How To Repair Microdrive Cartridges

A user on QL Forum (Saltor66 – Salvatore Lasorella) has produced a video showing how to use liquid glue to consolidate the little felt pad on detriorating microdrive cartridges, to help stop it falling off its mounting and contaminating the insides of the cartridge with little bits of debris. This helps to extend the life of a cartridge long enough for you to have a chance to recover the contents. The method applies equally to Spectrum and QL microdrive cartridges. The page is in Italian and English:

http://apuliaretrocomputing.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/come-ripararare-le-cartucce-per-zx-microdrive/

SMSQmulator Latest

SMSQmulator 1.22 is out – it contains several bugfixes (and comes with smsqe 3.17). There’s a list of changes and bug fixes on the download site. SMSQmulator is, of course, the QL emulator for Java systems. You need Java version 6 or 7 on your system to run SMSQmulator, although this can be on various operating system platforms such as Windows or Linux.

Download SMSQmulator from:

www.wlenerz.com/SMSQmulator

SMSQ/E v3.17

Wolgang Lenerz writes:

“SMSQE 3.17 is out – it only corrects the bug when moving a pulled down window with transparency.”

To update your SMSQ/E just visit Wolfgang’s SMSQ/E page at:

www.wlenerz.com/smsqe

From this page, you can download a 1.2MB zipped file containing binaries of the various versons of SMSQ/E for Atari, Aurora, Gold Card, Q40, QXLand SMSQmulator. The zip file also contains various text files describing changes in the various versions of SMSQ/E, and some help regarding recompiling SMSQ/E if you wish to tinker with the sources.

A5 QL User Guide eBooks

I’ve uploaded new eBooks to my website. These are:

1. QL User Guide, Introduction, Beginners Guide, Concepts and Keywords guides.

2. A re-hashed version of Martin Head’s QPC Concepts and QPC keywords guide.

These are A5 layout, in .pdf, .epub, .mobi and .azw3 formats (azw3 is hopefully for Kindles). Hopefully they’ll be easier to read on eBook readers as the pages won’t be shrunk so much to display, although some eBook readers can override margins, font sizes etc.

Available to download from http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/ebooks/index.html

SMSQ/E Sprites

SMSQE Sprites is a Java program from Wolfgang Lenerz for converting GIF, BMP, TIF, PNG and JPG graphics to SMSQ/E sprites in screen modes 4, 16, 32 and 64. The program can add reflections of the image. Download it from my site at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/sprites/index.html  or direct from Wolfgang’s site.

D-Miner Game

D-Miner v0.22 from Per Witte is a Minesweeper clone for advanced QL systems. Needs SMSQ/E v3.00 or later with GD2 (colour drivers) and QMenu by Jochen Merz. Can use the Sampled Sound System for sound effects if available on your system. Source files included. 395KB download from http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/games/index.html

GST QL Assemblers

With much appreciated help from Rich Mellor, the GST QL Assembler, Macro Assembler and Quanta Q-Mac are now available to download from the Dilwyn Jones website at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/asm/index.html

The Macro Assembler is available as a floppy disk version, or a two microdrive cartridge (program and library cartridges) version. The editor is included now.

Manuals are also available to download as PDF files. Note that the manual for the QL Assembler is rather large by QL standards at about 10MB.

Urs Koenig got permission from GST’s founder to release GST’s QL software as freeware a little while back, and Quanta committee decided after that to allow the Q-Mac (Quanta modified version of the Macro Assembler) to be made available for all QL users (previously only available to members).

Lands Of Havoc Re-Released

RWAP Software have made available to purchase once more the arcade game Lands of Havoc for the QL, at 5 pounds plus postage from http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/Sinclair-QL-Arcade-Game%3A-Lands-of-Havoc-2886

Lands of Havoc is a large graphical arcade adventure, where you have to explore a large maze made of 2000 screens, in order to collect items which will open up new levels. Your task is to explore the Lands of Havoc, and collect various items (starting with the Book of Change) which can be used to defeat the Dark Lords.