30.zip 49Kb Sep 23 1996 Zip File
piqdoc.zip 294Kb Sep 23 1996 Zip File
piqdsk.zip 168Kb Sep 23 1996 Troff-me
piqread.me 1Kb Jan 8 10:45 Directory
qfax Jan 8 10:45 Zip File
ql_pgp_262i.zip 679Kb Jan 8 10:44 Directory
ql_tools May 2 1996 text/plain
QPatch101.lzh 31Kb Jan 17 10:18 Directory
qtpi Jan 23 10:29 text/plain
quilm.txt 1Kb Jan 23 10:29 Zip File
quilm.zip 37Kb Jul 4 1996 Zip File
qziplux.zip 60Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
SFormat1E5.lzh 22Kb May 31 00:29 Zip File
simser.zip 11Kb May 31 00:29 text/plain
simserea.dme 8Kb Nov 6 1995 text/plain
spooler.readme 597 bytes Nov 6 1995 Zip File
spooler.zip 6Kb May 2 1996 text/plain
StarButton.lzh 16Kb Jul 4 1996 Zip File
tar-qdos.zip 57Kb Jul 25 1996 Zip File
thginfo.zip 23Kb Jul 25 1996 Zip File
thing05.zip 14Kb Jan 23 10:29 Zip File
tkcon.zip 26Kb Jan 23 10:29 text/plain
tkconrea.dme 166 bytes May 2 1996 text/plain
TOSforQL.lzh 66Kb Sep 23 1996 Troff-me
uhr-read.me 219 bytes Sep 23 1996 Zip File
uhr.zip 11Kb
FROM:Graham Buck, INTERNET:grim@spuddy.mew.co.uk
TO:(unknown), MIKEKENNEALLY1 DATE:25/06/97 21:24
#!Graham Buck
JS QL ( TH Eprom ), 2 x 3.5 HDDD, SerMouse, QIMI Mouse,
Epson FX105 printer, Zoom 14,400 Modem, Grundig PM015
monitor on loan Gold Card .
Mike K, Frank M & Martin W, Congratulations on getting
ClubQL International to issue 100. Well done.
Mike K, Congratulations to Margaret and yourself on your
new marital status. It is a strange expression you use
MADE AN HONEST MAN OF ME , what were you before then
?
TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DISHONEST!
Frank M said ....
I have no doubt got it wrong but not having Colin B's
original question about 'esc' codes and Abacus formulas
I am not sure if I follow Graham Buck's remarks
correctly.
And also .... As I see it he was explaining how he
copies formula from one cell to others in Abacus. Why
the quotes? Why not simply use the echo command?
The question stated why Colin could not use the copy or
echo commands and that is simply because if you do, all
formulae are linked together. If you Amend one, you
amend them all.
He required several different formulae referring to one
Look-up table or different parts of the same Look-up
table. Using Copy or Echo increments the cell references
in the copied formulae which takes them out of the
required ranges.
Using absolute cell references will not work because he
required different ranges or offsets in different
formula and as stated at the start, if you Amend one,
you amend them all.
If you want a spreadsheet with lots of similar but not
the same formula, then it is either a case of entering
them all manually; or, adopt my method which does half
the work for you, especially if they are long formulae.
Editing each with the Amend command on should still
though tedious be easier than having to manually enter
each one.
So, I reiterate, If you wish to construct a Spreadsheet
contaning lots of similar, but not the same formulae,
then you work out firstly what the master formula is
going to be for each section and make sure that it
works. Then using the Amend command in the quotation
marks () at the beginning and end of the formula and
press Enter. This then effectively changes the entry
from a formula to a Text entry. This can then be Copied
or Echoed over the required ranges. Using Amend again to
correct the formula and remove the quotation marks and
press Enter and you have a formula again. ...
How could my reference to printer esc codes have been
confusing, all I said was that I had previously sent in
a full list of the common Epson esc codes and how to get
them on a QL. Mike K obviously knew what I was referring
to as he had seen it recently. ...
Still Frank, sorry to hear about your trials and
tribulations with the QL, killing it and a Gold Card,
and possibly a monitor simply by turning a printer on.
I too have had a similar experience over the last couple
of weeks even though like yourself I have been getting
away with it for years turning various things on and off
and plugging and unplugging them while the QL is turned
on. Though normally everything is plugged into one
socket so that initially everything is turned on
together.
I have just obtained a 12V television with a view to
getting the QL more mobile. The TV has a Scart socket
and as this is what I use already to connect to a
monitor I thought it would be all straightforward. How
wrong could I have been.
I plugged the Scart plug in .... Nothing doing
I plugged the Scart plug out .... Nothing doing
In, Out, In, Out, shake it all about .... Nothing doing
OK, so the TV has a phono socket on the front for Video
input and I have another din plug wired up just for that
so I give that a try...
I have a picture of sorts but very distorted ...
Try the Scart plug again .... Still nothing doing
Back to the phono lead .... Screen flashes .... QL dead
Fortunately for me it would seem compared with Frank,
only the 8031 chip ( the second large chip from the left
hand side of the QL ) had gone and so was easily
replaced although these are becoming hard to get.
The solution to my problem, should anybody be interested
in connecting the QL to a TV via a Scart socket is as
follows:
To accept an AV / RGB input the TV requires 12V and 3V
inputs to switch it to the right mode, I have taken
12Volts from pin 6 on the Serial sockets and all other
connections via the 8 pin Din socket on the QL.
QL 8 pin Din QL Ser1 /
Ser2
Composite RGB RGB RGB
12V Earth Sync Green Red Blue
Pin 2 4 6 7 8
6 | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| 5 9 13 18 20 11 15 7 16
8 |__|__|___| |
| Links
-/\/\/\/-.
820 Ohm Scart
Resistor Plug / Socket
Pin 8 on the Scart is 12V AV switching and pin 16 is 3V
RGB Blanking.
WARNING The above lead would also work with a Video
recorder, but you need to disconnect the 12V lead at the
QL end first as a Video puts out 12V on pin 8 already.
Finally Frank, of course you still have got plenty to
say ...
Dennis Smith said ....
I've been busy during the last week or so organising a
new monthly sub-group, the first meeting was on Saturday
the 24th of May. The meeting was not very widely
publicised as we had a core group to "test the water"
first time out.
I hope that you are having more success in getting
people to join in than I am having. There are 12 Quanta
members in the Coventry / Northampton area, but I can
only manage to get 3 to attend monthly meetings in
Northampton. Despite having written to them all twice,
only two had the decency to reply.
On that subject Dennis, hmmmmm, hmmmmm, sorry that I
have not acknowledged receiving your programme as yet.
My original cryptic reply was due to the fact that I had
misread your notes and presumed you were sending me
something different. Unfortunately your programme does
not work on my set-up even with the Qlib extensions
loaded, it just burps at me when I invoke it ? I will
definitely leave you another message soon.
P. McPHERSON said ....
All of this leads me to this months series of
questions: that one of the more experienced members of
QLCI may be able to answer for me:- Are there any
decent, easy to use TIFF and JPEG programs available
for use on the QL equipped with a Gold Card? What on
earth is Aurora? Has anyone got any more details on
Goldfire?
At the moment the only way to view JPEG files on a QL is
to convert them to GIF and copy them to a QL disk, then
use Ungif to view them. This isn't generally very
successful though and an alternative is to further
convert the Gif file to PostScript for ( Depending on
its file size, you may not have enough memory with a
Gold Card ) and print it using GhostScript. This gives a
more viewable B & W image, but if the resolution of the
original is good and it is large image, then you will
almost certainl ot have enough memory to convert it.
The above unfortunately relies on having access to a PC
in order to convert the JPEG file to another format in
the first place.
Another option, again relying on having access to a PC
and a modem could be to load the image into say Word and
then print it to a file as a Fax. Convert the Fax to QL
format and view it on the QL with QFV ( Qfax View ).
This would again be a B & W ima though, but probably
more viewable than if it were colour.
Another option, again relying on having access to a PC
is to convert the files to bit map format which after
converting to QL format can be loaded into programmes
like Qdesign and Line Design and probably Page Designer.
Last suggestion, and probably the easiest, send Dilwyn a
begging letter printed on paper with pictures of the
Queen on and ask his assistance.
Mike Dodd, I hope that your information on Ch 5 will
sort out some of the obvious comments that people have
been making about not seeing any re-tuners. Obviously
the re-tuners are only required in areas where Ch5 is
broadcasting on Channel 37, in the other areas it should
not be necessary or a problem. The other misconception
is that the re-tuners will come and tune your TV into Ch
5 for you whereas they are only required to de-tune your
Video so that it does not cause cross channel
interference.
That's it for now
Graham Buck
-- grim@spuddy.mew.co.uk * Meeeow ! Call Spuddy on
(01268) 515441 for FREE mail & Usenet access *
Graham D Lutz
Gear includes:- Minerva 1.93 AURORA QL with Super Gold Card,
ED and HD disk drives, 40Mb IDE HD, SyQuest 128 HD,
Tatung SVGA monitor, Canon BJC-4100.Various other
QLs.
Dear Mike and fellow Quantum Leapers,
Well its here, the 100th issue of QL Club International and
I'm looking forward to reading contributions from some
past regulars which I know Mike has contacted.
Its a funny old world you know. I haven't backed up my hard
drive for a few months now, and I've changed a lot of
files and added quite a few, so I decided it was time to
backup.
Just 10 minutes after completion of backing up I saved a file
to win1_ and corrupted the drive. Lucky or what !!
I BET YOU BREATHED A SIGH OF RELIEF ABOUT THAT GRAHAM,IT'S A
HELL OF A SHOCK WHEN IT DOES HAPPEN!
Incidentally, I use Norback for backing up my hard drive, and
very well it works too, but I've now started to backup
to a partition on my SyQuest EZDrive, much faster and no
swapping discs, previously it was like feeding buns to
the elephants, even with ED diskettes !!!
You should find a copy of Dilwyns DISPLAY_cde and associated
files on this disc (probably in a _zip file). These
extensions are invaluable when writing programs which
wish to use the display on different resolutions.
I used these to write the part of the front end program which
loads a QL 32K bitmap to the screen. Normally on a
standard QL 512 X 256 screen you would use a line
something like :-
LBYTES win1_QL_scr,131072
where 131072 is the base address of the screen in RAM. On
Aurora or QXL platforms (probably Atari as well) the
base address of the screen will not be the same and
therefore the last line should not work.
So, I started writing the front end and used the same line as
above, although I knew the address was wrong. It worked.
Aurora must recognise the intention to write to the
screen and allows it. QXL however does not and my front
end program had a blank screen until I was sent a copy
of the DISPLAY extensions. Ta Dilwyn.
Heres another puzzler from my front end program.
I wanted to stuff some characters into Quill so that it could
auto-load the newsletter, I wanted to use Quill rather
than Xchange as it occupies much less disc space,
Xchange however allows file names to be passed to it in
the command line so is much easier to use.
I eventually used a modified version of Simon Goodwins
Taskforce code to pass the characters to Quill. The code
relies on Quill (an original un-patched copy) leaving
the cursor in Superbasic when it is EXECed (as opposed
to EXEC_Wed). Once the cursor is in basic the code finds
Quill's input channel, activates its cursor and by using
DIY Toolkit QUEUE% function stuffs the neccesary
characters into Quill. It worked fine in QDOS and SMSQ
on the QL and Aurora, but alas not on QXL. The QXL runs
Quill as normal when EXECed, leaving the cursor in
Quill, shame.
As an upside to all this, I borrowed Mikes Multimedia PC for
a few days to iron out the above wrinkles (Ta Mike). I
must admit that I quite enjoyed the joys of Multimedia,
for a few hours. It would be nice to see some of these
facilities on the QL some day, but I still would not
change my machine for one of these PC's even if they
don't.
Until next time.
Graham Lutz
#! Colin Baskett
30 June 1997
EQUIPMENT: QL FITTED WITH SUPERGOLD CARD; MkI MINERVA -
version 1.82;
SUPERHERMES; 170 MB HARD DISK; SINGLE 3.5" HD DISC DRIVE;
PHILIPS COLOUR MONITOR; SERIAL MOUSE; PRINTER BJ10sx; XCHANGE
3.90L; various other pieces of QL equipment (eg BJC4200, Z88)
shared with daughter, Wendy.
Dear Mike,
Congratulations on your century! Many thanks for all the
hard work you have put in for our benefit. You deserve a
telegram from the Queen.
I GOT ONE COLIN,SHE APOLOGISED FOR NOT KNOWING WHO THE HECK I
WAS!
ABACUS FORMULAE
Frank Merrison writes -----
"I have no doubt got it wrong but not having Colin B's
original question about 'esc' codes and Abacus formulas I am
not sure if I follow Graham Buck's remarks correctly.
As I see it he was explaining how he copies formula from one
cell to others in Abacus. Why the quotes? Why not simply use
the echo command?"
Graham was dealing with the problem how to copy Abacus
formulae so that they can be individually edited without
altering all the other copies. Formulae ed or ed
remain linked together so that altering one alters all the
rest. If the formulae are converted into strings they can
then be edited individually and the inverted commas then
removed to change them back to formulae. Useful if you want
to change cell or range references.
F1/F2 and a PROBLEM WITH F3/F4 on START UP
I would like to be able to choose between alternative
branches of my boot programme by pressing either F1 or F2 on
start up. A few trials indicate that PEEK(163892) returns 0
for mode 4 and 8 for mode 8. Can anyone explain what I am
reading and tell me whether it is a reliable indicator. Is
there a better way. Ideally, I would like to be able to use
F3 and F4 also to initiate other branches of my boot
programme (I have Minerva) but since I have had QUBIDE and a
SUPERGOLDCARD installed the machine just freezes if I press
F3 (and I think F4) on start up.
I MAY BE DENSE OR MAYBE NOT,BUT I THOUGHT THIS WAS WHAT THE
USE OF 'ALT'KEY SETUPS WERE FOR.
QUANTA MAGAZINE
Having some time on my hands and having had a little
experience of editing a group magazine back in the days of
electric typewriters, I rashly picked up the telephone when
an invitation appeared in the April QUANTA Newsletter for
applications for the position of Editor. Since then I have
been struggling with the software (ProWesS, LINEdesign and
TEXT87plus4) that my predecessor, Phil Jones, had been using
to produce the magazine. Despite a lot of assistance from
Phil I am still struggling. It appears that certain features
in the installation process for ProWesS will only work under
SMSQ/E which I do not have. Phil is sending me some working
files which my system is unable to produce and I am hoping
that I may at last be able to print from ProWesS. I am
resigned, however, that I shall have to produce the July
magazine, my first, using QUILL, good old QUILL, and scissors
and paste.
WHY NOT USE XCHANGE?
However, my purpose in mentioning QUANTA is to invite
suggestions about topics that people would like to see
included in QUANTA - from both existing readers and potential
new readers! I should be glad to hear your ideas, your hopes
and, even, your gripes. Submissions for inclusion in QUANTA
would also be gratefully received.
YOU COULD ALWAYS USE THE NEWSLETTER,IT WOULS SAVE YOU ONE
ISSUE AT LEAST.JUST KIDDING,QUANTA DOES'NT LIKE US.BUT MAYHAP
THAT WILL CHANGE NOW.CONGRATULATIONS COLIN,NOW YOU WILL SEE
WHAT IT'S LIKE FROM THE OTHER SIDE!
Best wishes
Colin B
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