Club QL Back Issues List UPDATED: 19.05.98
Issue# DOC? Other Programs On This Disk?
-------------------------------------------------- (in addition to
these disks,I have disks #1 to #18 of club QL software, but I am not
certain where to enter those disks on this list as yet, also I have
Graham Lutz's EXORCIST utility.These program disks contain programs
from disks 1-60, but have not yet been sorted out.If you have any of
the missing few disks to help me fill the gaps, get in touch)
1 Yes
2 Yes
3 Yes
4 Yes
5 Yes
6 Yes
7 Yes
8 Yes
9 Yes
10 Yes
11 Yes
12 Yes
13 Yes
14 Yes
15 Yes
16 Yes
17 Yes
18 Yes
19 Yes
20 Yes
21 Yes Yes
22 Yes
23 Yes
24 Yes
25 Yes Yes
26 Yes Yes
27 Yes
28 Yes Yes
29 Yes Yes
30 Yes Yes
31 Yes Yes
32
33
34
35 Yes
36 Yes
37 Yes
38 Yes
39 Yes
40 Yes
41 Yes
42 Yes
43 Yes
44 Yes
45 Yes
46 Yes
47 Yes
48 Yes
49 Yes
50 Yes
51 Yes
52 Yes
53 Yes
54 Yes
55 Yes
56 Yes
57 Yes
58 Yes
59 Yes
60 Yes
61 Yes Yes
62 Yes Yes
63 Yes Yes
64 Yes Yes
65 Yes Yes
66 Yes Yes
67 Yes Yes
68
69
70 Yes Yes
71 Yes Yes
72 Yes Yes
73 Yes Yes
74 Yes Yes
75 Yes Yes
76 Yes Yes
77 Yes
78
79 Yes Yes
80 Yes Yes
81
82
83
84 Yes Yes
85
86 Yes Yes
87 Yes Yes
88 Yes Yes
89 Yes Yes
90 Yes Yes
91 Yes Yes
92 Yes Yes
93 Yes Yes
94 Yes Yes
95 Yes Yes
96 Yes Yes
97 Yes Yes
98 Yes Yes
99 Yes
100 Yes Yes
101 Yes
102 Yes Yes
103 Yes Yes
104 Yes Yes
105 Yes Yes
106 Yes
107 Yes Yes
108 Yes Yes
109 Yes Yes
110 Yes Yes
********************
QL
CLUB
INTERNATIONAL
********************
ISSUE 112
JUNE 1998
MIKE KENNEALLY
E-MAIL MIKEKENNEALLY1@COMPUSERVE.COM
ANY AND ALL SOFTWARE SENT TO THE CLUB/NEWSLETTER WILL BE TREATED
AS PUBLIC DOMAIN UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED.
HI ALL,
WELL HERE I AM BACK FROM THE HOLIDAY FROM HELL!IT WASN'T
QUITE THAT BAD,BUT WE WON'T BE GOING THERE AGAIN.
WE ARRIVED THERE ON THE SUNDAY AND BY THE TUESDAY,MARGARET
WANTED TO COME HOME.WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FOREST,IT WAS
RAINING AND EVERYTHING WAS MILES AWAY.FOR THE 14 DAYS WE WERE
THERE WE HAD ABOUT 3 FULL DAYS OF SUNSHINE,THE ONLY PROBLEM BEING
THAT THE CARAVAN WE HIRED GOT ABOUT 1 HOUR OF SUNSHINE MORNING AND
AFTERNOON!THE SWIMMING POOLS,INCLUDING THE INDOOR ONE,SHUT AT 7pm
AND WE LIKE A SWIM IN THE EVENING,THE BARS SHUT AT 11pm.
IF YOU WENT OUT FOR THE DAY AS WE DID IT WAS MILES FROM
ANYWHERE,WE WENT TO LA ROCHELLE SEAWORLD,IT WAS 2 HOURS THERE AND
IT WASN'T WORTH IT,OURS ARE BETTER.WE ALSO WENT TO COGNAC,ANOTHER
2 HOUR TRIP,AND SO ON,GOOD JOB DIESEL IS SO CHEAP!
IF YOU LIKE BIRD WATCHING(FEATHERED VARIETY),WINE AND BEACHES
ITS THE HOLIDAY FOR YOU.THE COUNTRYSIDE,WELL IF YOU IMAGINE THE
NORFOLK BROADS TIMES 10 IT WAS LIKE THAT,FLAT AS A PANCAKE,10 FOOT
OFF THE GROUND AND YOU COULD SEE FOR MILES IN ALL DIRECTIONS.
WE LEFT A DAY EARLY WITH THE INTENTION OF STAYING OVERNIGHT
AND PERHAPS GETTING AN EARLIER FERRY,STOCKING UP ON WINE AND OTHER
THINGS BEFORE WE GOT ON THE FERRY AT ONE OF THE HYPERMARKETS.AS I
SAID WE LEFT EARLY TO GO ACROSS COUNTRY FOR THE SCENERY FURTHER
NORTH,IN THE EVENING AS WE WERE LOOKING FOR A HOTEL TO STAY IN THE
HEAVENS OPENED AND I MEAN OPENED,IT CAME DOWN THAT HARD AND FAST
THE WIPERS COUDN'T COPE,THE ROADS WERE LIKE RIVERS AND AT 5mph YOU
WERE AS BLIND AS A BAT!
WE SET OFF THE NEXT DAY AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED,YES,10mins
FROM BOULOGNE,THE DAMNED CLUTCH CABLE SNAPPED!WE HAD TO BE TOWED
TO THE FERRY,TOWED ON THE FERRY AND TOWED OFF IN FOLKESTONE.THEN
WE WAITED 3 HOURS IN THE CAR PARK AT FOLKESTONE WHILE THE RAC
DECIDED WHAT TO DO,FIX IT OR TOW IT,EVENTUALLY THE DECIDED TO TOW
US HOME.SO INSTEAD OF GETTING HOME EARLY AS I PLANNED ABOUT
11pm,WE GOT HOME AT 3.30am.
SO AS YOU CAN SEE WE HAD A REALLY WONDERFUL TIME,IT APPEARS
MY CARS DO NOT LIKE FRANCE AND MARGARET IS ALREADY TALKING ABOUT
NEXT YEAR!
IT WAS GOOD TO GET BACK TO SOME SORT OF NORMALITY!
THERE ARE STILL SOME WHO APPEAR TO HAVE PROBLEMS WITH
QPACII,GOING FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE AND GRAHAM'S HELP,FROM WHAT I
CAN REMEMBER.I FOUND IT EASIER TO PRINT OUT THE BOOT FILE HE DID
FOR ME,READ IT THROUGH AND SEE HOW IT WAS FORMULATED AND THEN ADD
BITS TO IT IN THE RIGHT PLACES.I KNOW PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW WHAT
'THINGS'AND THE LIKE ARE,BUT CAN'T WE GET THE PROGRAM UP AND
RUNNING AND THEN DISECT IT AFTERWARDS?
ANYBODY OUT THERE GOT A SPARE QL LYING AROUND DOING
NOTHING?ALL 4 OF MINE HAVE GONE TO THE GREAT QL HEAP IN THE SKY
FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER,I STILL HAVE THEM BUT FOR ONE REASON OR
ANOTHER NONE OF THEM WORK.
MIKE.
*!
Martin Wheatley martinw@ndirect.co.uk
QL, SuperQboard, Twin Disc Drives, Green Screen Monitor
Mersey Mouse, PC running Xchange
Hi all,
-------------------------------
Graham L wrote
CLUBQL HAS CONTAINED SUCH DETAILS FOR MANY YEARS WITHOUT ANY
PROBLEMS, AND I AGREE, IT COULD CONTINUE AS SUCH. HOWEVER, I ALSO
BELIEVE THAT WE ALL NEED TO BE AWARE OF THE LACK OF SECURITY USING
ON-LINE TRANSMISSIONS SUCH AS E-MAIL. MY OWN SUGGESTION WOULD BE
TO CONTINUE TO LEAVE IN ADDRESSES AND HARDWARE CONFIGURATIONS FOR
MAIL USERS, AND STRIP OUT THESE DETAILS FOR E-MAIL USERS. AN
E-MAIL ADDRESS IS ALL THATS REQUIRED.
-------------------------------------
Thus stopping e-mail users from being able to reply
meaningfully to some queries? Can I please ask everyone to call a
halt to this. Can we please examine what the risks actually are
and what we can do about them instead of just taking a series of
blind swipes which reduce the newsletters functionality
Noone seems worried about the copies of the newsletter that
go out on discs so we can leave them as they are
The copies that go out by e-mail are not public copies - they
are going to individual people who have asked for them just as the
disc versions do. They go one to one and are only seen by the
sender and receiver It is technically possible for the Mike's
Internet connection company and the receiver's company to read
the email - just as it is technically possible for the Post
Office to read any letter. It is however just as unlikely that
it actually happens - the average service provider handles many
thousands of e-mails a day (in the case of Compuserve - Mike's
provider that is millions). They have neither the time nor the
slightest incentive to bother reading them. They are not likely to
be either spammers (senders of unrequested mail) or burglars -
they would be out of business very quick if they were. Just where
is the risk - some one please tell me.
Now there is one copy that is posted to a public place
(possibly more than one - I'll deal with that in a minute). The
copy that goes to Andy Halliwell also goes onto the ClubQl
Website. As far as I am aware no copy has gone onto there
without first being edited by Andy to remove personal details.
He has always been aware of this problem - I have e-mails from him
that predate the web page when we were discussing it and Andy said
right from the beginning that editing would be required. So no
risk there
Now onto the one open situation. A few ClubQls back Mike and
I think Dennis Smith were discussing the possibility of ClubQL
going up on a bulletin board - I don't know if anything happened
about that but even so it is only going to be seen by Ql people
which has never bothered us in the past The same is true if the
copy sent to Tony F winds up on his bulletin board
As far as I can see there are no open loopholes so can
somebody please explain to me what this deadly risk is that is
causing Mike and Graham to panic in all directions because I just
can't see it.
ALL VALID POINTS MARTIN.AS YOU SAY THERE DOES NOT SEEM TO BE
ANY PROBLEM AT ALL SO I THINK WE CAN LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE.
--------------------------------------------
Colin Baskett wrote
Dear Graham, Dilwyn wrote about directories: I find the
big problem with directories is to devise a directory structure
that will satisfy my future needs. Or alternatively to find a
fool-proof way of copying files from an old unsatisfactory
structure to the new, gleaming structure, that inevitably
suggests itself shortly after I have set up a new directory
structure. To give one or two examples off the top of my head:
whether to arrange executable programs in, say, win1_progs_, with
separate directories for resident extensions, ancilliary files,
and data files, OR whether to arrange, say, all Quill files under
win1_quil_, all LineDesign files under win1_LD_, etc.. together
in both cases, of course, with a further division into
sub-dirctories as appropriate. QUESTION: Are there any model
structures??
-----------------------------------------------
No there are not! It's like designing databases or building
shelves. You have do a lot of prethinking as to what you are
going to want to use it for and make sure that what do is
adequate for that purpose
The QL is essentially a personal computer - only you are
going to use it so only you need to understand how it is set up!
A few thoughts about the sort of thinking you will have to do
Are you going to want to remove any of the progs (for example
prior to an upgrade). If so it makes it a lot easier if all the
program files for that program are in one directory and that is
all there is in that directory Similarly if the data files are
going to date so you need to weed them out occasionally (for
example with letters) it would be helpful if they were all
together on their own then you could just look at the list. Some
progs allow more flexibility than others - some don't like their
data files in more than one directory for example. Different
progs may require different structures. Not much help is it!
I WILL SEND COLIN A PRINTED COPY OF HOW MINE IS SET UP,IT MAY
GIVE HIM SOME IDEAS OR IT MIGHT NOT AS YOU SAY EVERYONE IS
DIFFERENT.
-------------------------------------------------
Colin also wrote about program copyright
Is there a definitive write up available. If not, would
someone like to clarify the position so that we may understand
better what we may and what we may not do with other peoples'
intellectual property. I must admit I had once imagined that I
was free to use software I had bought on any machine, I might
have, provided it wasn't installed on more than one machine at a
time. But now I understand that, if I had QPC, I would be allowed
only two installations, irrespective of any un-installations I
might make or machines I might trash.
MOST COMMERCIAL PC SOFTWARE IS NOT EVEN YOURS LEGALLY. YOU
EFFECTIVELY BUY A LICENCE WHICH ALLOWS YOU TO USE THE PACKAGE
(UNDER CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS).
-----------------------
It's not that simple but then you never really thought it was
did you! It's up to the individual copyright owners what
restrictions they put on its use. Some don't mind how many
different machines you put it on or how many times you use it -
others expect a separate licence for everything
-----------------------
Some of you will know or remember Richard Herland - the
American travelling writer who sometimes contributes to ClubQL.
He wrote in a recent e-mail to me
I'm late thanking you for QL111. I've saved it on a floppy
and intend to read it with devine calm whilst sailing in Turkey.
You might pass that on to Mike - it could be something of a
first.
IT IS RICHARD,ANY SPARE PLACES GOING.TO GET AWAY FROM THIS
LOUSY WEATHER!DON'T FORGET US MATE,IT WOULD BE NICE TO HEAR FROM
YOU AGAIN IN THE FUTURE.
-----------------------
I've just acquired a copy of the PC shareware Ql emulator
Q-Emulator I'm still struggling with getting the QL ROM images I
need to run it usefully. No doubt I'll crack it in time
NO DOUBT MARTIN,IT'LL BE INTERESTING TO HEAR HOW YOU HAVE
GONE ON WITH IT.
Martin Wheatley
P. McPHERSON,
25th May 1998.
Fraternal Greetings Everybody,
Current equipment: 2xQLs (AH roms), one fitted with a Gold
Card and twin Cumana 3.5" floppy drive, the other with a Trump
Card and a single 3.5", an Amstrad DMP 3160 printer c/w a Miracle
Serial Interface and two of the three piece Tandata modem set.
First of all can I thank Martin Wheately for his highly
informative response to my queries regarding preventing
pornography infiltrating the computer system at Bobs college. It
appears that the software available to do this takes a "shotgun
approach" and can actually prevent legitimate use of computers as
well, so it's not as easy as I thought it might be.
SHAME REALLY IT PASSES THE TIME.(ONLY KIDDING)
The situation has been complicated still futher by the fact
that the college has a hidden agenda to cut the "A" level Computer
Studies, Physics, Maths, Electonics and Chemistry courses so that
they can be installed in another tertiary college and the
authorities are looking for excuses to achieve this objective
instead of simply saying to the students "Look this is our policy,
to centralise our services and you will have to move to another
college next year so make the appropriate arrangements". It
appears that having failed to make a case against the students,
the college is now attempting to scapegoat one of the technicians
in an untenable attempt to discredit the over-subscribed courses
prior to cutting them. Make of it what you will.
I have been up to my neck trying to help Bob with some
Physics and Maths revision for his "A" level exams so have had
little in the way of time for QL related matters except to wish
that there were a few software packages around that could have
helped. My knowledge of physics is fair, but the Maths goes
happily sailing way above my head. Exactly which government twit
was it that claimed "A" levels are getting easier a couple of
years ago, I really would like to meet him in a dark alley with a
piece of 4x2 after the last couple of weeks!
Did you hear about those six American guys that died after
taking that new sex wonder drug, Viagra, well they have not buried
them yet....... They still can't close the coffins!
No, this is not an example of college humour, but one I was
told by a nurse at my diabetic clinic, who confirms, from personal
experience, that it also sends women rampantly randy, but gives
them a massive headache after their night of passion. At `16 a
time for a private prescription, I would imagine it also causes a
few financial headaches too.
IT WOULD BE CHEAPER TO BUY THEM A BOTTLE OF VODKA!
BEST WISHES
PAUL & BOB.
Martin Burke,
15th June, 1998.
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.
Frank: funny, my mind was relaxed, not at all active but when
I perceived your neologistic powers, it went all hectic! In fact
I had to hectivate myself in checking the dictionary: your word
seemed right somehow - I think I may have to use it myself!
QPAC2: I have yet to make contact with this in any real
manner. From what I hear, I suspect that a very full index is
required. It may also be that any manual needs to separate the
"what" and "how" of the system. In one section explain carefully
what QPAC2 can do, the facilities and choices it can offer. In an
entirely separate section explain how QPAC2 does it - or how it is
made to do it. This may remove or ease a - perceived - complexity.
Thanks for those who sent good wishes, I am close to 100%
now. I am still surprised at the nature and length of the "damage"
to my personal "CPU". Still, I do now feel a greater affinity for
Random Access Memory. Mine was extremly random at times.
GLAD TO HEAR YOU ARE MUCH IMPROVED MARTIN AND WE HOPE IT
WON'T BE TO LONG UNTIL YOU ARE TOTALLY FIT AGAIN.
Yours,
Martin Burke.
#!
Email : dilwyn.jones@dj.softnet.co.uk (home)
dilwyn.jones@bbc.co.uk(workplace)
GEAR: JM/Minerva QL+Gold Card+ED drives+RomDisq; 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; P90 Black PC and QPC 1.30; Toshiba T2100 486DX2/66 laptop
with QPC 1.30.
Dear Mike,
Sorry guys, another LONG letter from Dilwyn.
Frank mentioned the '3D sound' and 'Oilrig' recordings. I was
on a broadcasting training course when I heard the 'oilrig'
recording in binaural audio the first time. We had to wear
headphones for full effect, as that could not be achieved on
speakers at the time. At one stage in the recording, there was a
door knock and someone entering a room from behind which wasn't
immediately obvious in the script - it happened without warning -
and almost all of the class turned round to look to see who'd
entered our room, much to the instructor's amusement. A rather
simple technique was used to record audio like this for headphone
binaural reproduction - two small omnidirectional microphones were
fitted into the ears of a dummy head to mimic human hearing, and
the recording engineers took care of the rest. The use of the
dummy head etc meant that just as a human can tell where a sound
comes from, including front and back, that same phase relationship
etc between sound arriving at both ears was preserved thanks to
the recording technique and you got almost exactly the same effect
when it was played back through headphones, including front and
back information your ears and brain could make sense of. The
problem of binaural recording at the time was that although you
could listen to it on a normal stereo and make sense of it, the
full effects were only obtained by listening on headphones.
Events. This is where you can make a program expect a signal
from another program when some specific condition or action
occurs. I think this sort of thing has always been possible in
machine code programs, but the inclusion of Event keywords in
SMSQ/E (or SBASIC) is the first time I think that this facility
has been available from interpreted basic. So you could write a
small program which sat in the background waiting for something to
happen, when that happens it activates the Event number you set
the other program to expect. So this other program is hard at work
for you, but as it knows about Events, it recognises that the
Event it's expecting has been set and so can stop what it's doing
and attend to what the other program expects it to do. Of course,
you have to write the programs to handle all this, but the actual
signals from one program to another are handled by the Events
system. In effect, think of Events as "Oy, whoever was expecting
me to signal them when I was ready, I'm ready for you now, can I
have your attention please!"
ZIP files. These are compressed archive files - archive as in
many files stored together in one large file, not a QL Archive dbf
file! The simplest way of handling these is described below. A
file with a filename extension of _zip (or .zip if it's come from
a PC or from the internet) needs a program called UNZIP (freely
available from PD libraries, bulletin boards and Web pages such as
those of Jonathan Hudson), often distributed with the zip file on
the same disk. If you can find the latest versions, described as
'compatible with InfoGroup zip', these are the better versions as
they are up to date and include some extra facilities and bug
fixes over earlier versions.
UNZIP normally decompresses the file to the DATA_USE default
drive. So decide where you want the decompressed files to end up,
and specify this drive in a DATA_USE command (which will be
present on all systems which have Toolkit 2 and on most floppy
disk or hard disk interfaces). Place the zip file disk in one
drive, and a blank formatted disk in the other. You need to use
the EX command, which is an enhanced version of EXEC, also present
in Toolkit 2 and most disk interfaces. Let us assume that the zip
file called EXAMPLE_zip and the UNZIP program are in FLP1_, and
you have a blank formatted disk in FLP2_
DATA_USE FLP2_ : REMark files will end up here
EX FLP1_UNZIP;'FLP1_EXAMPLE_zip'
Depending on the size of EXAMPLE_ZIP this could take anything
from a few seconds to a few minutes. As a rough guide, the
decompressed files might take two to three times the amount of
space occupied by the _zip file.
Obviously, if you only have one floppy disk, you can
decompress from a _zip file onto the same floppy disk if you have
space. The UNZIP program and the _zip file don't necessarily have
to be on the same drive.
If you'd like an idea of what's in the _zip file before
decompressing it, you can get a list of files by using a '-l'
option (lower case letter l, not number 1) before the zip
filename, saparated by a space:
EX FLP1_UNZIP;'-l FLP1_EXAMPLE_zip'
The ZIP program, which does the opposite action of combining
and compressing files into a single large archive file, is a bit
harder to use. If you are into pointer driven programs, get hold
of the excellent (and free!) Archiver's Control Panel, which
simplifies much of the work.
To see a little help screen listing the instructions, just
start UNZIP with no parameter - i.e. EX FLP1_UNZIP
YOU COULD EVEN USE ACP,THIS PROG IS SO EASY EVEN I CAN USE
IT!
Michael Kite - hope you've had a good time in Canada. Let us
know if you met any QL users out there, there are a few, though
it's a large country.
Sorry, Colin, I don't have the experience of using Things to
show how to use them. Jochen Merz has a Thing & EPROM manager
program which gives various basic extensions to help with
controlling and using things. I wouldn't worry too much about it,
if you don't know how to use Things, it won't bring your life to
an end overnight. Anyway, you'll probably realise you're using a
few Things already anyway if you're a QPC2 user, as some of the
menus etc in that are implemented as executable things!
Regarding directory structures, here's what I do. It suits
me, but everyone ultimately has to decide on a structure to suit
his/her own needs. I give my most often used applications their
own directories, especially for their data files.
My biggest blocks of files are (1) resident extensions (2)
executable programs (3) word processor files (4) clipart (5) QL
Today files and (6) basic programs. I also use a 'Trash Can'
directory to move files into when finished with rather than
immediately deleting. This gives me a 'breathing space' to recover
accidentally deleted files. From time to time, I go through this
directory and weed out files more than, say, a week old. If I
accidentally delete an important file, I'll have realised within
the week and moved it back to where it belonged. QL Today wouldn't
last long at the rate I make mistakes!
WIN1_EXEC_ contains all executable programs. This doesn't
stop me having the full set of program files in another directory
if I need them, but having all executables in one directory on my
hard disk means I can set PROG_USE to the name of that directory
and just type in the name of the program to be executed, rather
than the full path name.
PROG_USE WIN1_EXEC_
EXEC QUILL
EXEC ABACUS
WIN1_BOOTUP_ contains all the RESPR type files needed by my
BOOT program.
WIN1_QUILL_ contains all my Quill doc files, accessed from
Quill using BASIC's DEV_USE as explained in a previous issue. I
used to take this a stage further and keep the doc files and plain
text files in separate sub directories by defining different DEVs:
WIN1_QUILL_ contains Quill, printer files, help files, etc
WIN1_QUILL_DOCS_ contains the doc files
WIN1_QUILL_TEXT_ contains the plain text/exported files
DEV_USE 1,WIN1_QUILL_
DEV_USE 2,WIN1_QUILL_DOCS_
DEV_USE 3,WIN1_QUILL_TEXT_
FLP_USE FDV
DEV_USE FLP
So Quill looked on FLP1_ (really WIN1_QUILL_) for its
printer_dat file and help files. As did INSTALL if I wanted to
change a printer driver. Saving to FLP2_ put the doc file into the
docs sub directory, and importing plain text files from FLP3_ took
text files from their own directory. I gave up using this system
as I started to use Quill less and less, and also I had some
troubles with FLP3_/DEV3_ which I never did manage to figure out.
I have two types of clipart - screens (or bitmaps) and Line
Design clipart. Line Design tends ot take up so much room that
I've given it a directory structure all to itself. The program
files and clipart live in their own directory called WIN1_LD2_,
while the fonts live in a sub-directory called WIN1_LD2_FONTS_. As
I'm always finding and converting new fonts for it, keeping them
together is quite useful, as I can remove or add fonts quite
easily. The Line Design startup file pats make it quite easy to
fetch fonts from a separate directory. My bitmapped clipart lived
in a directory containing a number of sub-directories (until the
last hard disk crash, this part hasn't been restored from the
mountain of floppies yet) of clipart categories:
WIN1_CLIPART_ nothing in this except more directories
WIN1_CLIPART_MINICLIPS_
WIN1_CLIPART_SPORT_
WIN1_CLIPART_OFFICE_
and so on.
And for QL Today, I have a similar scheme. New items go into
a directory called WIN1_QLToday_. As they are used, a new
subdirectory is created for each issue of the magazine and files
used placed there. So I have directories called WIN1_QLToday_V3i1_
for Volume 3 Issue 1, WIN1_QLToday_V3i2_ and so on. If a
particular issue contains an article with a huge number of files
without meaningful names, I can put them in their own
subdirectories if required, but I have to be careful I don't go
over the 36 character filename limit. Text87 users in particular
like to send me files with long meaningful names, probably too
used to Word 97 at work creating long filenames from the first
line of text in a file, so this tends to bugger up the system a
little. As issues pass into old age, whole sub-directories get
archived onto floppy disks and removed form the hard drive to
spave space. In practice, the system doesn't always work this well
as I have a laptop as well as the main computer, so files tend to
end up scattered on floppies and on on different hard disks when
I'm careless or too busy to tidy up. Luckily, in the history of QL
Today, I don't think we've managed to completely lose many files
so the system must work reasonably well.
BASIC programs live in a directory called (wait for it)
WIN1_BASIC_. No surprises there - with the QPAC2 files menu, or
even a DIR WIN1_BASIC_ I can see all my BASIC programs in one go.
Finally, the Trash Can is just another directory, but with a
very short name, to try to allow files with long names to be moved
into it, and a name which is harder to delete by accident. So
that's called WIN1_*_. When entering such a name you have to
enclose it in quotes from BASIC just to make it harder to delete!
So what I do to delete files now is to bring up the Files
menu from QPAC2, mark the files I want to deposit in the Trash Can
and use the MOVE command to transfer them there. When I realise
I've just 'deleted' something I wanted to keep, I don't have to
struggle with fancy file recovery programs, I just go to WIN1_*_
and move the file I wanted to recover back to where it came from.
Incidentally, WIN1_*_ also has the advantage that in a sorted list
of files, it appears at the top, so making it easier to find when
I need it.
My way of working is probably unique to me. Equally, your way
of working may be unique to you, or you may think it is. As long
as it works for the individual concerned for his own use
(consenting adults in private and all that) why not?
The directory tree looks like this:
WIN1_
|
+-WIN1_*_
|
+-WIN1_QUILL_
| +WIN1_QUILL_DOCS_
| +WIN1_QUILL_TEXT_
|
+-WIN1_LD2_
| +WIN1_LD2_FONTS_
|
+-WIN1_BASIC_
|
+-WIN1_BOOTUP_
|
+-WIN1_EXEC_
|
+-CLIPART_
| +-WIN1_CLIPART_MINICLIPS_
| +-WIN1_CLIPART_SPORT_
| +-WIN1_CLIPART_OFFICE_
|
+-WIN1_QLToday_
| +WIN1_QLToday_V2i6_
| +WIN1_QLToday_V3i1_
| | +-WIN1_QLToday_V3i1_Fred_ <==a long single set of files
| +WIN1_QLToday_V3i2_|
and so on...
BTW, I've written a little set of procedures for a future
QLToday issue, which give you recursive directory handlin
routines, to help you copy whole directories, search directories
and so on. Once these have been printed, as long as Jochen Merz
agrees I'll try to remember to include them here. Apart from being
useful in themselves and short enough to type in from printed
listings, they show to write BASIC programs which can handle
directories quite effectively. WHen you get the hang of it, it's
not that hard really, and it's such a useful technique to have
knowledge of if you want to write your own routines for bulk file
handling.
Concerning the request for details of little DIY hardware
projects, I have a couple of stories concerning cable adaptors and
my Aurora. It's out of action again at the moment and seems to
have taken over from my Black PC as the biggest trouble maker in
my house. Ron Dunnett supplied a cute little adaptor lead to run
from the Super Gold Card's parallel port to a PC style D connector
(I think it's 25 way) on the back of the tower case. Being a PC
style connector, it means I can buy cheap PC printer cables for
the system rather than having to make one up myself. And Tony
Firshman gave me a cute little adaptor for the 9 pin D PC-style
serial connectors to a British QL style 6 pin socket, so I can
still plug bits and pieces with British-QL style serial connectors
into the Aurora tower case 9 pin D connectors. Can't remember the
prices Ron Dunnett and Tony Firshman charged me, but they were
well worth it. I seem to recall that the printer port adaptor
wiring was published in International QL Report a long time ago.
The other useful project I've never regretted adding to my old
1984 QL has been a ROM switcher board from the lads in a Quanta
sub-group in Norwich. This sits inside the QL and holds both a
Minerva EPROM and a Sinclair ROM, so you can have, say, an old
version JM rom inside for running older programs and testing
software compatibility if you write your own programs, and switch
to Minerva (needs a reset to change roms) for day to day use. It
has an LED which changes colour depending on which rom is in use.
It involves a bit of pushing, shoving and drilling of the case for
a switch and the LED, but is well worth it when you get it to
work. That QL also has a QIMI interface (one of the original QJump
ones, not the Quanta version) which has worked faultlessly since
the mid 1980s. It seems rather strange after such a long time, but
this 1984 QL with all its little add-ons and its Gold Card and
RomDisq is still one of my most reliable systems, although it only
has 2Mb of memory and no hard disk (unless you count the RomDisq
as a mini hard disk). So much so, that even though it's out of
date now even in QL terms, I won't get rid of it because I know
what my Aurora system and PC are like when they go on strike.
Graphics Viewer. As one or two of you found out last month,
this program has some, errr, interesting bugs. I'm still working
on it and adding screen dumps facilities etc, hopefully with you
by the next issue. For a good bug, load a MODE 8 PIC file and do
something which invokes a QMenu menu. Oh dear...
Back issues. I'm still looking for copies of those missing
back issues, as described in the last issue. Please, if you have
copies of those issues and their files, please get in touch. Even
if nobody else wants them, I do! I'm still trying to sort out
which programs go with which of the early issues, and it's proving
to be a very fiddly job.
Sometime in the autumn, timed to coincide with a QL show in
Britain, Jochen Merz hopes to come to Wales on holiday, and we
plan to make a week long QL bash out of it if I can get time off
work at the same time. Darren Branagh hopes to come along too if
he can save up enough days off and Punts. Anyone else who'd like
to indulge in some shameless (I mean QL-related!) activities in
the lovely Welsh countryside on the outskirts of Snowdonia is
welcome to join us if in the area at the time, I'll send the dates
once I know them. QL by day, beer by night, so that Darren can
turn Punts to pints if he joins us! There's plenty to do around
here, and if you get bored we'll send you out to round up some
stray sheep or something...
WRONG TIME OF YEAR FOR TUPPING DILWYN!
Dilwyn Jones
Terry Williams 24/06 /98
QL112
Hi! Mike and Friends
MIKE: I hope you have returned refreshed and tanked up after your
holls! Did you meet any cats having a swimming race?.
My contribution for QL110 seemed to have missed the bus so I will
repeat it again:-
_______________________________
Mike, I am sorry you were unable to get the answer to the puzzle
last month, it must be due to your Pee Zee!!, as the copy you sent
back to me gave me the answer,
----[ 'One Two Three won because the Une Der Twa cat sank!!' ] ----
(excuse the phonetic spelling!!).
A friend tried this out, in his french class, but instead of two
cats he used two 'fishes had a race', which made it fall a little
flat !!!!.
THEN GOD ALONE KNOWS WHAT I WOULD HAVE SAID!
My set up is the original black box stuffed with Super Gold Card,
Quimi mouse, and twin ED drives and XCHANGE 3.9J running on QPAC2.
Dennis Smith: Many thanks for your bit in QL108 with reference to
stuffer buffer. While I had found out that, by hitting an item in
a file screen list and escaping, it was then in the stuffer buffer
ready for further use, to load something into QUIL, or whatever,
but I did not know how to write my own comments into the buffer.
program to write my own remarks easily into the buffer. Dead easy!!
--------------------------------------
I am sorry I missed last month so, I hope you will be able to put
it on the second disc I will enclose with this months issue. Taa
ever so Taaa!
I AM AFRAID YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT FOR QL111 AS I MYSELF DO
NOT YET HAVE A FULL COPY.
TTFN Terry
Andrew Halliwell
u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk
u5a77@potter.uga.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 (Now a slave) and now... a
250Meg quantum 3.5" harddrive as master, twin floppies (One DD and one HD as
FLP2_ and FLP3_) Minerva 1.97, 24 Pin Dot Matrix Printer... And loads of
little toys I download off the internet... (Including Qascade, which is
nice...)
Well... Here we go again. It's been quite an.... interesting June this year,
what with the army camp (which of course, I survived). It was at a camp in
Corwall called Penhale, near Newquay. (I'm definately going to go back down
there soonish to try some more surfing....)
THE THINGS PEOPLE WILL DO JUST TO GET A FREE HOLIDAY!
On the QL front, I've been recently getting very *&*#ed off with a certain
adventure game called Curses that runs under the infocom virtual machine,
InfoZIP (and before I say it, yes, there are two programs with the same
name). So far, I've managed to get about 34 points out of a possible 550,
and I'm stuck....
Anyway, last month, I said I'd do something on Qascade and Mtools. The
documentation for Mtools is good enough, so I'll just do a little on Qascade
(not saying that Qascade documentation is bad, but it'll probably see more
use....)...
Anyway, here is my QASCADE_RC file. (The file used to create the menu
structure)
# These entries are the main menu
# (almost) default colours
#COLS;gwrgyrwgwbbw #
Traditional QPAC2 colours
COLS;gbggwwbrbwgb
# These lines are used to define a preferred colour scheme. (The # lines are
# comments)
SEP;QPAC-Menus
# This produces a line in the menu with a title, like this...
# ------QPAC-Menus------
TITLE;Thingies
TITLE;Files
TITLE;Configure
# And these are the actual titles for the menus. The actual menus are
# defined lower down....
SEP;Applications
TITLE;Emulators
TITLE;Editors
TITLE;Business
TITLE;Games
SEP;Utilities
TITLE;Toolbox
TITLE;Compression
SEP;Minerva
# Minerva MultiBasic in a console window
MBAS;MultiBasic;,con
MENU;Editors
EXEC;Emacs;WIN2_C_emacs_ptr
EXEC;Qed;WIN2_C_qed
EXEC;QD;WIN1_QDIX
MENU;Emulators
TITLE;Spectrum
EXEC;Xtricator(zx81);win2_xtricator_XTricator_exe
MEND
#This defines the Emulators menu, referenced above
MENU;Spectrum EXEC;ZMht;win2_emul_ZMX_ZMhT_TASK
EXEC;ZM128;win2_emul_ZMX_ZM128_TASK
EXEC;ZeXcell;win2_emul_ZXL_ZeXcelU_obj
EXEC;Spectator;win2_Emul_spec_Spectator_exe
MEND
#This defines the Toolbox menu, referenced above
MENU;Toolbox
EXEC;*Alarm*;win1_alarm
EXEC;WinLink;win1_WinlinkALLext_V003_obj
EXEC;PIC View;slspv EXEC;Character Select;win1_CharSel_obj
EXEC;Calculator;WIN1_calculator_obj
EXEC;System Monitor;WIN1_sysmon
MEND
#This defines the Thingies menu. See above. MENU;Thingies
ETHG;Jobs;Jobs ETHG;Channels;Channels ETHG;Rjob;Rjob
ETHG;Hotkeys;Hotkeys ETHG;Things;Things ETHG;Sysdef;Sysdef MEND
#This defines the Files Menu. Again, see above.
#You might realise here, that I have no FLP1_. This is due to my getting a
#new drive that had to be used on a different socket on the SuperGold Card,
#so I only have FLP2_ and FLP3_ now. No great disadvantage.
MENU;Files ETHG;Files WIN1_;Files;\DWIN1_
ETHG;Files WIN2_;Files;\DWIN2_
ETHG;Files WIN3_;Files;\DWIN3_
ETHG;Files WIN4_;Files;\DWIN4_
ETHG;Files FLP2_;Files;\DFLP2_
ETHG;Files FLP3_;Files;\DFLP3_
ETHG;Files RAM1_;Files;\DRAM1_
MEND
#Ditto for the Configure menu...
MENU;Configure
EXEC;Level I;win1_Config
EXEC;Level II;win1_Menuconfig
EXEC;FileInfoII;WIN1_FI2config_obj
MEND
#Here we see a new item, the '?'. This means ask for additional parameters
#before running the program. (Not much point in running unzip without command
#line options and a filename to unzip.
MENU;Compression
EXEC;ACP;win1_ACP_ACP_obj
EXEC;Zip;?win1_zip
EXEC;Unzip;?win1_unzip
EXEC;Gzip;?win1_gzip
EXEC;Tar;?win2_C_tar
EXEC;Smash;?win1_smash
EXEC;Zoo;?win1_ACP_zoo
MEND
MENU;Business
EXEC;Perfection;win1_perfection
EXEC;Xchange;win2_Xchange_xchange
EXEC;Qspread;WIN1_qspread
MEND
#Again, here we see the '?' again. This is because the infocom program 'zip'
#requires a game file to load. Currently, the one I'm stuck on is Curses.
#Also here, we see the extended MBAS command allowing a program name to be
#passed to run.
MENU;Games EXEC;Infocom;?WIN2_Infocom_zip
MBAS;West;WIN2_games_west1_boot,con
EXEC;Minefield;WIN1_MineField_exe
MEND
To put things simply then, there are several keywords in Qascade.
COLS Set the colour preferences for border/text/etc....
EXEC: execute a program.
MENU: Start a menu definition.
MEND: End a menu definition.
TITLE: Create a title for a menu to be defined later with MENU.
ETHG: Execute a 'thing' such as the QPAC Files or Rjob things.
MBAS: Start a multibasic job. This can have added parameters passed to it so
that it'll run SuperBasic programs at the hit of a menu item.
SBAS: Basically the same as MBAS, but for SBASIC in SMSQ/E.
Overall, I prefer this scheme to the QPAC buttons. It looks a lot neater
just having one button, and everything neatly categorised into menus. My
only problem was, getting a few screen shots of the menus in action proved
impossible because QASCADE wouldn't allow grabit (or hotkeys) to work while
it was in menu mode. C caused the menu to vanish until it was
C'd back. Another problem I had was with unzip. For some
reason,the parameter passing screwed up with this, and characters were lost.
Something I'll probably report.
DID ANYONE UNDERSTAND THAT? I'M SORRY SPIKE BUT THAT LITTLE
LOT JUST WENT RIGHT OVER MY HEAD AND IS STILL FLYING,CAN WE HAVE
IT IN ENGLISH PLEASE? I KNOW IT MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH
QASCADE BUT WHAT?
And now onto the questions.... Colin Baskett asked last
month.... "I wonder if Dilwyn, or someone, could give a concrete
example of something a program can do through the 'thing' system.
And explain why a "Linked" List ???"
Right.... Well, I'm not too familiar with the THING system
myself, but a linked list is simply a list of items, each linked
to the next.... A bit like this....
-----------------
|List Data| | |
-----------------
| |
------------------------------ ------------
| |
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
|Item a| +--->|Item b| +--->|Item c| +---->|Item d|*|
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Oldest item ------------------------------> Newest item
The List Data structure holds the addresses of the head and tail of the
list. (Neccesary for adding and removing items). You add to the tail, and
remove from the head.
It's a very usefull datastructure. There are several variations. The one
above is called a single linked list, because it is a list of
datastructures, each connected to the next by a single pointer.
In order to navigate to the item you want, you simply take the address of
the first item (which is known), and read the address of the next one in the
list (which is part of Item a). This points to the address of Item b, and so
on, until there are no more items. At this point, a NUL pointer is reached,
represented by the '*' above, telling the program there are no more items
in the list.
A double linked list looks similar, but has pointers in both directions.
A binary tree is a specialised form of list to increase search speeds. In
this one, each item has two pointers, like this....
--------------
|Item 1| | |
--------------
/ \
/ \
-------------- --------------
|Item 2| | | |Item 3| | |
-------------- --------------
/ \ / \
etc.....
The reason linked lists are used it that they can grow and shrink
dynamically. With an Array, the array size must be set at startup, but with
a linked list, all you need is one occurance of the structure to start with,
and this can then be used to build a large list, adding and removing items
at will. (Well, almost. With a double linked list, you can remove or add an
item from anywhere within the list, but with the single linked list, that's
not really feasable. You have to remove from the end, and add at the
beginning.
Now, I'll make this request to MIKE. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN A GOOD FORMAT THIS
MONTH. Normally, my posts to ClubQL end up knackered. All bunged into a
single paragraph or two, which makes parts of them unreadable.
Load it into QD if nessecary, just to see what it SHOULD look like.
(It is pure text after all. I think quill ignores the fact that I'm not
using CR/LF, only LF. (Carriage Return and Line Feed).
ALL I CAN DO WHEN YOU SEND IT TO ME BY EMAIL SPIKE IS IMPORT
IT TO XCHANGE FROM DISC AND RESET THE MARGINS AND INDENTS AND
UNLESS I KEEP SWITCHING FROM WINDOWS TO QL ALL THE TIME I CANNOT
GUARANTEE WHAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE.UNLIKE UNIVERSITY TYPES WHO HAVE
TIME ON THEIR HANDS,I HAVE RESTRICTED TIME HERE.THE ONLY WAY IT
CAN BE GUARANTEED IS IF YOU SEND IT TO ME ON A QL FORMATTED DISC
AS YOU LAID IT OUT.
>>** Well... It turned out crap again, so I had to repair the damage.**<<
NEXT:
A couple of months ago, Dilwyn was talking about using the network port for
sampling and sound generation. I said I thought I'd got the files, but in
fact didn't.
Well, I managed to track them down...
(They were on the other computer, potter, not the comp-sci one....)
Don't know how much use it'll be. It came from someone (Richard Zidlichy I
think) who sent me the info over a year ago when I was thinking about the
same thing.
----------------------------- e-mails ------------------------------
> |> I don't suppose you could add some comments to the Network code
sometime.
> |> I want to figure out how to access it for sampling and sound
production.
> |>
> |> I think I sent you some info about the Hermes registers, was this of any
> |> use?
> |>
> |> I'm not sure if that was me. I don't have Hermes.
> |
> |I meant the good old ZX8301/8049 combination, I found some info about
their
> |registers in an QMAC include file. Difficult to read but goos as a starting
> |point for experimentation.
>
> Yep. It was me.
> I just checked. I forgot about that file, probably because it's so hard to
> figure out what it all does....
> Thanks again.
> --
I had a look at it, quite tricky bit shifting but probably I could figure out.
So far what I can see is that the write is done by the 5538 routine; this calls
L00420 to init the mode register $18020 to $18. The actual writing is done bitwise,
by setting some $18002 bits. Bit 0 of $18020 is always checked before any write..
If you have any kind of description of the hardware registers, that would help.
Did you think about the necessary hardware to connect to the net port?
Bye
Richard
Hello,
I had a look at some GST documentation files and found the
following. So my best guess is that your register is $18002
in mode %11000 and pc_tdata. Did you try the qdos disassembly?
Bye
Richard
* SYS.PC peripheral chip registers
PC_TCTRL EQU $18002 *** transmit control
PC_MCTRL EQU $18020 Microdrive/link control register
PC_IPCRD EQU $18020 IPC read is the same
PC_IPCWR EQU $18003 IPC write is not
PC_INTR EQU $18021 interrupt register
PC_TDATA EQU $18022 *** transmit register
*
PC.INTRG EQU $01 gap interrupt register
PC.INTRI EQU $02 interface interrupt register
PC.INTRT EQU $04 transmit interrupt register
PC.INTRF EQU $08 frame interrupt register
PC.INTRE EQU $10 external interrupt register
PC.MASKG EQU $20 gap mask register
PC.MASKI EQU $40 interface mask register
PC.MASKT EQU $80 transmit mask register
*
* transmit control register values
*
PC..SERN EQU 3 serial port number
PC..SERB EQU 4 0=serial IO
PC..DIRO EQU 7 direct output
*
PC.NETMD EQU %00011000 *** network mode
*
>
> |Did you think about the necessary hardware to connect to the net port?
>
> I was thinking about doing it in a similar way the speccy did it with the
> tape port. It inputs and outputs audio signals.
> It's just a matter of seeing if it's possible to getting to output different
> frequencies and accept normal audio.
AFAIK all the net prots can produce or recognize are digital HI and LO signals.
It should not be difficult to design a circuit for the audio output, but
decomposing audio input to something that could be received over the net
ports would require quite a bit of engineering.
The quality of output or input therefore only depends on the maximum frequency
available on the net port- that should be at least 89k bits/sec this could
give decent quality if some clever coding is applied.
>
> (Which, I think it is, because that's how the ZMHT emulator emulates
> spectrum 128 sound and loads spectrum tapes. I think.)
It might help to get some more info about ZMHT, I have never seen its audio
capabilities.
Bye
Richard
>
> |It might help to get some more info about ZMHT, I have never seen its audio
> |capabilities.
>
> I tried e-mailing them a few months back, but got no reply.
> I suppose I might eventually buy ZMHT (When (if) I can afford it.....).
I have these addresses if it helps:
madmax@prix1.pr.infn.it
Davide_Santachiara@f21.n335.z2.fidonet.org
Marco_Ternelli@f21.n335.z2.fidonet.org
Also I found some old info from them which offers a demo disk for 6 IRCs or
a very moderate amount of money. From their info it is clear that they use
the net ports for reading spectrum tapes, also it says that ZMHT emulates
some YM... audio chip but doesn't say how.
Bye
Richard
------------------------------- end e-mails -----------------------------
I'm not quite sure if I got the order of the e-mails right, but they should
be usable....
Next, some off topic natter about... Star Trek Voyager...
Bill Waugh said....
"Now for something completely different, I see that Janeway women is
back, still lost though, you have to wonder how on earth she ever got in
charge of that ship, Kirk and Picard might have had there faults but
they never got lost for long, always back on course by the next episode.
This woman has been flying in circles along a terrestial M25 for nearly
two of our earth years, and the crew she has leaves a lot to be desired."
Actually, if you watch sky, (or the videos) it's more like 4 years now.
(And 50 more to go unless they find a large short-cut)
I AM AFRAID IT IS 71 YEARS TO GO AS THEY WERE 75 YEARS FROM
HOME AT THE BEGINNING.
"Chickatay - a disposessed apache or something, no sense of fun, plays
with a couple of coloured stones (wel I soppose a rain dance is a bit
pointles in space), Ryker would have the shirt of him in a game of
poker."
Oh, I don't know. I quite like Chakotay.... Ever heard of character
developement? BBC2 are doing reruns at the moment.
"Toovok - a black Vulcan (see Enoch was right)"
What's so wrong with having a black Vulcan? I imagine they have similar
climactic differences on thier planet as we do, with hotter places causing
people to evolve darker skins. The main ploblem with Tuvok is he shows just
a tad too much irritation when Neelix is nearby.
"A female Klingon !! - are the men not bad enough"
Actually, she's half Klingon, and Half Human.
"A Doctor with more attitude than the Klingon."
You forgot to mention the fact that he's a Hologram....
"Nelix - now he is good, feeds the crew of several thousand from a couple
of cauldrons on gas rings, so what happend to the replicators, Janeway
probably lost them somewhere."
Don't pay attention to the plot I see.
The ships compliment isn't several thousand. It's several HUNDRED.
The replicators have been "Rationed" to save energy, so, unless you want to
use up all you replicator rations, you're stuck with eating Neelixes glop.
ACTUALLY IT WAS 147 AT THE BEGINNING,WITH DEATHS,LOSSES AND
BIRTHS IT SHOULD ROUGHLY BE ABOUT THE SAME NOW.THE ORIGINAL
ENTERPRISE HAD A CREW OF ABOUT 450 AND THIS IS A MUCH SMALLER
SHIP,AS FOR THE ENTERPRISE D,THE COMPLIMENT IS ABOUT 1100.
(Also makes playing poker more interesting, because they can use their
replicator rations as a form of currency on board ship. [Not something
people on starships normally worry about, as there isn't any currency...]
THE REPLICATORS ARE ONLY USED FOR BASIC ITEMS THEY CANNOT GET
ANYWHERE ELSE,THEY HAVE BEEN ON REPLICATOR RATIONS SINCE LOSING
SOME OF THEIR POWER,THEREBY CONSERVING POWER BY NOT OVERUSING THE
REPLICATORS.
"Last but certainly not least the Borg - Seven of nine - now thats what I
call a body, she can stun me with here phaser anytime, hey "you will be
assimulated" yes please wheres's the problem..
Yep Seven of nine or Dax, either could tear me away from a keyboard."
Ahhh, so you ARE watching season 4. I'll agree with you there....
"Well time to go - warp five Ensign Crusher - make it so"
OH PLEASE! Don't drag him into it! We've got rid of him, and the last thing
we want to do is see that little wuss again.
[In case you haven't guessed, yes, I do subscribe to the newsgroup
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die. He is *THE* most hated individual in the
Star Trek universe....]
WAIT TILL THEY START THE RE-RUNS OF BABYLON 5 ON THE SCI-FI
CHANNEL,FROM THE VERY FIRST ONE!
And now, back to our regular, scheduled topics.....
Next....
COLIN MURPHEY! Shame on you for even considering using a M$ product to
format your ClubQL message! It took me ages to get rid off all the dubious
characters and make it readable for the web page.
He then went on to say.....
"Has no one else suffered the problem of transplanting a QL hard disk, of
QubIDE format, into a system of other hardware like a PC with QXL or ,
like me, uQLx. There appears to be no software that would allow me to
read a QL hard disk directly. I no longer have access to QL hardware,
so I can not network the two machines together. Has anyone any idea how
I'm going to get all my QL data back?"
Why can't you just get your old setup repaired? Ron Dunnet could probably
handle most of it, as it seems to be aurora/qubide based. And as it was a
hard drive that caused the problem, maybe it's just the Qubide that's fried.
If not then it looks like you'll probably have to invest in a LOT of HD
floppies, and take it along to a QL club somewhere. ZIP will save a lot of
time, probably halving the number of floppies you'd need, and you wouldn't
need to backup ALL the data on the drive.... Would you?
Amyway... That appears to be it for this month....
See you next month. (I might even see Mike and John this month, at NEMQL,
now that it's uni holidays and my 2 week camp's out of the way. -----------------
FRANK MERRISON,
24-6-1998
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!
Hope you returned safely Mike and having enjoyed yourself - have had
time to sober up! Please reply to my questions about your PC in a
recent issue.
I HAVE A PACKARD BELL EXECUTIVE MULTI-MEDIA P100,8MB OF RAM,1GBYTE
HARDRIVE,4XCDDRIVE,28800 MODEM,TRUST SCANNER,CANON BJC-4100 COLOUR
PRINTER.I THINK THATS ALL.
To follow up on my past remarks about Qpac2; I have now read and re-
read the articles in the 1995 issues of Quanta. I have practiced, as
Bill Waugh suggested, and I now believe that 95% of what is need to
know is contained within these articles. There is one thing that
bothers me and that is about the "Stuffer_buffer" I've read the manual
and this is about as helpful as reading the Koran. OK it tells you how
to stuff a particular thing but how do you - say - insert a file name
from the files menu so that it can be placed into the command line of
a word processor - for example. I have seen this done at the sub-group
but never saw how!
I did later receive a reply to my letter to Wolfgang Lenerz with about
seven pages of detailed information, mainly on the HOT_RES, HOT_CHP,
HOT_LOAD & HOT_THING. Very useful.
Dilwyn: I'm not sure what you are missing from reading 'Issues_txt'. Is
it the letters or programs you are short of? If the letters; I have ALL
of them and many more from before they began to be numbered. This began
long before Mike took over the newsletter. The first ones are on paper.
Later we had discs with letters and progs mixed up. I used to save them
to discs as they came at one time but subsequently made a practice of
storing letters and progs on different discs. I now have a pile of
about twenty full DSDD discs and they are too many to copy (or lose the
originals). I suggest that we meet the next time there is a workshop
somewhere within reach of London Town and you can browse through them
to pick out what you want. Hopefully one will take place soon as I wish
to discuss SMQE/E with Roy. I'm interested but need more information
before I can make a decision to buy it. Rich Mellor's review in the
March Quanta got me interested..
This leads me to a problem that I have spotted in the QL dealers'
world. Since trade is very limited dealers cannot afford expensive
advertisments with the result that initially there is a brief
announcement made in Quanta when some new program is produced which
then gets an occasional update. Take as an example Ron Dunnett's hard
disc interface. From time to time he has reported which drives it will,
or not, work with. Similarly SMSQ/E gets a mention but this just gets
lost for people who do not buy it when it comes out. Take my case. If I
become interested in a program I then have to sort out dozens of back
issues of Quanta to get the full story of what it does and it's
updates. How do dealers feel about the complilation of all this
information onto discs to be held in the Quanta library. As things are
developed the dealer could send an up-dated disc in with the complete
story. Would it be simpler for someone concerned with the library to do
the updating? I think the idea is worthy of discussion. Obviously -
this does not refer to minor utilities but major programs. I hope to
discuss this suggestion with Colin Baskett at the next London
sub-group.
I have just received the June issue of Quanta (bit late Colin!) and Lo!
& behold yet another proposed new update for the QL is on the horizon.
Milan - an upgraded Atari that can run SMSQ/E and look like a super QL.
Frank Merrison.
#!
Colin Baskett
1 July 1998
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, etc..
Dear Mike,
I hope you have had a good holiday. We have just returned from a SAGA
"Gardens" holiday in Devon. Strongly recommended if you can lay on
reasonably dry weather and, of course, like gardens. We were lucky. It
rained quite a bit but only once when we were actually out in the open.
I THINK I SHALL HAVE TO WAIT A FEW YEARS YET BEFORE SAGA TAKE ME AWAY!
Back to earth. "WHICH" magazine has just (July 98) published an item on
the quality of printing. In Note at the end of the article it mentions
that all the printers it has discussed are IBM-compatible and
condescends to notice that not everyone has a Pc by pointing out that
they cannot be used with an Apple Macintosh. So now we know.
The machines included in the survey were:
INKJETS
Canon BJC-80 `200 TEST SCORE 7
BJC-4300 `130 8
BJC-7000 `250 7
Hewlett Packard Deskjet 340CBi `210 6
Deskjet 400 `100 6
Deskjet 890C `280 9
Lexmark 1000 `100 7
Olivetti JP 190 `90 6
JP 795 `170 8
Xerox Home Centre `300 7
LASERS (Black an White only)
Brother HL-1060 `430 8
Kyocera FS-600 `351 8
Oki OkiPage 6e `280 8
No Epson or Apple printers were included because the makers were
changing their ranges.
The test score takes no account of price or reliability and is based
on: print quality and speed (40%), convenience (25%), versatility
(15%), build quality (10%), noise/energy (10)%.
The article points out that quality of printing varies with the paper
from copier paper (less than 1p/sheet), to inkjet paper (c. 5p/sheet),
to high resolution paper (c. 10p/sheet), to glossy paper up to
`1/sheet. Only the Deskjet 890 C and the BJC-7000 produced text
(virtually) indistinguishable from the laser printers. However, the
best graphics printout by far was from the HP 890C. This was also the
quickest machine for printing detailed colour images onto copier paper.
Other machines were not much slower BUT THE HP890C WAS THE ONLY ONE TO
PRODUCE GOOD QUALITY COLOUR IMAGES USING COPIER PAPER.
AH! BUT NONE OF THEM GOT THE MAGICAL 10.OR IS THAT RESERVED FOR BO
DEREK?
Ink costs varied from 29p to 71p per 10 black pages and from 15p to 99p
for 1 colour page. Use your inkjet printer sparingly ! The lasers cost
between 7 and 10p for 10 black pages, excluding laser drum
replacements. Paper extra in all cases. The HP890C was amongst the
cheapest inkjet printers for ink costs both black and colour.
The report gives no indication whether the printers accept conventional
printer control codes or whether they are designed to be driven solely
by the Windows printer manager (as raster graphics printers). But four
of them, BJC-80, 980C, HL-1060, and the FS-600 are said to have sets of
fonts on disk or CD-Rom and so presumably may be driven in the
conventional way.
Do any of us have experience of any of these printers? What is a
sensible compromise between paper quality and paper costs for printing
text? Have we got any recommended suppliers of paper?
YES,LIDL OUR LOCAL SUPERMARKET @ 99p FOR 500 SHEETS OF COPIER PAPER.
Best wishes
Colin B
#!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Darren Branagh,
27th June, 1998.
QL & COMPUTER GEAR INCLUDES: One Gateway 2000 Pentium PC running
QPC (demo) and PC Xchange, 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_), 280+ 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.........
...........and a Partridge in a very heavy pear tree !!!
Dear Gang,
Short and sweet this month, actually its becoming a habit... I'm
still mega busy at work.....
I am currently writing some reviews of Rich Mellors Games Programs
for the QL, namely text adventures, The Prawn and Nemesis, at
Dilwyns request. I have been having fun with them - brings me back
to my Spectrum days, playing Temple of Vran until 2am...
The reviews should appear in Ql Today over the coming months..
I also sent Paul McPherson a Monitor, which when arrived decided
to blow up his 2 QL's.... I felt terrible, so If dennis still has
the QL from last month for `20, Paul is probably interested. I had
the Monitor ionsured, so I should be able to reimburse Paul soon.
Its not a nice thing to happen though. It must have been damaged
internally somehow.
Anyway, enough from me.. This will be late, and its 1.25am as it
is..... Hopefully it will make it into QL112...
Regards,
Darren.
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