*********************
QL
CLUB
INTERNATIONAL
*********************
ISSUE 104
OCTOBER 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.
HI ALL,
WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?
FIRST OF ALL LET ME WELCOME 3 NEW FRIENDS TO OUR LITTLE
GROUP,A.PARKER LEWIS,WELCOME PARKER AND ALSO J.C.MARCUS,NO FIRST
NAME,COME ON JC WE ARE VERY INFORMAL HERE!ALSO ADRIAN YOUNG.MAYBE
NEXT TIME WE CAN GET PARKER AND ADRIAN TO SEND US SOME INPUT TO
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THEMSELVES.
I HAVE A QUESTION,THERE YOU GO FRANK A QUESTION!HOW DO YOU
ACTUALLY GET ON TO A BULLETIN BOARD?I HAVE ACCESSED THE NENE
VALLEY BOARD,SIGNED IN AND SET A PASSWORD,BUT WHERE DO I GO FROM
HERE?
MARTIN HAS COME UP WITH A PROBLEM THAT SOME OF YOU MAY BE
HAVING,AS REGARDS E-MAIL AND THE FACT THAT SOME OF YOU ARE JUST
USING SSSHHHHH! PC'S AND XCHANGE.FROM NOW ON I SHALL BE JUST
E-MAILING THE NEWSLETTER AND NOT THE PROGS,WHEREAS BEFORE I WAS
ZIPPING THEM ALL TOGETHER AND SENDING THEM OUT TOGETHER.THOSE OF
YOU WHO WANT ALL THE PROGS AS WELL,SEND ME AN E-MAIL AND I SHALL
SEND THEM OUT TO YOU.
PARKER,ARE YOU STILL HAVING PROBLEMS USING QL100 AND THE
FILES?IF YOU READ SPIKE'S LETTER YOU WILL FIND OUT HOW TO UNZIP
FILES,USING THE COMMAND LINES ONLY.
AS USUAL IF I THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE I SHALL BE BACK!
I'M BACK,SPIKE,IS THERE ANY WAY YOU CAN PUT AN ASIDE ON THE
WEB PAGE,TO TELL PEOPLE WHO 'HIT'IT THAT THERE ARE EMULATORS
AVAILABLE TO RUN QL SOFTWARE?
THANKS TO DARREN BRANAGH FOR SENDING IN A COPY OF THE PAGE
FROM THE SATELLITE T.V.MAGAZINE,FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WILL NOT GET
A HARD COPY,IT IS AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR SIR CLIVE'S LATEST
INVENTION! THE WORLDS SMALLEST RADIO!FOR ONLY `9.50 PLUS
P+P,`10.00 IN TOTAL.IT'S AMAZING,AND WORTH IT JUST FOR ITS
CURIOSITY VALUE ALONE.I SHALL BE SENDING FOR ONE!THE ADDRESS IS:
SINCLAIR RESEARCH LTD.
VECTOR SERVICES DIVISION
13 DENNINGTON ROAD
WELLINGBOROUGH
NORTHANTS
NN8 2RL.
THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE I WAS GOING TO WRITE BUT ITS GONE
RIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD AND THIS NEEDS FINISHING,SO I'LL GO NOW,SEE
YOU ALL NEXT MONTH.
OH YES,I REMEMBER NOW,DON'T FORGET THE CHRISTMAS POSTINGS
THIS YEAR,THIS IS MAINLY FOR OUR OVERSEAS MEMBERS.FOR THE USA IF I
REMEMBER RIGHTLY IT'S THE 6th OF DECEMBER AND FOR EUROPE IT'S THE
12th,THIS IS TO GUARANTEE DELIVERY BEFORE CHRISTMAS.SO GET YOUR
DISCS IN EARLY!
MIKE.
Dear Mike (& Friends)
Well, having (finally) managed to finish reading your 100th
ish., which I received along with my QL Today, I, of course, would
like to continue to stay in touch with your group. I just hope
that you are not so inundated now with new members, that you just
can't keep up!!!
NOT AT ALL MATE GLAD TO HAVE YOU WITH US.
As regards the QL etc, my main problem at the moment, (and
for the last few years, really) has been finding time in between
work & other interests, to (sometimes) keep up with all the
goings-on, latest releases, new programs, etc, etc. For example,
as a QUANTA member, I have most of the library discs, but have
never really found the time to fully, or satifactorily, check out
all the programs in the library that may interest me. On top of
that, of course, are the hundreds of other programs held in the PD
libraries, which I'd also love to 'try out', or play with, but I
think I'd need a year or so off work to do so! Maybe I'll just
have to wait until I've retired in order to really enjoy my QL.
DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT MATE,ASK FRANK.HE'S RETIRED AND THERE'S
STILL NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN A DAY!
About myself: electronic 'tinkerer' (technician[??], then),
who 'drifted' into sound engineering after playing in a couple of
groups; after running a small P.A. company in London for several
(read: too many) years, I was offered a job here (Euskadi = Basque
Country), where I now run a (slightly bigger) P.A. company!
WHAT'S IT LIKE THERE,MARGARET WONDERS,AS I THINK SHE WOULD
LIKE TO GO THERE.
My system: QL with SGC, Minerva 1.97, Hermes, 2xHD drives,
CUB 653 & Epson LQ-500 printer; Backup QL: JS ROM, GC & 2xDD
drives; I also have a QUBIDE with 170Meg drive waiting to be put
into a case, (maybe with an Aurora) - if I can find the time (see
above)- DAMN, there goes the phone again....
On the serious side, I've had the QL for over 12 years now,
run my business, (and a Housing Co-op, when I was in London) with
it, and find it more than sufficient for all my needs. When I
have time, I 'tinker' about with it, write a bit of software for
myself, or check out other peoples programs on it. I've also
'played' around a bit on friends PC's (YUCK!), Atari's & Amiga's,
but as yet, have not found anything to tempt me away from what I
already have. Besides the time & effort it would take for me to
learn to run or program a new system, I think that QDOS/SMSQ/E is
still way ahead of the competition. From what I've seen on some
friends PC's, for example, I cannot honestly understand how that
machine has become the 'world standard'. Someone vaguely famous
down here was recently quoted as saying: "La mayoria de la
poblacion mundial es gilipolla." I'll let someone else translate
that for you, but I reckon they were talking about PC owners!!
O.K., I guess that that's enough for now. Hope to be in
contact again soon. Keep up the good work, and
QL/QDOS/SMSQ/E/.... FOR EVER!
Yours sincerely
J.C.Marcus
Plaza Santa Agueda, 9
THESE ARE LETTERS FROM SPIKE,I POSSIBLY,MAY HAVE GOT THEM
BACK TO FRONT.THE REASON BEING I HAD PROBLEMS DOWNLOADING HIS
LETTERS SO HE HAD TO SEND THEM TO ME AGAIN AND AGAIN
AND............
Andrew Halliwell
E-mail: u5a77@cc.keele.ac.uk
u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk u5a77@elec.keele.ac.uk
spike1@cyberspace.org
Gear:- Supergold card QL with various pointer thingies,
Qubide 1.55 ROM, TKII (of course), 40 Meg Hard Drive (Still not
full), twin floppies (one currently disabled) Minerva 1.97... And
loads of little toys I download off the internet...
HALLIWELL, RECRUIT, 23966924 reporting for duty, SIR!
THE ONE THING YOU NEVER FORGET IS YOUR MILITARY NUMBER
SPIKE,NOW IS IT 23966924 OR 249 66924,SEE LETTER BELOW!
Well, I'm pushing my luck with the timing again. Lets just
put it down to settling in to my new room (moved in last week),
and downloading the wrong file when I wanted to reply to QL102 the
first time. Then the ol' QL crashed after I'd written a few
pages... Ho hum...
Anyway, I now have another nice little QL generated POV
picture improving the looks of the sun workstation I'm on in
computer science.
I decided now that I'm 1990s compliant, I'd try out POVray
again, just to see how long it would take this time.
If you remember, last time I generated a picture with POV, I
had to keep the QL powered up and chugging along uninterrupted for
2 weeks. (It proved that my QL COULD chug along for 2 weeks
without crashing if nothing else...)
2 WEEKS!HAVE YOU GOT ANY NAILS LEFT?
So, a couple of weeks ago, when I was going on my weekend III
basic training with the TA (outdoor, setting up bashers and going
on patrol/guard duty stuff and sleeping in said bashers), I left
it chugging along again with a different picture from last time.
I'm not sure how much quicker or slower the picture generated was
code-wise, but it took 56 hours to complete. (A lot better than 2
weeks, I think you'll agree).
BASHERS?ITS AMAZING HOW QUICKLY ONE PICKS UP THE MILITARY
SLANG!
Then, I realised I'd made a small cock up. POVray is capable
of generating several different graphic file formats. I could've
SWORN I'd set it for a format called "Targa", which I knew the
graphics viewer on unix (xv) could handle. Alas, it came out as
Raw data, which then had to be converted.
So, I downloaded POV utils. Extracted the files, and found
they'd lost their executable headers.... Normally, replacing thwis
info is quite simple, but for some reason, it still failed to
work. So... Activate C68 to compile the source code. But C68 that
I downloaded was just an upgrade, not complete. Dig around looking
for the runtimes on the original disks I'd got from Qubsoft. Try
again... Keep getting "out of memory" errors. Try again... After a
lot of p**sing about, I finally got an executable file which
worked.
The moral of this story (for me at least), is as soon as I
acquant myself with the CC, CPP and LD command line options, the
C68Menu is going right out the window.
For those of you wondering what the HELL I'm on about, POV
(standing for Persistence of Vision), is a ray tracer. This is a
rather complicated program where a scene is described in a
programming language, describing the shapes, orientations,
colours, etc of objects and light sources. It then traces each
individual ray of light "generated" by the light source, and
produces a very nice picture based on where these rays reflect,
refract or are absorbed by the objects...
Anyone who's seen Toy Story or Reboot will know what a
ray-tracer can do.
I'm going to e-mail John S a copy of something called
Qascade. (Not tried it yet). It's a menu system for the QL similar
to that used in the Unix based "X-windows", Apple Machintosh and
Windoze 95... Hopefully, he'll be able to get it to
Mike in time for the newsletter... (As he lives down the road...
fingers crossed)
I'VE GOT IT AND SHALL SEND IT OUT,BUT IT MAY HAVE PROBLEMS.IF
IT HAS THEN IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE WHO NOTICES AND SOLVES
IT.IF NOT THEN THE PROPER VERSION WILL WING ITS WAY NEXT MONTH.
Anyway, on with the show....
Dennis Smith asked "What does the following bit of my boot
program do?" To put it simply, it checks the day. If it's Monday,
Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, it sets off the alarm at 7:25 PM.
Why? I've no idea, unless you like a certain programme on the
Radio or something. It's also possible to make the program do
something with the alarm when it does go off by having a small
superBASIC (or SBASIC) job running that checks the beeper with
BEEPING and does something else as a result....
OK, you stumped me. Why do you want the alarm to go off every
other day?
MONDAY,WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AT 7.25 HAS TO BE CORONATION
STREET,BUT SUNDAY HAS ME STUMPED,NO IT HASN'T MARGARET HAS JUST
INFORMED ME IT STARTS AT 7.30 ON A SUNDAY AS WELL!SO HE HAS TO BE
A CORRY FAN!
Colin Baskett: The "reading the function keys" problem.
Well... They way I'd do it is to simply do something like...
10 a$=INKEY$(0) 20 IF a$=CHR$(code for F1) 30 THEN whatever
40 ELSE IF... etc etc etc... (Remembering the END IFs )
Now, I can't remember the character codes for the function
keys off-hand, and I'm typing this from the computer lab, not my
QL (I ran out of time again), but the Manual and loads of good
books will give that info...
You DO still have the manual, don't you?
PROBABLY LIKE MINE,GATHERING DUST SOMEWHERE!
Frank Merrison: "How do I run Xchange from subdirectories in
SMSQ?" Well, I'm not an SMSQLer, but wouldn't prog_use
: ex Xchange work?
If there's an Xchange config program, that should be used as
well, I reckon....
THERE IS ALWAYS THE EASIER WAY,USE QPACII.
Well... That seems to be about it for this month... See y'all
next month...
Andy
HALLIWELL, SIGNALMAN, 24966924 reporting for duty, SAH!
Well, it's that time.... Again... I don't think I'll
say much this time, 'cos there's still two months worth of my
posts to read through anyway. (Mikes holiday, and then Mike
not being able to download it for some reason...) I will
attempt to include one little program this time. (Called Qascade,
I mentioned it in the last one, (see below) but now it's no
longer a Beta version, so it's freely distributable and looks
quite nice... Now to start messing about with it and
making it do what I want it to do...
OH GOOD,WHEN YOU FIND OUT LET US KNOW WON'T YOU!
I got my first pay from the TA last week. Of course,
being the army, one can't expect miracles, so of course, they
ballsed up. (Charged me tax and didn't include any travel
expenses...)
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT,"THE GOVERNMENT GIVETH AND THE GOVERNMENT
TAKETH AWAY,AMEN!"
On November the 9th, we'll be going on Remembrance Day
parade through Newcastle (Already got some number 2 uniform that
sorta fits OK).
I MIGHT JUST COME DOWN,THIS I HAVE TO SEE!
Then on the 15th/16th I'll be going on my weekend 4
(again). We passed off(ish) last time, but didn't have the large
ceremony they normally give, because we only had 5 people turn
up. (The rest had either dropped out, been injured in some way,
or taken ill...). So we've got to do it again, properly this
time.
Then, the week after that, I *MIGHT* be going on my phase
II. (That's a 2 week army camp where you go through all the
stuff you did on the weekends, only in much more depth...)
AND YOU GET TO MIX WITH ALL THE REGULARS AS WELL,THAT WILL BE
FUN!
Right... That's the news from where I'm sitting,
lets see if there's anything to respond to....
Darren Brannagh... Well, I had a look at the two
PC>>QL>>PC transfer progs... Problems with both I'm afraid...
IBMdisk refused to even do a directory, even though I knew things
were on it (A PC disk), and XOVER had no trouble... Also, it
doesn't appear to like my HardDisk.... And there appears to
be a file missing from MultiDOS... Something called
outln_rext.... Any ideas?
Graham Lutz... The Cuboct program was quite nice, but
I think I have an improvement for you... In the version last
time, it would fall over with an overflow if you used wierd and
wonderfull values to producing nice warped shape/space-warp
effects.
A simple fix... 685 IF ze==0 THEN ze=.01...
Another usefull thing to do would be to auto turn on 2nd
screen for gold card users...
Something like... 10 TK2_EXT:IF free_mem > 2000000 THEN
SCR2EN
It took me quite a while to figure out why it was
refusing to accept my minerva 2nd screen mode....
I think that's about it for this month....
And now.... The moment you've all been waiting for...
My words of wisdom from the previous 2 months....
---------------------------------------------------------
QL102... NOTE: Bits in >>> <<< are newly added....
And now, the news. (At least, if this gets in on time, it'll
be news. Otherwise it'll be olds...)
>>> VERY OLDS <<<
Last month, I finally got my hands on a second hand SuperGold
Card. Thanks go again to Martin Burke who asked me to get one for
him 6 months ago, and said I could use it 'till he wanted it. I
was lucky enough to get an e-mail from Ron Dunnett saying he had
just inherited one, and did I want it. And the cost? 100 pounds.
(I owe you 20 quid Martin). Thanks again.
You know how they say bad things come in threes? This last
month seems to be making up for all the REALLY bad things that
happened last year. I've got a Supergold Card. I got offered a
room on campus (and that's save me about 500 quid over the next
year), I got a couple of temping jobs with an agency (an agency
that actually FINDS work for you.... Wierd), I finally passed the
one module that I failed at christmas and therefore, the last
academic year is now clear and complete.
And finally, and this, some of you might find hard to
believe..... I am now a member of 58 Signals (Territorial Army),
so goodbye mohawk.... This weekend just gone, it was Basic
Training Weekend 1. Every fortnight from now on until mid-october
I'll be going on one of these... (I'm half looking forward to it,
and half dreading it, but the first weekend wasn't all that bad
really. I even managed to pass the Basic Fitness Test and beat my
old time by about a minute...) Also, this means I've got to learn
to do something that is totally alien to me.... IRONING....
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T KNOW SPIKE,HE HAS GONE FROM THE
RIDICULOUS TO THE SUBLIME IN ONE HAIRCUT!
I'm afraid, what with everything happening this month, I
still haven't done anything with the ClubQL home page. (One of my
major problems is getting 'round to it. That might change now I'm
in the TA... Possibly)
>>> Have now... Added ql101, ql102 and ql103 to the web page
a couple of weeks ago... <<<
This month, I sent Mike a copy of FileInfo II (V3.02). This
is a GREATLY enhanced Fileinfo with a few bug fixes over Fileinfo
II (V3.00), which didn't work with Minerva. Also, I sent John a
copy of QPAC2_patch. This patches up a bug in QPAC2 which
prevented it from using FI2v3 to its full potential.
And now, on with the responses bit of the post. Firstly, I
made a SLIGHT error in my explaination of the WIN_CSUM command.
Nothing really serious, but in isn't WIN_CSUM 1,1 for WIN1_, but
for the PHYSICAL hard drive (so if you have more than one Hard
Drive, WIN_CSUM 2,1 will turn on Checksumming for THAT full drive,
no matter how many partitions it has....).
Martin Wheatley. You asked about copying the Toolkit II from
a superQboard... It's a bit more complicated than you'd think. On
the Trump Card, the Toolkit II ROM was held at address 65536. (I
scanned the memory above the top of ROM to find it. QuBIDE resides
in the ROM slot location on mine (which is 49152). There are other
areas in the QL memory map where the ROM could be stored, but
65536 seems the likeliest.
In order to check that you have the correct location, run
this program. 100 FOR n=65536 TO 66000: PRINT CHR$(PEEK(N));:END
FOR N
This will print the ROM contents on the screen. If there are
Toolkit II commmands amongst the jumble on screen, then 65536 is
the base of the Toolkit ROM.
Now, you might think "I know... I'll SBYTES
flp2_TKII_rom,65536,16384. That aught to produce a nice copy...."
WRONG! I tried it, and during the procedure, both disk drives
started up. Something in the TKII ROM prevents that method from
working. This one does work. (In fact. I used this method to make
images of my Minerva and TKII enhanced ROM before plugging in the
SGC. (It just takes a little longer)
100 OPEN_NEW #3,win3_TKII_rom 110 FOR n=0 to 16384 120
a=PEEK(65536+n) 130 PRINT #3;CHR$(a); 140 END FOR n 150 CLOSE #3
And there you have it. A ROM image of TKII...
You also said: "Hold on there Mike - it's not that simple.
Firstly there is no such thing as FREE Web space - it is part of
the facilities of a paid for account. It cannot just be taken for
granted - it belongs to somebody Someone has to have such space
that they have no possible use for and be prepared to make a
longterm commitment to let ClubQL use it (I have some space but
also some plans to go with it!)"
I'm afraid you're wrong there. All over the internet there
are free services for almost EVERYTHING. I myself have a free
e-mail account with cyberspace.org, and I got the free web space
on Geocities with no trouble at all. All you have to do is go to
the geocities home page to find out how to register yourself... Go
into the clubql homepage and use the backdoor into the geocities
web site. HTTP://WWW.Geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/4807
(All accounts are required to have a link back into the
Geocities web site. One of the only requirements for it being
free.)
The disk allocation is about 3Megs, unless you want to pay
for more, but with a cleverly written page and plenty of links to
other sites, and 3Megs should be plenty.
Mike asked me why the IEEE Recruitment Newspaper was no good
for me when I offered Jeremy a copy of it... Simple... I'm on a
degree course. I haven't got it yet....
NO YOU HAVEN'T MATE,BUT THERE IS NO HARM IN PUTTING YOUR
POKER IN THE FIRE JUST TO WARM IT UP A BIT!
Martin Burke... Unzip.... Well... I'll do my best to explain
it. It's very simple once you get used to it, and I always
preferred the versatility of command lines rather than fumbling
around in menus...
ACP IS VERY EASY TO USE,IT MUST BE I USE IT!
When you execute unzip by itself, without a command line, a
help page is called up. This help page lists the syntax for
commands, and all commands available. However, unless you want to
be extravagant, the only commands you need with unzip are -l and
-x.
The syntax after that is simple, and to make things simpler,
you can use PC/UNIX style wild cards to help...
I'll start simply, by fully unzipping a single file.
The file you have is ClubQL101_zip. You want to unzip this
file to ram1_. The first thing you must do, it set the DATA
directory to the destination.
i.e. DATA_USE RAM1_
Then, you execute the unzip. Now, as there is a single file
that you want to extract all files from, the command is:
ex unzip;'flp1_clubql101'
Simple, concise and not at all complicated.
Now... Suppose you have a batch of files that you want to
unzip. Say QL96_zip to QL103_zip. This is where wild cards can
come in handy. You COULD unzip them all seperately, but why
bother, when you can make unzip do it for you?
The command
DATA_USE WIN1_ ex unzip;'win3_QL*'
Will force unzip to go through every file in WIN3_ starting
with QL and attempt to unzip it. Don't worry. It can't unzip files
that aren't ZIP files.
Now for the unzip commands. If you want to know what files
are actually archived in a ZIP file, use this command...
ex unzip;'-l flp1_clubql101'
-l = list all files. There is also a -v, which lists more
information.(Verbose mode)
To get a little more complicated now, lets say you want to
extract a single file from the zip file. This is where the command
line always had the most versatility until the most recent version
of ACP came out.
Assume the directories have been set. The file you want to
extract is QL101_txt.
ex unzip;'-x clubql101 QL101_txt' will extract a single file.
You can just as easily extract a whole list of files, just by
adding to the end (before the closing quote).
Again, the wildcards can come in usefull...
Say you have a file called Games_zip, and the listing
contains the following...
Minefield_boot Minefield_rext Minefield_exe Minefield_txt
MineREAD_ME Lotto_exe lotto_txt Asteroids_hsc Asteroids_exe
Asteroids_pic
Now, you COULD tell unzip to extract all the minefield game
files separately, or as a list, but much simpler is the method
below...
ex unzip;'-x Games Mine*'
This will extract all files in the ZIP file beginning with
"Mine".
And so endeth todays lesson.... (Mainly because that's all
you need to know, unless you want to start using the more advanced
features, which aren't really needed for general use...)
Frank Merrison asked for simple definitions for some of the
latest QL thingies... OK... Here goes...
I2C: This is something that works in conjunction with Minerva
MKII. It contains various nice things, like a battery backed up
clock and a small amount of backed up RAM that can be used to make
certain system settings remain the same on switch on, and even
contains room for a few lines worth of BOOT program that's
accessed BEFORE the normal BOOT. It also grants access to such
things as A/D and D/A converters. (Digital to Analogue, and
Analogue to Digital). These are for the hardware hobbiest, and
along with a bank of switches, can be use to record various things
like temperature, or control your train set (or even burglar
alarm) Most people get it for the clock and backed up memory.
(Another use for the memory is to store the QubIDE settings to
speed up the BOOT process)
QubIDE: QubIDE is probably THE most usefull peripheral after
a basic memory and disk interface. Yes, even more usefull than a
Gold Card. QubIDE is a Hard Disk controller card. (I have a 40
Megabyte hard drive separated into 3 devices. Win1_, win2_ and
win3_. (Equivalent to flp1_, flp2_, etc) A hard drive is a VERY
FAST storage medium. And much larger than your average floppy
disk. 40 Megabytes is roughly equivalent to about 55 720k floppy
disks.
SMSQ/E is Tony Tebbys answer to QDOS for the 1990's. It
requires the use of at least a Gold Card to use it, as it's pretty
memory hungry, and needs the extra processor power of the 680x0 on
the card. It has the pointer envirinment as standard, built in. It
can read PC disks without the need of a safety net, and if you
talk to it nicely, it'll even do the washing up....
Aurora... RIGHT.... Aurora is a replacement motherboard. This
means that you open the QL case. Take a couple of chips from the
circuit board. (The ROM(s) and something else). Plug those chips
into the aurora card. Take the old circuit board and chuck it
away/put in up in the loft/use it as a tastefull piece of objet
d'art/etc. The Aurora finally removes the most redundant part of
the QL circuit board, that of the microdrives. It is small.
Compact. Neat. And when used in conjunction with a Gold Card,
SMSQ/E and a decent monitor, a miracle (pardon the pun, it's made
by QubSoft) occurs. The graphics resolution of the QL is more than
DOUBLED. Also, the speed of the QL is increased as well, due to
the use of fast memory chips for screen control. And this wonder
card, in more even than that. Tony Tebby is currently working on a
set of device drivers for SMSQ/E, which will be able to drive
high-resolution monitors and provide, as well as the enhanced
resolution, COLOUR. A somewhat alien concept for the QL (having a
maximum of 8). Aurora is designed to provide up to 256 colours.
(Athough I think the resolution might by slightly limited at that
level...)
And now, the card everyone is waiting for.... GOLDFIRE.
Goldfire is a new replacement for the SUPERGOLD card. Instead of a
clunky old 68020 CPU, the GOLDFIRE will contain a NEW CPU called a
COLDFIRE chip. This chip is designed around a heavily modified
68040. All software written for the 68040 and below will (or
should) work on it, and it will increase the speed of the QL
to.... I'm not sure, but I'd guess at least a x10 increase over a
SuperGold card. The Goldfire will also have LOTS of bells and
whistles to make the QL even faster, including the facility to
plug another card into it that will contain another CPU. These two
CPUs will then share the work between them in such a way that one
deals with ALL input and output, printer/screen/floppies/hard
disk/etc, while the other takes care of the users program. What
this means is, not only will the speed increase yet again, but when
you save to disk, or print something out, or connect to a modem,
the QL will NOT pause. The disk will run, and you will be able to
continue with whatever you where doing. Probably the most usefull
thing about GOLDFIRE however, will be the ability to plug in SIMM
cards. These are memory cards, used for years by the PC and thus,
cheap. As they are so cheap, and memory prices fluctuate all the
time, the GOLDFIRE will be sold without extra memory, but with the
capability of being able to handle up to 256 Megs of RAM. (I think
you can pick up 8Meg SIMMS for about 20 quid sometimes....)
There.... I think that just about sums it
up.... NEXT!
Dennis Smith.... You devious little..... So... It was all a
cunning plan to start a bit of controversy? Oh well, I'll let you
off then.
=(B-})
Ooops.... Can't use that smilie anymore.....
(B-})
There..... That's better....
You mentioned that the only way to access the Goldfires
"incredible advantages over the GoldCard" was to plug it into
aurora.... I disagree. To me, the BIGGEST, and most important
advantage over the gold card is the facility to plug in SIMMs (up
to 128, or 256Meg... Or whatever the latest stats are).
I really don't believe that they're going to release it in
such a form that it can't plug into the standard QL board. After
all, they'd be building themselves out of the market. It was
discussed on the QLusers mailing list a couple of months ago, and
they said that connecting to the standard board was no problem
anyway. in fact, they found it to be very easy.
Well..... That's about it folks. I appear to have run out of
people to respond to, and things to write. As it's so late, I'll
e-mail it to Mike anyway, in the hope he can get it before the
deadline. (It's currently the 4th of september.)
-------------------------------------------------------------
AAAARGH! I accidentally deleted QL103 (overwrote it with
the REAL ql103 when I was downloading to the clubql page at
Geocities..)
I asked for it to be restored from backup, but, they haven't,
yet....
So this is Sig Halliwell, signing off, for now....
*!
Martin Wheatley
martinw@ndirect.co.uk
QL, SuperQboard, Twin Disc Drives, Green Screen Monitor
Mersey Mouse, PC running Xchange (Ql currently out of action
until I can afford to repair it!)
WHATS THE MATTER WITH IT MARTIN?
Hi everyone
Frank wrote about Quanta and Mike replied
--------------------------------------------
The main costs are printing and posting the magazine and
paying for workshops. I feel that this last item might well be
looked at as the workshops are not well attended now and members
who do go, or even the arranging sub- group, might well assist
with the costs in some way.
I AGREE FRANK,LOCAL SUB GROUPS COULD WELL SUPPORT THE LOCAL
MEETING AS THEY BENEFIT FROM THEM AS WELL
---------------------------------------------
I'm curious about this. In what way does the local group
gain? The people who gain are the traders who get a shop window
for their product. The London Group had what was generally
regarded as a succesful workshop in April. As far as I can see
all we got out of it was the honour of doing the work - there
wasn't one extra person at our next meeting!
THATS A GOOD POINT MARTIN,BUT THEY DO KNOW YOU ARE THERE IF
NEEDED.I SOMETIMES THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE GIVE UP THE QL BECAUSE
THEY BELIEVE THAT NO-ONE ELSE USES IT!
---------------------------------------------
Mike wrote THERE YOU GO FRANK,ITS LIKE ME.I USE MY PC 5% OF
THE TIME AND AS A QL 95% OF THE TIME.IT SOMETIMES MAKES ME WONDER
WHY I BOUGHT IT!
----------------------------------------------
We wonder that too!! The answer is that you are using the PC when running the QXL - you use the PCs input/output, storage
and processor
PLUS I CANNOT E-MAIL VERY EASILY FROM THE QL.
----------------------------------------------
Dilwyn asked Can anyone help me with a little Unix problem
this time? I was asked to convert a more recent version of the CIA
World Factbook I convertd a coupel of years ago. For anyone not
familiar with it, it's an electronic book of data about the
countries of the world, containing such data as population,
language, and so on. I've been asked by so many to update it (the
most recent version on the Web is the 1996 one) that I want to get
it done but have run into a big, big problem. We have managed to
download the file WFB-96_T.GZ and I'm guessing that .GZ means it's
GNU-ZIP (an Unix compression system). I have a copy of GZIP on the
PC, and both QL versions in Steve Johnson's PD library. However,
all report the same error message, that the file contains
additional data and the format has been violated. Having
downloaded it twice and got the same results each time, I think it
must mean that the decompression routines are too old. I used the
standard command EX GZIP;'-d FLP2_WFB-96_T.GZ' (-d meaning
decompress) and it startd OK, but quickly failed.
--------------------------------------------------
At the usual risk of getting slagged off for addressing a
non-QL specific problem I do have a suggestion to make. You'll
not the file name ends _T.GZ This suggests to me it is not just
GZIPped but also TARred. TAR is a UNIX systemn for collecting
together several files into one archive - it's not strictly a
compression system so it usually goes together with GZIP. To get
your original file(s) you would have to UNTAR it first then UNGZIP
it. How do I do that you say. Well there do exist UNTAR
utilities - I noticed one in the SIMTEL shareware archive the
other day. However the easiest way is to just run the file
through WINZIP (if you don't have that on your PC you should
have!) which handles both TAR and GZIP. Having said that it may
just be that your file is corrupt! It has been known!
TECHNICALLY IT IS A QL RELATED PROBLEM MARTIN,BECAUSE THE
FILE WILL EVENTUALLY BE USED BY QLERS.
At the last London group meeting we had a visit from a
gentleman who has 2 QLs which he has been using for a number of
years. He has written a book using Quill and also uses Archive
and Abacus. Both machines are completely unexpanded with no
extra memory and using microdrives only! You see such people do
still exist. He has just acquired a cheap 386 PC and is moving
across. One of his problems is sorting out how to get his files
across! He is not computer literate and has no wish to be any
more computer literate than required to do what he wants to - to
him it is not a hobby but a tool - he is not interested in
computers as such - not even the QL!. I have given him PC
Xchange so he will have something he is comfortable with. Before
anyone starts talking about emulators he is retired and has no
wish to spend any money (the freeware software emulator is far too
technical and too slow - remember it is not a hobby for him - he
has no wish for any sort of learning curve that he can avoid -
even the idea of Xchange as an integrated prog rather than 4
separate ones is new to him).
MARTIN WHEATLEY
Terry Williams
25/09/97
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
Darren: Thanks for your idea for the HD/ED conversion. I have
tried one on a new IBM disk which I had previousley formatted to
HD. I formatted with: FORMAT FLP1_TEST_ED and it came up with
6400/6400 sectors! .
I then loaded TASKMASTER FROM the MASTER DISK and copied a
previously used working TASKMASTER disk and files to it, and they
both give 2832/6400 sectors.
It seems to be a marvellous idea as you suggest for backups,
only time will tell!
MIKE: Reading about your French trip reminds me of the our
experience, when I bought a 7 year old VW transporter caravanette
conversion, back in 1968. We arranged to take Marians cousin back
to her place in Sunbury, and stay the week. We loaded up with our
gear packed away in all the cubby holes about the van together
with our three kids and us three adults. The Severn Bridge was in
opperation but the rest of the M4 was still being built so we had
to go on A4 from there on. Everything was OK to Chippenham but
going down the hill into the town I found that the top gear would
not engage but we soldiered on . Having stopped at some lights on
the way out I tried to start off, but as soon as I let in the
clutch the engine stalled! The gear box had died with two gears
engaged at once!! Luckily we had stopped opposite a garage and
once the traffic chaos died down we were towed over. We then had
to hire a Vauxhall Victor car, take whatever we could from the
cubby holes and pile into it for the rest of the journey. A week
later we went back to Chipenham, to return the hire car, followed
by John and Gaynor in their car. We all then piled in to their
car, four adults three kids and all our gear, for the rest of the
journey home.
All went well untill the Severn Bridge services, where we
found "Murphy" had not deserted us and the engine overheated!!!.
The RAC man came along, John joined on the spot. The man had a
look, disappeared for half an hour, and came back with a second
hand water pump, and we made the rest of the journey OK!. I had a
lift a couple of weeks later back to Chipenham to collect the
repaired van.
I sold it some seven years later, after many holidays, for
the same as I paid for it, to a bloke who intended to go touring
the Alps. Nothing ever was heard from him again!!.
I HOPE THE RAC WAS AS HANDY FOR HIM AS IT WAS FOR YOU!
Terry
Email : dilwyn.jones@bbc.co.uk
GEAR: JM/Minerva QL+Gold Card+ED drives; Aurora, Super Gold
Card v2.49, Qubide 1.37, 420MB Conner Hard disk, ED and DD drives,
HP Deskjet 320; Amstrad ALT286+QXL+Zoom modem+Canon BJ10sx; Pentium
75 Amstrad Integravision PCTV and QPC;Toshiba T2100 486DX2/66 with
QPC.
Dear Mike,
I did not have a copy of the earlier issues of ClubQL, but I
did have a copy of issue 66, which you will have received some time
ago. A thought, why not contribute the earlier issues to a PD
library, who could keep copies for collectors, I'd even offer to act
as back issues librarian if I had a complete collection and anyone
thought that would help.
THAT WOULD BE VERY HANDY DILWYN,JOHN SOUTHERN HAS GOT ALL THE
EARLIER EDITIONS TOGETHER AND SORTED THEM OUT.HE HAS PUT THE
NEWSLETTERS AND PROGS THAT CAME WITH THEM TOGETHER,SOMETHING I
FAILED TO DO IN THE EARLY DAYS!DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE AN OPINION ON
THIS,AFTER ALL IT IS YOUR NEWSLETTER NOT MINE!
I have been using my 486 laptop for some time now and have had
some good times with it, carting it to Ireland and to the Byfleet
workshop. One little laptop shoulder bag takes my "QL" with me
anywhere. It's a second user machine, and "only" cost me about 600
pounds, and apart from a floppy disk drive failure has given me no
trouble at all. I expected a 486 DX2/66 to be rather slow with
Windows 95 or QPC, but it's been quite useable on the whole. QPC
runs at quite an acceptable speed, despite the warnings that you
really need a Pentium machine to deliver with QPC; that just isn't
true. It keeps up with me with no trouble, the only time I notice a
slow down is when compiling a program with QLiberator, where the
line count is rather slow (I wonder if screen output is to blame - a
lot of programs which output to the screen a lot seem to be rather
slow on it). By and large, it feels much better than a Trump Card
QL, and without doing timings, I'd estimate somewhere around the
speed of a Gold Card from the 'feel' of using it.
I think that it may be responsible for the disappearance of
hundreds of pounds from Darren Branagh's bank account sometime in
the near future, as he seemed to fall in love with the machine at
the Irish QL show, must be all the black stuff! Look forward to
meeting you again at the Bristol workshop, Darren, where I may teach
you to use Line Design to see if that will persuade you to retain
your Prowess. I must admit, I've never got to like Prowess, but
that's me, not Prowess. With the rumours of a new windowing system
from Tony Tebby while he's been working on the colour drivers for
SMSQ/E, we seem to have a bright Christmas ahead of us with several
positive developments happening or about to happen.
THAT'S GOOD NEWS DILWYN,ITS ALWAYS NICE TO HEAR ABOUT NEW
PRODUCTS.
At the Byfleet workshop, Tony Firshman announced a new product
called RomDisq. Based on a design idea by Stuart Honeyball of
Miracle Systems, this device plugs into the ROM port of a QL or
Aurora and gives either 2MB or 8MB of flash-memory style storage
which can be used to hold your startup files (QPAC2 boot if a QPAC2
user) and your favourite programs. It can be written to up to
100,000 times, so can be used as a semi-hard disk style storage, but
it's rather slow to write to and to erase especially, so Tony said
it was best to think of it as a rewritable ROM rather than a mini
hard disk or something like that. 8MB in QL terms is quite a lot;
apart from huge works like Line Design you cn get most of your
favourite programs into 8MB (a surprising amount into the 2MB
version in fact). The ROMdisq will have a ROM based device driver on
board, accessed as directory device ROM1_. If the ROMdisq contains a
basic program called BOOT, it will start up from this. Tony expects
the 2MB version to cost less than `50 while the 8MB version will be
about `100. The PCB is wonderfully small and dense, about the same
size as a standard plug in EPROM board. It's expected to be
available before the end of the year.
Also available at the Byfleet workshop was Q-Route from
Q-Branch. This is a QL port of a program called Route Master
originally written by Brian Henderson for the Atari. Rich Mellor has
converted it for the QL. You may have heard of Auto-Route, for
example, that's broadly the functions of this program, finding
routes between given places in the UK. You can add new roads etc to
the database as they are built. The version I've seen is a bit slow,
but useable. One more important application hits the QL.
I HAVE SEEN IT DILWYN AND IT DOES GIVE THE PC VERSION A RUN FOR
ITS MONEY AND PROBABLY A LOT CHEAPER AS WELL!
I agree with Colin Baskett in the last issue saying that we
have to present the QL in a positive light. It's something I've
tried to do with QL Today, but he's right to point out that I've
spent too much time being negative about the PC and not enough
promoting the benefits of the QL. Those QL users who are on the
Internet can help here, but extolling the virtues of the machine and
its operating system especially. The rumoured new windowing system
from Tony Tebby will give us a new edge, and once Web browsing
facilities arrive there'll be little we can't do for ourselves. As
it is, we may have to use the PC to actually access the Web at the
moment, but there are HTML and Lynx readers courtesy of PROGS and
Jonathan Hudson, while someone else is working on the libraries
needed to implement full browsers. The likes of Dave Walker are
working on library managers, so the whole thing is coming together,
albeit gradually.
People like Mike and I have and use PCs for whatever reason.
OK, we use them 10% as PCs and 90% as QLs, what's the problem with
that? I can't (yet!) buy a portable QL, so the next best thing is to
buy the PC hardware and put the preferred operating system on it as
well (SMSQ/E). End result, a machine which gives me the best of both
worlds. Equally, anyone who uses a Mac, Atari, Amiga or any other
machine capable of running a QL emulator is really getting the best
of both worlds, and the sheer fact that QDOS/SMSQ is now available
for so many platforms is a positive selling point for trying to
attract back the many users lost to other computers - I've seen this
happen, at a show in London a couple of ex QL users walked in having
heard on the Web that QPC and QXL and even QLay were available and
wanted to find out a bit about them to see if they could be used to
run their old QL software. One wanted to do this for nostalgia's
sake, the other said his PC was a wonderful machine, but far too
difficult for him to understand. We're probably being
over-optimistic in hoping to attract new users, apart from a few
tinkerers who relish the challenge of implementing a new operating
system on their PCs or whatever, but it ought to be possible to
attract back former QL users if we do it in a positive and
co-ordinated way.
IN THIS DILWYN,I AM IN TOTAL AGREEMENT.ALTHOUGH WE MAY ATTRACT A LOT OF EX QL USERS BACK IF ONLY WE COULD LET THEM KNOW WHAT THEY
CAN DO WITH QLAY,QPC AND QXL IN THEIR PC'S.EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY HAVE
GONE ON TO A PC,THEY WILL MORE THAN LIKELY STILL HAVE THEIR QL
SOFTWARE AND LONG TO USE IT AGAIN.
In terms of what makes SuperBASIC a good programming language,
QL users are quite used to being able to write their own
applications in a short time, rather than have a team of programmers
take weeks to produce something on a PC (albeit, the PC one will
probably look prettier and be finished to a higher standard, until
it goes wrong anyway). We shouldn't be competing with that kind of
computer software, the type which takes several people months to
prepare, but look at the QL scene where good software is produced by
one-man operations (witness SMSQ/E by Tony Tebby, a complete
operating system produced mostly by an individual).
THIS IS ALSO TRUE,THE ONLY PROBLEM BEING THAT THE PC PROGS ARE
AIMED AT THE MASS MARKET AND THEREFORE ARE UNLIKELY TO DO EXACTLY
WHAT YOU WISH THEM TO DO,WHEREAS IF YOU CAN PROGRAM IN SUPERBASIC
YOU CAN GET EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT.OR IF LIKE ME YOU CANNOT PROGRAM
AT ALL AND YOU WANT SOMETHING SPECIFIC,YOU COME TO A GREAT CLUB AND
MEMBERS LIKE THIS LOT.
BJC4200 - I have a BJ10/BJ20 programmer's manual, but it makes
no mention of control codes to switch between emulation modes, so it
must be something specific to that printer, or else there is an
undocumented facility to do this. Canon have a helpline number,
0891-616151, fax 0181-773 0941. The address on the back of the
programmer's reference manual is: Canon (UK) Ltd., Canon House, 2
Manor Road, Wallington, Surrey, SM6 0AJ.
Yes, Mike, my boss missed the issue sent by email. Doesn't mean
I'll get away with it next time though! There was an internal memo
at work which went round recently which warned us against personal
use of company email, as the company's name is part of the email
address and so we can be 'done' for bringing them into disrepute via
use of email. That's why I'm cautious about what goes in and out of
my email at work until I get a personal account at home somtime in
the future.
NO PROBLEM DILWYN.
Dave Walker helped me un-gnu-zip (if that's the right term!)
the 1996 CIA World Factbook at the Byfleet workshop. Thanks Dave, if
you're reading this. Much to our surprise it went from 800KB
compressed to almost 4MB uncompressed. So that's why they used
GNU-ZIP not ordinary ZIP! This gives me an unexpected problem, none
of the QL text editors seem to be able to cope - QD for example gave
up because it has a 16 bit line counter and funny things happened
after about 32,000 lines!!! So, back to our wonderful simple
programming language and write a few little programs to chop up the
file into a manageable set of sections, add a viewer utility and the
upgrade will be with your PD libraries before long!
I DO HOPE YOU SEND US A COPY DILWYN,IN MANAGEABLE BITS.PLEASE.
Dilwyn Jones.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Darren Branagh,
Rep. Of Ireland. 19th October, 1997.
QL & COMPUTER GEAR INCLUDES: One Gateway 2000 Pentium PC
running QPC (demo), A Philips Pro-286 PC running an 8 Meg QXL 2
card, 2 QL's one JS and one Running MINERVA v1.97 (also JM Roms),
Miracle Trumpcard, Ferguson Monitor, Twin NEC 3.5" DS/DD Drives &
Twin Miracle DS/HD Drives both joined by a Miracle Disk Adaptor
(flp1_ to flp4_), 150+ Disks of Software, 3 Epson EPL4100 Laser
Printers, Serial 8056 Thermal Printer, Joysticks, DIY SERmouse,
Tandata 3 stack Modem, Zenith Minisport 286 Laptop PC, Cambridge
Z88 Laptop, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K +2a, Sinclair ZX81.
Dear QLCI Gang,
Another month rolls by... nearly Xmas again!
Speaking of Xmas, if Dilwyn is reading this, I'm going to
attempt to use a Pal's colour printer this year to make my own
Xmas cards and calendars.... I think somewhere In the vast clipart
collection you have there are a few Xmas type scenes - carollers,
Xmas trees, Bells, snowmen etc, - any chance you could send a few
in for the Xmas issue???
Ah, another bead of News (keep this under your hats, though -
its not certain to happen yet) but.......
I was talking to Steve Johnson of SJPD on the phone on Friday
last - I had ordered some PD stuff from him, over two weeks
previously, and hadn't recieved it yet. Seems the reason was poor
ol' Steve had recently connected to the internet (only 3 weeks
previously) and downloaded a really nasty virus, that destroyed
the ENTIRE QL SOFTWARE LIBRARY ON HIS HARD DRIVE!!!!!
Not to bad, as he had it all backed up on floppy (lucky) but
now has the misfortune of having to reload everything back onto
the hard drive - quite a few hundred disks of stuff, which brings
me to the News scoop.....
Steve is going to bring out his entire catalogue on a single
CD-ROM !!! Hes been thinking about it for a while, and this
trouble with the Hard Drive has only enforced the idea. He is
going to buy a CD-Writer drive (a CD-ROM drive with the added
benefit of being able to write to a CD-ROM as well as read from
one) soon, and then put the entire catalogue onto one, and make
copies to blank CD's on order!! Nothing for definite yet, but
hopefully it will happen - obviously it will only be of benefit to
QXL/QPC owners with CD-ROM drives (or people with access to
one!)but it should be a cheap and handy way of getting LOADS of
PDware!! (Similar to the EZdrive and ZIP cartridges Ron Dunnett of
QubbeSoft sells).
NOW THAT IS A NASTY SURPRISE,A QL VIRUS FROM THE NET.STRANGE
IF IT'S TRUE.IF THAT IS THE CASE THEN ALL HIS CD'S WILL BE
SUSPECT.
Oh, Mike - I've included a few blank HD disks in my bag this
month - could you but ZIPped files of QLCI prior to the QL89
edition on them please? - as many as will fit, as I found myself
with a glut of HD disks, so I thought I may as well fill 'em with
some useful stuff!!
NO PROBLEM,I DID WONDER WHAT THEY WERE FOR.
Sorry to talk of PC's, but I'm currently looking for a 486
colour Laptop - 50Mhz or higher - as I'm starting a new job soon
with Bank of Ireland and it would make life easier with one. I'm
also using it as an excuse to get the real QPC (I'm currently
using the demo version) and run it on that too!! Quite expensive
over here second hand - `800-ish, I know Dilwyn did really well on
the price of his one - can anybody help out here??
HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO SPEND,LET ME KNOW AND I SHALL HAVE A
LOOK FOR YOU HERE,WHERE ITS BOUND TO BE CHEAPER
Mike was wondering who Jeremy Reeves was last month - no,
Mike I didn't mean Stuart Honeyball - smart-arse!! :-)) Jeremy
Reeves used to work for Miracle some time ago, left, to persue a
"job" of his own (namely a `30-ish SOUND CARD for the QL that was
due to attach to the ROM socket at the rear - an idea now since
shelved, in favour of incorporating the Sound features into the
new Miracle ULTRA GOLD CARD instead!!) - which is the reason he is
now back working with (or should I say for) Stuart again. Nice
fella - Similar age to me (mid-twenties), so we got on quite well.
SORRY MATE,I'D NEVER HEARD OF HIM.
The Sound features should be interesting too, when the UGC
arrives, as Windows .WAV sound files should work on it - which are
plentiful in the PC world. (only gossip so far though)
My conquest to find an affordable photoconductor drum for my
Laser printer is over too, I found a guy flogging off his old
office stock, and bought 3 Epson EPL-4100's off him for `120!!
(these are exactly the same as my EPL-4000, but with extra
features - internally they're identical) I'll probably sell the
other two soon, maybe keep one as a backup of parts - but they all
work!! `40 each for a Laser printer, not bad eh?
Frank Merrison was asking about SMSQ/E last month - well,
basically its just an update to the original QDOS, a new and much
improved operating system for the QL. It adds a whole host of
extra features - faster , flexible disk format, the ability to
read and write to MS-DOS format PC disks directly from the QL,
multiple faster BASIC's, (meaning you can multitask LOADS of basic
programs together at once - neat, huh?) faster screen drivers etc.
I only have the demo version - bundled with the demo of QPC I use
on my Pentium, but it is much bettter than even SMSQ on the QXL (
the /E just means "extended", SMSQ can stand for (I first
discovered this from an article in QLtoday - THIS IS THE BEST MAG
FOR THE QL - SUBSCRIBE TODAY!!) Small Microcomputer System for the
QL, or Single-User Multitasking System fo QL.
Basically you just load up SMSQ/E from disk; and it replaces
the original operating system - it wouldn't make sense to put it
on a ROM or EPROM (unlike Minerva) as: 1) its bigger that the
original 49,152 bytes (48K) of QDOS, and 2) its being updated and
improved constantly, currently on version 2.85 or so.
The advantages of SMSQ/E over SMSQ (or QDOS) are quite
enormous; SMSQ/E for example has the full pointer environment
built-in, so you no longer need PTR_GEN, WMAN, or HOT_REXT
(MENU_REXT is possibly included too - I'm not sure) loaded in your
BOOT file - ditto for TOOLKIT 2, as this is incorporated in SMSQ/E
too.(this is where the "/E" extended comes in - extended to
include the P.E. and TK2, among other things!!)
One of the more useful features (besides the MS-DOS disk
handling, very useful in my job, and no need for XOVER anymore!!)
is the vast array of extra commands; I use DISP_SIZE in my BOOT on
my QPC for example, to set the screen to VGA. Just typing-
DISP_SIZE 640,480
Sets the display to VGA - 640 pixels by 480 pixels. Dead
easy, and a damn sight easier that using the blasted WINDOW
commands of QDOS!! There are a heap of other simple to use
commands like this too. Using the demo version has excited me
enough to get the full version (included with the full version of
QPC for `100) when I get my Colour Laptop!!
I don't claim to be an expert though - Dilwyn is definitely
the best person in the QLCI world to ask about SMSQ/E - All
questions on the back of a `50 Note to Dilwyn's house then!! :-)).
Hopefully a few people have decided to rush out and buy
SMSQ/E imediately!!
Oh, and Mike - TAFN at the end of my letter last month stands
for "thats all for now" (see the last issue of QLtoday, as Jochen
has done a full article on this, as well as the :-)) thingys on
the 'net) TTFN is also OK, "ta ta for now".....see, it wasn't the
beer after all!!
:-) = a smilie face, (turned 90 degrees to the left, used to
convey a laugh within a letter or text!)
:-)) = very smilie face!! :-(( = dissapointed;
There are LOADS of others, see QLtoday!!
I DO REMEMBER THEM MATE,IT JUST SLIPPED WHAT LITTLE BRAIN
CELLS I HAVE LEFT!
Martin Wheatley was talking about QLAY last month - the free
QL emulator for 386 or higher PC's, with lots of RAM. To allow
those who want to, I've included it in a ZIP file on this disk!!
All you need to do is transfer this file (QLAY.ZIP) to a PC disk
(using XOVER, DiskOver, SMSQ/E, or the MULTIDOS or IBMDISK
programs I sent in last month)and then use PKUNZIP on the PC (also
FreeWare) to UNZIP it. I use WINZIP, ( a Windows version of
PKUNZIP/ZIP) as its the easiest to use (also free). Sorry if this
seems an awkward method, but I'd have but it on the disk unzipped,
but It is just over a meg. when unzipped!! (1,084,390 bytes -
although not all these files are needed to run it) It fits OK on a
HD disk, but not all QL'ers have a HD setup, and the disk goes out
to most on HD (me included!) For Anyone thats confused, take
Martin up on his Offer, or its also available from Steve Johnson.
Also on the disk are copies of the ZX81, ZX80 and SAM coupe
computer's ROM images, now PD - they where on the same directory
on my Hard Drive as QLAY, so I've included them - someone may find
'em useful.
I also took time to modify an old PD program, called GLAZIER.
This was really useful to define windows of any size, but as it
was written some time ago, was incompatible with the higher
resoloutions of the QXL or QPC, i.e. It couldn't handle windows
bigger than the normal QL 512x256. I rewrote a few of the lines in
the program to handle VGA resoloutions on my QXL - for a better
idea, just LRUN flp1_WINDOWS_VGA_WPROC, which defines a procedure
called VGA - typing VGA at the command prompt when in VGA mode on
the QXL will re-define the familiar 3 window monitor display of
the QL to fill the entire Screen, rather than just the top, left
hand corner. I've found it quite useful, and was handy before I
discovered the DISP_SIZE command of SMSQ/E. LRUN GLAZIER_VGA to
define your own.
And another freebie on the disk - DOCVIEWER_OBJ - This really
is great, a pointer driven Quill_doc Viewer!! I've been using this
to read QLCI each month since I got it around July or so!! I also
use it to multitask with Xchange - I load last months mag in the
viewer, and write this months on Xchange, flipping between them,
to answer last months queries (if I can, that is.) It needs the
usual pointer files (PTR_GEN, WMAN etc.) to run, and just EXEC
it!! (The reason I don't load both files into Xchange and
multitask those is because I can MOVE the viewer to the bottom of
the screen - thus having BOTH files visible at the same time on my
QXL!!)
Heres a question - Does anyone have any good PD Bird Books
for the QL or PC?? - Don't get smutty, I meant the feathered kind,
not the ones in bikini's!! I haven't found any in SJPD's books
collection, but I'm sure there are loads on the 'Net that could be
transferred to the QL (Martin?? Dilwyn? Can you Help?) My dad has
been a crazed ornithologist since his childhood - so I'd like to
get a Bird book, or related ramblings for his old Laptop he uses,
and then he would bring it with him!!
AND I THOUGHT HIS 'TWITCHING'WAS DOWN TO THE BLACK STUFF!
Moving on, I agree with Mike too (last month) about the QXL -
great thing altogether. I was considering getting a Tower Case,
Qubide, Qplane, Hard Drive, Aurora, etc. for myself - But as I
already had a PC, the QXL 2 was a MUCH cheaper option!!
(especially as you really have to buy SMSQ/E for the Aurora, as
this is needed for the higher than 512x256 screen modes - it with
work with QDOS, but only in 512x256!! The likes of 640x480 (VGA
standard) or the stunning 1024x768 resolutions are only accessible
with SMSQ(/E) running!!
I too would like an Idiots Guide to ACP (Archivers Control
Panel) and FileInfo II. I can't make head nor Tail of them, and as
for ProWesS...........(!)
ACP IS VERY,VERY EASY TO USE,TRY IT YOU'LL LIKE IT!
Thats all of my Pathetic ramblings for this month.
TTFN (there, happy now Mike!!)
DARREN.
P.S. It also seems likely that I will be editing a new Z88
related Mag for Z88 owners - nothing concrete yet, but Bill
Richardson and myself have been chatting about it at the Irish
Show and on the Phone since. However, now QUANTA has decided to
allow Z88 related material into the Magazine, it may not
materialize..... have to wait and see!!
+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_-
+_+_
P.P.S. Crikey, 4 pages!! Howzat for knitting a flag?? I'm
getting a bit like Frank Merrison (I've nothing to say, so hears a
bookful..)
#! Martin Burke,
20th October 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. Plus Super Goldcard!!!!
I've finally taken the plunge and bought myself a Super
Goldcard (at the Byfleet bash). I fitted it and .... nothing
works. So I've taken it out again and plugged my Trump card back
in. This does work. When I've finished my contribution I will
probably retry the SGC but first things first.
I would like to echo Colin Baskett's request for "pithy
sentences about the selling points of the QL". I have already
made a similar request to Colin Murphy and John Southern: any
worthwhile results may get surprising activity. Colin Baskett
says that there are problems about "whom to contact and how" ...
Funny he should mention that!
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE..........
Terry Williams mentions QPAC2. John Southern firmly believes
that the last thing one should do is to read the QPAC2 manual. I
must admit I would prefer the automatic to the manual.
Yours,
Martin Burke.
#!
#!
Colin Baskett
28 October 1997
EQUIPMENT: QL FITTED WITH SUPERGOLD CARD; MkI MINERVA -
version 1.82;
SUPERHERMES; 170 MB HARD DISK; SINGLE 3.5" HD DISC DRIVE; ED
DRIVES; PHILIPS COLOUR MONITOR; SERIAL MOUSE; PRINTER BJ10sx;
XCHANGE 3.90L. Various other pieces of software I am hoping to
learn in order to edit QUANTA better.
Dear Mike,
To deal first with your points:-
Thanks for the suggestion about the "old" mailing lists. Bill
Newell and I are trying to work something out along those lines.
Thanks also for the point about Windoze being fancier (than
QPAC2) and looking good. Food for thought there.
I SAID IT LOOKS GOOD,NOT THAT IT'S BETTER.THERE ARE FAR TO
MANY MENUS TO GET YOU TO WHERE YOU EVENTUALLY WANT TO GO.THEREFORE
MAKING LIFE THAT LITTLE BIT HARDER.ESPECIALLY IF YOU ACCIDENTLY
HIT THE MOUSE BUTTON TO EARLY AND YOU LOAD THE WRONG BIT OF THE
PROG!
I note that you are inclined to agree that our software, in
some cases, lends itself to programming by the user more easily.
But like me you would like the views of more experienced
progammers.
THIS IS TRUE,WITH QL SOFTWARE,IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG IT
TELLS YOU WHERE AND WHAT PART OF THE LINE THE PROBLEM IS,THEREBY
AT LEAST GIVING YOU A CHANCE TO 'HAVE A GO'.THE ONLY PROBLEM IS
WHEN IT IS CODED IN ANY FORMAT.THEN I'M KNACKERED!
I like your point about making the emulators INEXPENSIVE AND
SOME OF THE "OLDER"SOFTWARE FREELY AVAILABLE TO THEM,SO THEY CAN
SEE HOW GOOD IT IS AND MAYBE PERSUADE THEM TO BUY THE
"MODERN"PROGS.
HOW ABOUT SENDING THEM ONE OF THE FREE ISSUE
EMULATORS(PD)WITH INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO LOAD AND USE IT,WHEN YOU
GET IN TOUCH WITH PAST MEMBERS!WHAT WILL IT COST?PENNIES ONLY,AS
DD DISCS CAN BE PICKED UP FOR SONG AND IT ONLY COSTS A 2nd CLASS
STAMP TO SEND THEM!ANOTHER WAY OF DOING IT AND NOT VERY POPULAR AT
ALL,I AM BOUND TO GET BLOWN OUT ON THIS,IS TO 'SPAM'THE NET.O.K. I
CAN HEAR EVERYBODY,JUST A SUGGESTION.BUT THERE MIGHT BE SOMEONE
OUT THERE WHO CAN DO IT.SEE NOTE IN MY LETTER.
Point taken about the cumulative cost of all the bits and
pieces you need to put together to get a state of the art 'QL'.
THE CUMULATIVE COST IS DECLINING SOMEWHAT OF LATE,BUT IT IS
STILL EXPENSIVE.WHEN YOU THINK NOW YOU CAN BUY A PC FOR LESS THAN
`500 NEW AND SECOND HAND EVEN CHEAPER,STICK QPC,QXL OR QLAY IN IT
AND STILL SAVE MONEY.WHAT'S THE ANSWER?
My daughter is using her BJC4200 with a QL. If she had a PC
it would presumably be simple to use the software provided to
change the emulation to and fro.
YES,BUT THEN THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING IT TO WORK ON A QL HAS
GONE!
Darren:-
Thanks for the promise of more articles. Great! Remind me.
Did you once offer to review software for QUANTA?
I have just tried your HDtoED dodge. I only had (DOS)
formatted HD disks available and so I wasn't surprised, following
your warning, to get repeatedly formatting reports such as
1568/1600. To my surprise when I dir'ed the disk just before
abandoning it I found that it had formatted something like
6336/6400. Confusion. I had just recently started using SMSQ/E and
this was the first disc I had formatted under it. I tried other
genuine ED discs and these two gave format reports 1600/1600
although they had formatted successfully to 6384/6400. Odd. Back
to QDOS and it kept formatting to various numbers below 6384/6400
such as 6336/6400. I could hear that the formatting was not
completing smoothly. Once it formatted completely satisfactorily,
but only once.
Up to this point I had been using Cellotape to close the HD
slot. Next morning I tried a hard filler (actually Woodflex
Polyfilla because that was what I had in the garage). Since then
the disc has formatted perfectly a number of times and is now
holding part of my ClubQL archive. Was it just coincidence or was
the switch from Cellotape to Pollyfilla responsible? Incidently
even when the HD slot was left open, the disc still attempted,
unsuccessfully, to format 6384 sectors, in response to the command
'format "flp1_TestingN*E".
What are other people's experiences with HDtoED. Any
disasters?
Martin:-
I suspect a lot of us don't yet know everything you can do
with Quill, let alone XCHANGE. These are jolly good programs with
a Super Gold Card and SMSQ/E to give them a bit of speed (does
SMSQ/E do this? It is certainly my impression but I am too busy to
do any bench-marking). I too find QPAC2 stuffed with features that
I don't know how to use. What little I do know I have mostly
picked up from tips in QUANTA or CLUBQLI. So, those of you have
found out something useful, send it in. There's bound to be
someone who didn't know and who will benefit from the info.
That goes for SMSQ/E too. I'm sure there is lots to know.
That's all for now. Cheers!
Colin B.
#! Dennis Smith.
NET1(downstairs) = (installed in a mini tower) Aurora, Super
Gold card, SuperHermes, Qubide, 420Mb hard disk, 2 ED drives,
(SER3)Pace 33.6 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.
Hi,
First the advert. Our local sub-group (SeQueL) presents for
November Roy Wood of Q Branch and Tony Firshman of TF Services.
They will be talking about and demonstrating the latest hardware
and software, answering your questions and generally giving
advice. We will see the prototype of the RomDisq with 2 mbyte and
8 mbyte of flash memory and Q Route etc. The venue is the same as
last month when we had Ron Dunnett of QUBBESoft visit.
I have held this text back a few days so that I may confirm a
new BBS in Codnor, Derbys. run by Derek Stewart. All the usual
stuff PBOX etc. 24 hrs. the number is 01773-741335, give it a try.
The file area is being increased as you can imagine with a new BBS
but all the other facilities are complete. Try the local echo for
our sub-group 'Local QL chatter'.
Darren Branagh: Multi-dos. Yes I know, I've had it for
approx. couple of years. It's ok but limited to DD disks or maybe
a new version might handle HD it doesn't matter as its been
superseded and is now unnecessary. Look at what we have. SMSQ/E
will read and write to QL DD, HD, ED, of course but it will also
READ AND WRITE to DOS disks DD, HD, and ED plus Atari if you
really want to. The ability is built into the system you do not
have to find and execute a program, don't forget to load the
pointer system first etc. etc. No not now, just pick up a PC disk
whenever you're ready slam it in flp1_ or flp2_ or flp3_ or flp4_
and off you go do what you like. If I remember correctly (talking
of Multi-dos) it looks for a DOS disk in flp2_ and if you don't
have a flp2_ you have to wait then correct it and start again.
Anyway, from the above SMSQ/E performance you must agree it is
very adequate as it stands and is thrown into the device driver
for you to use or not, built in convenience. :-))).
The Alarm line in the boot. Well, yes it is to do with
Coronation St, I imagine we all have this line in our system boot
don't we? The answer to what happens next is when the alarm sounds
I jump up from the QL and make the wife a tea or coffee ready for
the above soap, well guessed.
Martin Wheatley: Yeah, yeah, right. So you admit to not being
able to see my new line, so therefore you admit guilt.
Patronising, yes certainly. All remember, patronisations are
freely available but do book early to avoid disappointment.
Mike: You asked about FaxeQl - quick recap. FaxeQl (free)
drives Qfax (free) or Lfax (free) which in turn uses a fax modem,
nothing to do with a fax machine. You do not need a fax machine to
send and receive faxes. If the modem part of your fax machine can
be driven externally (i.e. by computer) then yes.
BUT WOULD I BE ABLE TO ACCESS THE EXTERNAL MODEM ON THE
PC,FOR USE WITH THE QL?
Got to get this in the post now, sorry about being a bit late
but I did want to verify the BBS news.
Bye.
FRANK MERRISON,
8-10-1997
GEAR includes 2 x JM QL's: Gold Card: DMP: Epson Stylus 800 printer:
2 x HD disc drives. 486 DX33 & Knee deep in paper & problems!
Dear Mike,
Thanks for the return of my disc which holds, among lots of other
files, "QL103_doc". Although this was much shorter than earlier issues,
never-the_less it gives much pleasure to read the legible parts!
Which leads me to again repeat an old complaint.
I KNOW,YOU GET HEADACHES FROM MY TYPING IN WHITE BOLD!
On the disc are 14 files in total. Of these; two are what I sent in,
one is QL103_doc, and three are from Ireland. IrishQL_doc, Junk_doc and
Junk2_doc. This leaves 8 files that give no indication of what they are
for or how they are to be used or even if they might just possibly be
of some use to me. I have left these on the dsic in hopes of some
enlightenment. I thought that cuboct_min_bas looked pretty straight
forward - a simple basic program that I should be able to 'Lrun' - not
to be however - even when I removed or 'REM'ed out the mode commands I
only got an error message "at line 760 bad line" I guess it's just not
my day!!
I DO NOT WIPE THE DISCS CLEAN ANYMORE FRANK UNLESS IT WARRANTS
IT,THEREFORE YOU DO GET BACK THE FILES YOU SEND.PEOPLE USUALLY SEND IN
AN EXPLANATION FRANK,SO FOR THE UNENLIGHTENED AMONGST US(ME FOR
ONE)PLEASE SEND AN IDEA OF HOW TO USE AND UNDERSTAND THE PROGS YOU
SEND.
When I am in my usual frame of mind, as I begin my contribution and
don't know what to put in, will it be OK if I take the easy route and
fill a disc with totally illegible junk with some sort of fancy name
that sound terribly technical but means absolutely nothing to anyone
else? This is, to me no different to sending out compressed files as I
explained last month.
Just imagine the rumpus it would cause (in certain nearby circles) if
MicroSoft sent out files for the PC either in a form that could not be
used without going through some complicated de-compression routine or
if there was no explanation of what the files were for or how they were
to be used! I don't think that Bill Gates would now be the richest man
on earth. He must know something that we don't!
AH!BUT LOOK AT THE MONEY THEY CHARGE FOR JUST THEM SORT OF
DE-COMPRESSION PROGS FRANK!
31-10-1997.
I have just re-read the above and I now wonder how Bill feels having
lost some BILLIONS of dollars this week?
I DON'T THINK IT WILL HAVE HURT HIS POCKET THAT MUCH MATE.
Colin Baskett asked about changing his daughter's Canon BJC4200 printer
from Epson LQ mode to Canon BJ mode.
As far as I can make out from reading my son's manual(s) for the Canon
BJC4100 model (which I am sure is almost the same) I get the impression
that there is no code, as such, that can swiftly be changed to alter
these modes. It looks as if the utility program has to be run each and
every time the mode is changed. Presumably because anyone would only do
this once. His daughter is using the Epson mode and should find no
reason for a change!
It is almost certain that you have the same manuals Colin but if you
feel that a copy of my son's might be a help I will willingly bring
copies of the relevant sections to the next London sub-group or post
them to you... just ask... These explain in simple terms how to use the
setup program with many illustrations.
BesT wishes to all.... FRANK MERRISON.
(
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