Version 2.24 of the Java-based emulator called SMSQmulator is now available from Wolfgang Lenerz’s website. Includes some bug fixes and now allows the CTRL+mouse wheel movements to produce left and right scroll keycodes.
Download from http://www.wlenerz.com/smsqmulator/
Version 3.31 of SMSQ/E is now available and includes both bug fixes and new facilities.
The sources and binaries are available to download from Wolfgang Lenerz’s website at http://www.wlenerz.com/smsqe/
Following his recovery from illness, Dave Park has taken up the mantle of designing new QL hardware once more.
A random hardware ideas thread on QL Forum led to the design of the miniplane, a compact three slot backplane with two slots facing left away from the QL and one facing right upside down over the CPU. This would allow, for example, a Super Gold Card and Qubide to be used together.
The card is quite compact, 96.3mm x 20.6mm and comes with small plastic shields to protect cards from touching against each other, or against the keyboard backplate in a QL.The fit inside a QL case is pretty tight and one suggestion is to add a washer on the front and back screws on the left side of the QL case to give an extra 1mm, which gives a small air gap and helps the QL run a little cooler due to the increased power demand of using more than one card at a time.
Dave has produced a small initial run of these and mailed them out to first customers already – the first small batch sold out pretty quickly and more connectors have been ordered for a further small batch of miniplanes. The cost was $29 for a two slot version, or $36 for a three slot version plus postage. For anyone already owning the DIN 41612 connectors, Dave was willing to supply the bare PCB to save on postage costs.
Dave is hoping to send out PCBs to someone in Europe to assemble, to make it cheaper to produce these devices for supply this side of the Atlantic, as he’s doing this on a non-profit basis.
A combination of circumstances which arose at the same time as my ISP’s decision to stop providing email addresses caused the Sinclair QL Homepage site to disappear a few weeks ago.
Fortunately, Graeme Gregory stepped in and quickly provided a temporary home for the site complete with downloads at the temporary new home of www.greybeardz.com until I get time to fully restore the original site.
The dilwyn.me.uk site site remains available but has not yet been fully restored from backups. A temporary home page redirects you to the greybeardz.com site for now.
Jan Brdenbeek has re-released MultiMon – a QL Monitor, Disassembler and Debugger written in 1986/7 – on GitHub.
It was already available from PD websites, but now there’s an English manual and source files too.
MultiMon v2.1 is entirely written in machine code and less than 10K bytes in size.
It may be started with an EXEC command or installed via LRESPR as a SuperBASIC extension called MON.
Alain Haoui has prepared special versions of Quill, Abacus, Archive and Easel modified with Martin Head’s Psion Mod package.
These allow you to set memory they can use and have a cursor for task-switching more easily. Configured to run from FLP1_ and data on FLP2_.
Please note that these modified versions can’t be (re)configured with the original PSION utility as it will not be able to find items on expected offset addresses. Refer to Martin Head’s Psion_Mod package mentioned above for more info. However, all configuration items can be passed as parameters to Mods.
Look at Martin Head PSIONMOD_DOC inside this package for instructions.
All this needs Toolkit 2 activated.
Keith Murphy took a commented version of the sources for Quill v2.4 and reverse engineered the internal language within.
This version of Quill, Quill_e, has been made clean so that all direct access to the screen and unnecessary MODE calls are removed.
It also doesn’t grab all the memory in the machine, in fact you can pass the memory size as a parameter. It also multitasks so you can EXEC it, try it on the second screen in Minerva.
Two versions – one in QemuLator executable format, so you can just copy it to a native directory of QemuLator and just exec it from there, the other a zipped version of the normal Quill executable, which you should cop to any other QDOS/SMSQ system, unzip it there and then exec it.
No further documentation required, works just like standard Quill. Note: still limited to 8.3 filenames.
Download from the Psion programs page on my website http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/psions/index.html (scroll down to Quill-e section)
A cursor emulating mouse kit from members of the Merseyside QL group in the 1980s.
Supplied in kit form, the interface was usually installed inside the QL with a socket to allow a mouse to be attached.
There were a few examples of these built into external cases, plugged into the CTL sockets too – the picture shows one I came across with a dot matrix printed label indicating ‘Mersey Mouse mk 2’ with a switch which allowed you to switch one of the mouse buttons between ENTER and ESC.
These scanned documents are from Steve of QBits and include a circuit diagram and installation instructions. Not that many of these were made, so if you get hold of one of these rare interfaces, you have a collector’s item on your hands! (Scanned as three JPEG files).
A version of the QubATA software is now available for Q40/Q60 with IDE controller(s) on ISA card.
This driver, with associated utilities, supports a primary and secondary IDE controller with 1 to 4 physical drives on the Q40/Q60 platforms.
As with the original QubIDE driver, QubATA uses its own QLW1 format for disks and partitions and will not actually support the QLWA format used by the WIN driver under SMSQ/E on Q40.
Original Qubide media such as CF cards can be directly used if inserted in the Q40 IDE slot with adaptor. Also, QubATA driver may cohabit safely with the WIN driver if present. It will install itself as QUB driver instead of the usual WIN driver name and will handle QLW1 disks formatted and foreign media without interfering with other WIN disks.
To avoid clashes with BASIC keywords, all QubATA commands prefixed with WIN_ are changed to QUB_ instead. The CD_xxx keywords are unchanged.
Please refer to the QubATA manual for a complete description of all commands and replace WIN by QUB everywhere. All QubATA commands and features should work on Q40: direct raw access, trashcan, partitioning, CD audioplaying, alien media. See the Q40_Notes_txt file supplied for a fuller explanation of the differences.
Get QubQ40 from the QL ROMs page on my website at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/qlrom/index.html (scroll down to Qubide section).
Several program from former QL trader QBits have been made available, some in an updated form.
QBFtidy is a file handling program – copy, rename, etc files. Download this from http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/files/index.html
The following games are available to download from the Games page on my website at
QBDarts – a darts game allowing you to play 301 or 501 on QL.
QBWH – Storeman_Sam and Warehouse_Sam combined into a program called QBits Warehouse (or QBWH for short). Try to manage a warehouse, invoices, deliveries, stock movement etc.
QBGolf – Play an 18 hole round of golf. Play against other generated players to compare scores. Pit your skills at Power Driving off the tee and Putting the ball once you reach the green.
QBMD – A Minesweeper style of game.