Monthly Archives: June 2017

Fleet Tactical Command II

A patched version of the Fleet Tactical Command II Demo, this patch allows you to play the game in QPC2. It also allows you to play a Network game between two copies of QPC2 either on the same PC, or two PCs connected over a local area network. It is supplied as two small QXL.WIN files in FTCIIDemo.zip which act as FLP1 & 2. There are two documents supplied. Operate, is a tidied up version of the Operate text file supplied with the FTCIIDemo. Fleet Tactical Command II for QPC2, is notes on using the patched version, updating the full version, and instructions for using IPVirtPrint, which is a Virtual Text Only Printer for use with FTCII, where the game’s print output can be displayed in a Windows program outside of QPC2. This patched version is the work of Martin Head. Along with IPVirtPrint, it may be downloaded from

http://www.greybeardz.com/games/index.html or http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/games/index.html

Dumping

Simone Voltolini of Outsoft in Italy has been involved with preserving QL software for some time now and has provided regular emails to keep us updated on what has been preserved, along with a list of hundreds of QL programs he has been able to duplicate for preservation.

Using special software to dump the content of a cartridge to a preservable form (many microdrive cartridges are now at an age where they simply stop working largely due to the disintegration of th efelt pad in the mechanism), Simone has been doing a fabulous job preserving this for the day when there are no working master copies of anything.

Simone has produced an English language YouTube video showing how he goes about his work with the mDump2 and mDoubler4 software. The video is about an hour in length, so allow plenty of time. View it via https://www.facebook.com/groups/sinclaircollection/permalink/10155176458182457/https://www.facebook.com/groups/sinclaircollection/permalink/10155176458182457/

Bill Newell

During early May, John Taylor (former Quanta Treasurer) let us know that former Quanta Chairman Bill Newell was seriously ill in hospital. Bill was also Membership Secretary previously.

Several members from Bill’s time as an officer of Quanta responded with kind words about Bill and his time in office.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this difficult time.

QubATA

Alain Haoui has released a new version of the QubATA IDE hard disk driver software. This new release 3.10 is a unified product, where all the variants are released in one package at the same version level.

Versions for all supported platforms – Qubide, clones and Q40/Q60 plus Trashcan, Cdplayer, CDExplorer and Monitor – are all in this release.

Download the latest version on the QL ROMs page on my website at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/qlrom/index.html or http://www.greybeardz.com/qlrom/index.html

The page now includes a section which seeks to help users who have experienced problems with Quill files being saved as zero or 64 byte length with no text and provides a patched version of Quill to work around this problem.

SERNET

I have finally been able to make available a copy of the Sernet software, which allows you to connect SMSQ/E systems together via serial ports to form a simple network for file transfer. Sernet normally needs SMSQ/E to work, as it relies on split receive and transmit serial port connections – it might be possible to get this to work on QDOS systems using the SIMSER extensions, though I have never tried this for myself.

I’ve included copies of versions up to 2.25, and Marcel Kilgus kindly supplied a copy of v3.01. I only have documentation available for the version 2.xx copies. As far as I know, these are only two station versions – if anyone knows better, or has copies of the multi-station version please let me know so I can make copies of those available.

The download on the page at http://www.greybeardz.com/tk/index.html (or http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/tk/index.html ) includes links to pages on serial cable links.

WINDOS 1.01

Win-Dos is a program to list the definitions of win and dos drives in QPC2, and show drive capacities and change medium names.

Bob Spelten has updated the program to allow it to be used with SMSQmulator NFA drives as well as now handling renamed drive names.

Download the updated program from http://www.greybeardz.com/files/index.html or (when the Homepage is back up and running) http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/files/index.html

Sbasic Bug Boogie

If you are interested in the internals of how Sbasic works, you may be interested to read a blog entry from Marcel Kilgus where he describes in detail how he solved the “LRESPR in a procedure” bug which has existed for years in SBASIC.

It is not easy reading, even Marcel says it takes him huge efforts to barely understand parts of it.

Read his exploits at https://www.kilgus.net/2017/04/10/sbasic-bug-boogie/