QL Forum Online Chat

Rob Heaton writes:

We are currently trialing a new ‘Online Chat’ system, this allows our members to communicate in real time and will hopefully add a social side to the Forum!

Once signed into the Forum, you will see a link above, called ‘Online Chat’ (This sits next to the ‘User Control Panel’)

You can also connect via an IRC client of your choice, using the following settings;

IRC Server: irc.mibbit.net Port: 6667 Channel Name: #qlforum

If the Online Chat is a success, we’ll look at purchasing the ad-free version, which also allows us to apply the look and feel of the forum to the chat window.

Update: after a few moans about the free ad-supported version, the QL Forum owners purchased the ad-free version and it is now up and running without the annoying popups and adverts (well, unless we go over a rather high number of users at any rate).

Peter Scott (‘vanpeebles’ on QL Forum) says that there’s been an average of about 5 people a night, including some well known QL personalities. It’s certainly quickly become a stable fixture of the QL scene.

New version of “The Final DVD”, now as free download for everyone!

Lucerne, Jan 12th 2014 – COWO Enterprises LLC proudly launches QL is 30 2014 The Distribution. This distribution is the successor to the QL Today 2013 The Final DVD which was sent out in September 2013 with The Final Issue of the QL Today magazine. The new version 3.00 holds everything which was on the DVD, but has been carefully updated and supplemented with new material – we have been able to add some real gems and an exclusive new release of a formerly commercial package – created or preserved during the last few months. Altogether there are more than 4.6 GBytes of QL related documents, software and pictures on this distribution. Preconfigured QL emulators for use under Windows, Mac OS and even Linux make it easy to bring the QL (back) to your desk. QL is 30 2014 The Distribution is free which means it can be downloaded, used and re-distributed by anyone at no cost. As we are in the final stages of production availability is just days ahead. Order your free download copy using the email address listed in the Feedback section on the brand new “QL is 30” website. In good old Sinclair manner we have to state: Please allow 28 days from receipt of order for delivery.

Latest additions include (state 05.02.2014):

  • Very latest versions of the virtual QL machines (aka emulators) QPC2 and SMSQmulator and the Operating System SMSQ/E.
  • QL INTERACTIVE FANTASY collection
  • QL ZEXCEL SPECTRUM EMULATOR collection
  • 7 volumes of the QUANTA eMag (Volumes 22 to 28, 2005-2011, 43 issues)
  • The SBASIC/SuperBASIC Reference Manual (PDFs and more)
  • Plus some real gems (e.g. long lost software) and an exclusive new release (update) of a formerly commercial package

QL forever!

30 Years Since… Announcement

2014 is the year of the 30th anniversary of the Sinclair QL Professional Computer, the Mac that never was. The QL is worth remembering. The new website www.qlis30.org.uk hosts or links to any 30th anniversary activities. This website will grow over the next few months so bookmark it and keep on visiting frequently. Share it with friends; post it on social media and your other communication channels. Watch out, there’s even more to come. Stay tuned…

MDI Driver

Martin Head has written a device driver for emulating the microdrive cartridges as used in the Sinclair QL, as a file stored on another device. He wrote it after coming across an old box of microdrive cartridges of his in a cupboard and deciding to copy and preserve them before they became unusable.

It was specifically developed for use with QPC2, but should work with most emulators. Since QL compatible systems generally have no microdrives, this lets you use saved microdrive images on emulators. It includes images of Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel.

To create your own images of microdrives, you will need a real QL with working microdrives and read the text file “Creating_Images_txt” supplied to see which program to use and how to go about it. Apparently even microdrive ‘random number’ finger prints are copied, allowing even some protected older programs to be run!

The driver lets you ‘mount’ the image files created from your microdrive cartridges, and use them from an emulator. You can load and save from/to these microdrive images.

Martin is currently soliciting opinions as to whether a similar floppy disk imaging system might be of interest, now that many users have emulators on computers with no floppy disk drives. No further news on that as yet.

The MDI Driver may be downloaded free from my website at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/utils/index.html or from http://www16.zippyshare.com/v/68973691/file.html

QL-SD Is Here

The QL-SD is finally available. Designed by Peter Graf and with software developed from original drivers from the designer of the Ser-Usb device, QL-SD was built and made available on a no-profit basis by members of the German QL community (http://forum.tlienhard.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=9 ), including producing a manual for it. The units themselves were built by Paul Veltjens, who initially made a batch of 12. Support was through the German QL forums and the devices will be available via SellMyRetro.com, with the price expected to be around €60

The first unit was auctioned off on SellMyRetro.com and apparently fetched a price of £128 in the end after a total of 16 bids starting at £40 – see http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/QL-SD-internal-SDHC-Card-Interface-for-QL-3596 for details, a picture and a copy of the manual!

A few weeks ago, I got to try out an older prototype version of QL-SD which hooks up to a QL via the bi-directional parallel port of a Super Gold Card. Peter sent me a version of the QL-SD software to try it out and I eventually got it working after a few mistakes – read about my experiences with it on my blog at http://dilwyn2.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/ql-sd-for-sgc-par-port/?relatedposts_exclude=164

While this particular version isn’t in production at the moment, perhaps Peter Graf would consider making a few if enough people ask him nicely! Given that early standard QL-SD devices don’t work with all versions of Gold Cards and Super Gold Cards, this might be an alternative route to getting SD cards for QLs if you have a Super Gold Card, or perhaps for those who are not confident of opening up their QL and removing a microdrive to make room to install a standard QL-SD. Please bear in mind that a parallel port version of QL-SD might be a little slower than a standard version, of course. You also have to use the higher capacity SD-HC cards rather than the early SD cards.

The Last Five Years

Geoff Wicks has written an article about the last five years of the QL. He discusses the positives and disappointments of the QL scene in recent years. The article is well worth reading, as you may not have realised so much happened on the QL scene in the last few years. Read it on his very popular (according to the increase in number of hits on it since the closure of QL Today magazine) News page at http://www.gwicks.net/justwords.html

Classic 70s and 80s Games Go Online

The Internet Archive has made available a number of classic 70s and 80s games online to play in a browser. OK, nostalgic and all that, but the real interest for us is that some of this is based on a Javascript implementation of the MESS emulator system, which included the Sinclair QL when I last reviewed it in this magazine, although the online version is so far based on only a handful of games machines from that era such as the Atari games consoles. The online version is called JSMESS.

There is a news feature about it on the BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25527786

The Internet Archive feature on this is at https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom (it’s referred to as the Consolve Living Room online).

Where it gets even more interesting is if you search for ‘Sinclair QL’. Try:

https://archive.org/details/Sinclair_QL_TOSEC_2012_04_23

(note it has several underscores in the link above which may be hidden by the underlining).

Scroll down to the bottom of that page and check out the links to some of Timo Salmi’s old QL software, for example. The ones I have looked at are written in SuperBASIC.

For further information about the MESS system, visit http://www.mess.org/

QL Games Collection 1

To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Sinclair QL, we are now offering the QL Games Collection Pack 1 at 50% off until the end of March – just £5 with email delivery! The games included in this package are:

Jungle Eddi by Stefan Kuhne
Hoverzone by R G Riley
Deathstrike by Damon Chaplin and T. Bovingdon
Cuthbert in Space by Steve Bak and S J Proctor
QL Hopper by Steve Bak and S J Proctor
QL Pengi by Jochen Merz and R. Bieniek
QL Vroom by Daniel Macré
Stone Raider II by Alex J Herbert
The King by C H Robertson Consultants
The Lost Pharaoh by Stefan Kuhne

http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/Sinclair-QL-Games-Collection-1-2152