********************* QL CLUB INTERNATIONAL ********************* ISSUE 104 OCTOBER 1997 M.A.KENNEALLY EMAIL.106114,710 COMPUSERVE.COM MIKEKENNEALLY1@COMPUSERVE.COM ALL SOFTWARE SENT TO THE CLUB IS ASSUMED TO BE PD UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED AND WILL BE TREATED AS SUCH. QXL2 WITH A PACKARD BELL ATTACHMENT 2XQL'S,1X3.5 DISC DRIVES,TRUMPCARD,CANON BJ4100 COLOUR PRINTER. HI ALL, WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? FIRST OF ALL LET ME WELCOME 3 NEW FRIENDS TO OUR LITTLE GROUP,A.PARKER LEWIS,WELCOME PARKER AND ALSO J.C.MARCUS,NO FIRST NAME,COME ON JC WE ARE VERY INFORMAL HERE!ALSO ADRIAN YOUNG.MAYBE NEXT TIME WE CAN GET PARKER AND ADRIAN TO SEND US SOME INPUT TO TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THEMSELVES. I HAVE A QUESTION,THERE YOU GO FRANK A QUESTION!HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY GET ON TO A BULLETIN BOARD?I HAVE ACCESSED THE NENE VALLEY BOARD,SIGNED IN AND SET A PASSWORD,BUT WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE? MARTIN HAS COME UP WITH A PROBLEM THAT SOME OF YOU MAY BE HAVING,AS REGARDS E-MAIL AND THE FACT THAT SOME OF YOU ARE JUST USING SSSHHHHH! PC'S AND XCHANGE.FROM NOW ON I SHALL BE JUST E-MAILING THE NEWSLETTER AND NOT THE PROGS,WHEREAS BEFORE I WAS ZIPPING THEM ALL TOGETHER AND SENDING THEM OUT TOGETHER.THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT ALL THE PROGS AS WELL,SEND ME AN E-MAIL AND I SHALL SEND THEM OUT TO YOU. PARKER,ARE YOU STILL HAVING PROBLEMS USING QL100 AND THE FILES?IF YOU READ SPIKE'S LETTER YOU WILL FIND OUT HOW TO UNZIP FILES,USING THE COMMAND LINES ONLY. AS USUAL IF I THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE I SHALL BE BACK! I'M BACK,SPIKE,IS THERE ANY WAY YOU CAN PUT AN ASIDE ON THE WEB PAGE,TO TELL PEOPLE WHO 'HIT'IT THAT THERE ARE EMULATORS AVAILABLE TO RUN QL SOFTWARE? THANKS TO DARREN BRANAGH FOR SENDING IN A COPY OF THE PAGE FROM THE SATELLITE T.V.MAGAZINE,FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WILL NOT GET A HARD COPY,IT IS AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR SIR CLIVE'S LATEST INVENTION! THE WORLDS SMALLEST RADIO!FOR ONLY `9.50 PLUS P+P,`10.00 IN TOTAL.IT'S AMAZING,AND WORTH IT JUST FOR ITS CURIOSITY VALUE ALONE.I SHALL BE SENDING FOR ONE!THE ADDRESS IS: SINCLAIR RESEARCH LTD. VECTOR SERVICES DIVISION 13 DENNINGTON ROAD WELLINGBOROUGH NORTHANTS NN8 2RL. THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE I WAS GOING TO WRITE BUT ITS GONE RIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD AND THIS NEEDS FINISHING,SO I'LL GO NOW,SEE YOU ALL NEXT MONTH. OH YES,I REMEMBER NOW,DON'T FORGET THE CHRISTMAS POSTINGS THIS YEAR,THIS IS MAINLY FOR OUR OVERSEAS MEMBERS.FOR THE USA IF I REMEMBER RIGHTLY IT'S THE 6th OF DECEMBER AND FOR EUROPE IT'S THE 12th,THIS IS TO GUARANTEE DELIVERY BEFORE CHRISTMAS.SO GET YOUR DISCS IN EARLY! MIKE. Dear Mike (& Friends) Well, having (finally) managed to finish reading your 100th ish., which I received along with my QL Today, I, of course, would like to continue to stay in touch with your group. I just hope that you are not so inundated now with new members, that you just can't keep up!!! NOT AT ALL MATE GLAD TO HAVE YOU WITH US. As regards the QL etc, my main problem at the moment, (and for the last few years, really) has been finding time in between work & other interests, to (sometimes) keep up with all the goings-on, latest releases, new programs, etc, etc. For example, as a QUANTA member, I have most of the library discs, but have never really found the time to fully, or satifactorily, check out all the programs in the library that may interest me. On top of that, of course, are the hundreds of other programs held in the PD libraries, which I'd also love to 'try out', or play with, but I think I'd need a year or so off work to do so! Maybe I'll just have to wait until I've retired in order to really enjoy my QL. DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT MATE,ASK FRANK.HE'S RETIRED AND THERE'S STILL NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN A DAY! About myself: electronic 'tinkerer' (technician[??], then), who 'drifted' into sound engineering after playing in a couple of groups; after running a small P.A. company in London for several (read: too many) years, I was offered a job here (Euskadi = Basque Country), where I now run a (slightly bigger) P.A. company! WHAT'S IT LIKE THERE,MARGARET WONDERS,AS I THINK SHE WOULD LIKE TO GO THERE. My system: QL with SGC, Minerva 1.97, Hermes, 2xHD drives, CUB 653 & Epson LQ-500 printer; Backup QL: JS ROM, GC & 2xDD drives; I also have a QUBIDE with 170Meg drive waiting to be put into a case, (maybe with an Aurora) - if I can find the time (see above)- DAMN, there goes the phone again.... On the serious side, I've had the QL for over 12 years now, run my business, (and a Housing Co-op, when I was in London) with it, and find it more than sufficient for all my needs. When I have time, I 'tinker' about with it, write a bit of software for myself, or check out other peoples programs on it. I've also 'played' around a bit on friends PC's (YUCK!), Atari's & Amiga's, but as yet, have not found anything to tempt me away from what I already have. Besides the time & effort it would take for me to learn to run or program a new system, I think that QDOS/SMSQ/E is still way ahead of the competition. From what I've seen on some friends PC's, for example, I cannot honestly understand how that machine has become the 'world standard'. Someone vaguely famous down here was recently quoted as saying: "La mayoria de la poblacion mundial es gilipolla." I'll let someone else translate that for you, but I reckon they were talking about PC owners!! O.K., I guess that that's enough for now. Hope to be in contact again soon. Keep up the good work, and QL/QDOS/SMSQ/E/.... FOR EVER! Yours sincerely J.C.Marcus Plaza Santa Agueda, 9 THESE ARE LETTERS FROM SPIKE,I POSSIBLY,MAY HAVE GOT THEM BACK TO FRONT.THE REASON BEING I HAD PROBLEMS DOWNLOADING HIS LETTERS SO HE HAD TO SEND THEM TO ME AGAIN AND AGAIN AND............ Andrew Halliwell E-mail: u5a77@cc.keele.ac.uk u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk u5a77@elec.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 (Still not full), twin floppies (one currently disabled) Minerva 1.97... And loads of little toys I download off the internet... HALLIWELL, RECRUIT, 23966924 reporting for duty, SIR! THE ONE THING YOU NEVER FORGET IS YOUR MILITARY NUMBER SPIKE,NOW IS IT 23966924 OR 249 66924,SEE LETTER BELOW! Well, I'm pushing my luck with the timing again. Lets just put it down to settling in to my new room (moved in last week), and downloading the wrong file when I wanted to reply to QL102 the first time. Then the ol' QL crashed after I'd written a few pages... Ho hum... Anyway, I now have another nice little QL generated POV picture improving the looks of the sun workstation I'm on in computer science. I decided now that I'm 1990s compliant, I'd try out POVray again, just to see how long it would take this time. If you remember, last time I generated a picture with POV, I had to keep the QL powered up and chugging along uninterrupted for 2 weeks. (It proved that my QL COULD chug along for 2 weeks without crashing if nothing else...) 2 WEEKS!HAVE YOU GOT ANY NAILS LEFT? So, a couple of weeks ago, when I was going on my weekend III basic training with the TA (outdoor, setting up bashers and going on patrol/guard duty stuff and sleeping in said bashers), I left it chugging along again with a different picture from last time. I'm not sure how much quicker or slower the picture generated was code-wise, but it took 56 hours to complete. (A lot better than 2 weeks, I think you'll agree). BASHERS?ITS AMAZING HOW QUICKLY ONE PICKS UP THE MILITARY SLANG! Then, I realised I'd made a small cock up. POVray is capable of generating several different graphic file formats. I could've SWORN I'd set it for a format called "Targa", which I knew the graphics viewer on unix (xv) could handle. Alas, it came out as Raw data, which then had to be converted. So, I downloaded POV utils. Extracted the files, and found they'd lost their executable headers.... Normally, replacing thwis info is quite simple, but for some reason, it still failed to work. So... Activate C68 to compile the source code. But C68 that I downloaded was just an upgrade, not complete. Dig around looking for the runtimes on the original disks I'd got from Qubsoft. Try again... Keep getting "out of memory" errors. Try again... After a lot of p**sing about, I finally got an executable file which worked. The moral of this story (for me at least), is as soon as I acquant myself with the CC, CPP and LD command line options, the C68Menu is going right out the window. For those of you wondering what the HELL I'm on about, POV (standing for Persistence of Vision), is a ray tracer. This is a rather complicated program where a scene is described in a programming language, describing the shapes, orientations, colours, etc of objects and light sources. It then traces each individual ray of light "generated" by the light source, and produces a very nice picture based on where these rays reflect, refract or are absorbed by the objects... Anyone who's seen Toy Story or Reboot will know what a ray-tracer can do. I'm going to e-mail John S a copy of something called Qascade. (Not tried it yet). It's a menu system for the QL similar to that used in the Unix based "X-windows", Apple Machintosh and Windoze 95... Hopefully, he'll be able to get it to Mike in time for the newsletter... (As he lives down the road... fingers crossed) I'VE GOT IT AND SHALL SEND IT OUT,BUT IT MAY HAVE PROBLEMS.IF IT HAS THEN IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE WHO NOTICES AND SOLVES IT.IF NOT THEN THE PROPER VERSION WILL WING ITS WAY NEXT MONTH. Anyway, on with the show.... Dennis Smith asked "What does the following bit of my boot program do?" To put it simply, it checks the day. If it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, it sets off the alarm at 7:25 PM. Why? I've no idea, unless you like a certain programme on the Radio or something. It's also possible to make the program do something with the alarm when it does go off by having a small superBASIC (or SBASIC) job running that checks the beeper with BEEPING and does something else as a result.... OK, you stumped me. Why do you want the alarm to go off every other day? MONDAY,WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY AT 7.25 HAS TO BE CORONATION STREET,BUT SUNDAY HAS ME STUMPED,NO IT HASN'T MARGARET HAS JUST INFORMED ME IT STARTS AT 7.30 ON A SUNDAY AS WELL!SO HE HAS TO BE A CORRY FAN! Colin Baskett: The "reading the function keys" problem. Well... They way I'd do it is to simply do something like... 10 a$=INKEY$(0) 20 IF a$=CHR$(code for F1) 30 THEN whatever 40 ELSE IF... etc etc etc... (Remembering the END IFs ) Now, I can't remember the character codes for the function keys off-hand, and I'm typing this from the computer lab, not my QL (I ran out of time again), but the Manual and loads of good books will give that info... You DO still have the manual, don't you? PROBABLY LIKE MINE,GATHERING DUST SOMEWHERE! Frank Merrison: "How do I run Xchange from subdirectories in SMSQ?" Well, I'm not an SMSQLer, but wouldn't prog_use : ex Xchange work? If there's an Xchange config program, that should be used as well, I reckon.... THERE IS ALWAYS THE EASIER WAY,USE QPACII. Well... That seems to be about it for this month... See y'all next month... Andy HALLIWELL, SIGNALMAN, 24966924 reporting for duty, SAH! Well, it's that time.... Again... I don't think I'll say much this time, 'cos there's still two months worth of my posts to read through anyway. (Mikes holiday, and then Mike not being able to download it for some reason...) I will attempt to include one little program this time. (Called Qascade, I mentioned it in the last one, (see below) but now it's no longer a Beta version, so it's freely distributable and looks quite nice... Now to start messing about with it and making it do what I want it to do... OH GOOD,WHEN YOU FIND OUT LET US KNOW WON'T YOU! I got my first pay from the TA last week. Of course, being the army, one can't expect miracles, so of course, they ballsed up. (Charged me tax and didn't include any travel expenses...) WHAT DO YOU EXPECT,"THE GOVERNMENT GIVETH AND THE GOVERNMENT TAKETH AWAY,AMEN!" On November the 9th, we'll be going on Remembrance Day parade through Newcastle (Already got some number 2 uniform that sorta fits OK). I MIGHT JUST COME DOWN,THIS I HAVE TO SEE! Then on the 15th/16th I'll be going on my weekend 4 (again). We passed off(ish) last time, but didn't have the large ceremony they normally give, because we only had 5 people turn up. (The rest had either dropped out, been injured in some way, or taken ill...). So we've got to do it again, properly this time. Then, the week after that, I *MIGHT* be going on my phase II. (That's a 2 week army camp where you go through all the stuff you did on the weekends, only in much more depth...) AND YOU GET TO MIX WITH ALL THE REGULARS AS WELL,THAT WILL BE FUN! Right... That's the news from where I'm sitting, lets see if there's anything to respond to.... Darren Brannagh... Well, I had a look at the two PC>>QL>>PC transfer progs... Problems with both I'm afraid... IBMdisk refused to even do a directory, even though I knew things were on it (A PC disk), and XOVER had no trouble... Also, it doesn't appear to like my HardDisk.... And there appears to be a file missing from MultiDOS... Something called outln_rext.... Any ideas? Graham Lutz... The Cuboct program was quite nice, but I think I have an improvement for you... In the version last time, it would fall over with an overflow if you used wierd and wonderfull values to producing nice warped shape/space-warp effects. A simple fix... 685 IF ze==0 THEN ze=.01... Another usefull thing to do would be to auto turn on 2nd screen for gold card users... Something like... 10 TK2_EXT:IF free_mem > 2000000 THEN SCR2EN It took me quite a while to figure out why it was refusing to accept my minerva 2nd screen mode.... I think that's about it for this month.... And now.... The moment you've all been waiting for... My words of wisdom from the previous 2 months.... --------------------------------------------------------- QL102... NOTE: Bits in >>> <<< are newly added.... And now, the news. (At least, if this gets in on time, it'll be news. Otherwise it'll be olds...) >>> VERY OLDS <<< Last month, I finally got my hands on a second hand SuperGold Card. Thanks go again to Martin Burke who asked me to get one for him 6 months ago, and said I could use it 'till he wanted it. I was lucky enough to get an e-mail from Ron Dunnett saying he had just inherited one, and did I want it. And the cost? 100 pounds. (I owe you 20 quid Martin). Thanks again. You know how they say bad things come in threes? This last month seems to be making up for all the REALLY bad things that happened last year. I've got a Supergold Card. I got offered a room on campus (and that's save me about 500 quid over the next year), I got a couple of temping jobs with an agency (an agency that actually FINDS work for you.... Wierd), I finally passed the one module that I failed at christmas and therefore, the last academic year is now clear and complete. And finally, and this, some of you might find hard to believe..... I am now a member of 58 Signals (Territorial Army), so goodbye mohawk.... This weekend just gone, it was Basic Training Weekend 1. Every fortnight from now on until mid-october I'll be going on one of these... (I'm half looking forward to it, and half dreading it, but the first weekend wasn't all that bad really. I even managed to pass the Basic Fitness Test and beat my old time by about a minute...) Also, this means I've got to learn to do something that is totally alien to me.... IRONING.... FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T KNOW SPIKE,HE HAS GONE FROM THE RIDICULOUS TO THE SUBLIME IN ONE HAIRCUT! I'm afraid, what with everything happening this month, I still haven't done anything with the ClubQL home page. (One of my major problems is getting 'round to it. That might change now I'm in the TA... Possibly) >>> Have now... Added ql101, ql102 and ql103 to the web page a couple of weeks ago... <<< This month, I sent Mike a copy of FileInfo II (V3.02). This is a GREATLY enhanced Fileinfo with a few bug fixes over Fileinfo II (V3.00), which didn't work with Minerva. Also, I sent John a copy of QPAC2_patch. This patches up a bug in QPAC2 which prevented it from using FI2v3 to its full potential. And now, on with the responses bit of the post. Firstly, I made a SLIGHT error in my explaination of the WIN_CSUM command. Nothing really serious, but in isn't WIN_CSUM 1,1 for WIN1_, but for the PHYSICAL hard drive (so if you have more than one Hard Drive, WIN_CSUM 2,1 will turn on Checksumming for THAT full drive, no matter how many partitions it has....). Martin Wheatley. You asked about copying the Toolkit II from a superQboard... It's a bit more complicated than you'd think. On the Trump Card, the Toolkit II ROM was held at address 65536. (I scanned the memory above the top of ROM to find it. QuBIDE resides in the ROM slot location on mine (which is 49152). There are other areas in the QL memory map where the ROM could be stored, but 65536 seems the likeliest. In order to check that you have the correct location, run this program. 100 FOR n=65536 TO 66000: PRINT CHR$(PEEK(N));:END FOR N This will print the ROM contents on the screen. If there are Toolkit II commmands amongst the jumble on screen, then 65536 is the base of the Toolkit ROM. Now, you might think "I know... I'll SBYTES flp2_TKII_rom,65536,16384. That aught to produce a nice copy...." WRONG! I tried it, and during the procedure, both disk drives started up. Something in the TKII ROM prevents that method from working. This one does work. (In fact. I used this method to make images of my Minerva and TKII enhanced ROM before plugging in the SGC. (It just takes a little longer) 100 OPEN_NEW #3,win3_TKII_rom 110 FOR n=0 to 16384 120 a=PEEK(65536+n) 130 PRINT #3;CHR$(a); 140 END FOR n 150 CLOSE #3 And there you have it. A ROM image of TKII... You also said: "Hold on there Mike - it's not that simple. Firstly there is no such thing as FREE Web space - it is part of the facilities of a paid for account. It cannot just be taken for granted - it belongs to somebody Someone has to have such space that they have no possible use for and be prepared to make a longterm commitment to let ClubQL use it (I have some space but also some plans to go with it!)" I'm afraid you're wrong there. All over the internet there are free services for almost EVERYTHING. I myself have a free e-mail account with cyberspace.org, and I got the free web space on Geocities with no trouble at all. All you have to do is go to the geocities home page to find out how to register yourself... Go into the clubql homepage and use the backdoor into the geocities web site. HTTP://WWW.Geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/4807 (All accounts are required to have a link back into the Geocities web site. One of the only requirements for it being free.) The disk allocation is about 3Megs, unless you want to pay for more, but with a cleverly written page and plenty of links to other sites, and 3Megs should be plenty. Mike asked me why the IEEE Recruitment Newspaper was no good for me when I offered Jeremy a copy of it... Simple... I'm on a degree course. I haven't got it yet.... NO YOU HAVEN'T MATE,BUT THERE IS NO HARM IN PUTTING YOUR POKER IN THE FIRE JUST TO WARM IT UP A BIT! Martin Burke... Unzip.... Well... I'll do my best to explain it. It's very simple once you get used to it, and I always preferred the versatility of command lines rather than fumbling around in menus... ACP IS VERY EASY TO USE,IT MUST BE I USE IT! When you execute unzip by itself, without a command line, a help page is called up. This help page lists the syntax for commands, and all commands available. However, unless you want to be extravagant, the only commands you need with unzip are -l and -x. The syntax after that is simple, and to make things simpler, you can use PC/UNIX style wild cards to help... I'll start simply, by fully unzipping a single file. The file you have is ClubQL101_zip. You want to unzip this file to ram1_. The first thing you must do, it set the DATA directory to the destination. i.e. DATA_USE RAM1_ Then, you execute the unzip. Now, as there is a single file that you want to extract all files from, the command is: ex unzip;'flp1_clubql101' Simple, concise and not at all complicated. Now... Suppose you have a batch of files that you want to unzip. Say QL96_zip to QL103_zip. This is where wild cards can come in handy. You COULD unzip them all seperately, but why bother, when you can make unzip do it for you? The command DATA_USE WIN1_ ex unzip;'win3_QL*' Will force unzip to go through every file in WIN3_ starting with QL and attempt to unzip it. Don't worry. It can't unzip files that aren't ZIP files. Now for the unzip commands. If you want to know what files are actually archived in a ZIP file, use this command... ex unzip;'-l flp1_clubql101' -l = list all files. There is also a -v, which lists more information.(Verbose mode) To get a little more complicated now, lets say you want to extract a single file from the zip file. This is where the command line always had the most versatility until the most recent version of ACP came out. Assume the directories have been set. The file you want to extract is QL101_txt. ex unzip;'-x clubql101 QL101_txt' will extract a single file. You can just as easily extract a whole list of files, just by adding to the end (before the closing quote). Again, the wildcards can come in usefull... Say you have a file called Games_zip, and the listing contains the following... Minefield_boot Minefield_rext Minefield_exe Minefield_txt MineREAD_ME Lotto_exe lotto_txt Asteroids_hsc Asteroids_exe Asteroids_pic Now, you COULD tell unzip to extract all the minefield game files separately, or as a list, but much simpler is the method below... ex unzip;'-x Games Mine*' This will extract all files in the ZIP file beginning with "Mine". And so endeth todays lesson.... (Mainly because that's all you need to know, unless you want to start using the more advanced features, which aren't really needed for general use...) Frank Merrison asked for simple definitions for some of the latest QL thingies... OK... Here goes... I2C: This is something that works in conjunction with Minerva MKII. It contains various nice things, like a battery backed up clock and a small amount of backed up RAM that can be used to make certain system settings remain the same on switch on, and even contains room for a few lines worth of BOOT program that's accessed BEFORE the normal BOOT. It also grants access to such things as A/D and D/A converters. (Digital to Analogue, and Analogue to Digital). These are for the hardware hobbiest, and along with a bank of switches, can be use to record various things like temperature, or control your train set (or even burglar alarm) Most people get it for the clock and backed up memory. (Another use for the memory is to store the QubIDE settings to speed up the BOOT process) QubIDE: QubIDE is probably THE most usefull peripheral after a basic memory and disk interface. Yes, even more usefull than a Gold Card. QubIDE is a Hard Disk controller card. (I have a 40 Megabyte hard drive separated into 3 devices. Win1_, win2_ and win3_. (Equivalent to flp1_, flp2_, etc) A hard drive is a VERY FAST storage medium. And much larger than your average floppy disk. 40 Megabytes is roughly equivalent to about 55 720k floppy disks. SMSQ/E is Tony Tebbys answer to QDOS for the 1990's. It requires the use of at least a Gold Card to use it, as it's pretty memory hungry, and needs the extra processor power of the 680x0 on the card. It has the pointer envirinment as standard, built in. It can read PC disks without the need of a safety net, and if you talk to it nicely, it'll even do the washing up.... Aurora... RIGHT.... Aurora is a replacement motherboard. This means that you open the QL case. Take a couple of chips from the circuit board. (The ROM(s) and something else). Plug those chips into the aurora card. Take the old circuit board and chuck it away/put in up in the loft/use it as a tastefull piece of objet d'art/etc. The Aurora finally removes the most redundant part of the QL circuit board, that of the microdrives. It is small. Compact. Neat. And when used in conjunction with a Gold Card, SMSQ/E and a decent monitor, a miracle (pardon the pun, it's made by QubSoft) occurs. The graphics resolution of the QL is more than DOUBLED. Also, the speed of the QL is increased as well, due to the use of fast memory chips for screen control. And this wonder card, in more even than that. Tony Tebby is currently working on a set of device drivers for SMSQ/E, which will be able to drive high-resolution monitors and provide, as well as the enhanced resolution, COLOUR. A somewhat alien concept for the QL (having a maximum of 8). Aurora is designed to provide up to 256 colours. (Athough I think the resolution might by slightly limited at that level...) And now, the card everyone is waiting for.... GOLDFIRE. Goldfire is a new replacement for the SUPERGOLD card. Instead of a clunky old 68020 CPU, the GOLDFIRE will contain a NEW CPU called a COLDFIRE chip. This chip is designed around a heavily modified 68040. All software written for the 68040 and below will (or should) work on it, and it will increase the speed of the QL to.... I'm not sure, but I'd guess at least a x10 increase over a SuperGold card. The Goldfire will also have LOTS of bells and whistles to make the QL even faster, including the facility to plug another card into it that will contain another CPU. These two CPUs will then share the work between them in such a way that one deals with ALL input and output, printer/screen/floppies/hard disk/etc, while the other takes care of the users program. What this means is, not only will the speed increase yet again, but when you save to disk, or print something out, or connect to a modem, the QL will NOT pause. The disk will run, and you will be able to continue with whatever you where doing. Probably the most usefull thing about GOLDFIRE however, will be the ability to plug in SIMM cards. These are memory cards, used for years by the PC and thus, cheap. As they are so cheap, and memory prices fluctuate all the time, the GOLDFIRE will be sold without extra memory, but with the capability of being able to handle up to 256 Megs of RAM. (I think you can pick up 8Meg SIMMS for about 20 quid sometimes....) There.... I think that just about sums it up.... NEXT! Dennis Smith.... You devious little..... So... It was all a cunning plan to start a bit of controversy? Oh well, I'll let you off then. =(B-}) Ooops.... Can't use that smilie anymore..... (B-}) There..... That's better.... You mentioned that the only way to access the Goldfires "incredible advantages over the GoldCard" was to plug it into aurora.... I disagree. To me, the BIGGEST, and most important advantage over the gold card is the facility to plug in SIMMs (up to 128, or 256Meg... Or whatever the latest stats are). I really don't believe that they're going to release it in such a form that it can't plug into the standard QL board. After all, they'd be building themselves out of the market. It was discussed on the QLusers mailing list a couple of months ago, and they said that connecting to the standard board was no problem anyway. in fact, they found it to be very easy. Well..... That's about it folks. I appear to have run out of people to respond to, and things to write. As it's so late, I'll e-mail it to Mike anyway, in the hope he can get it before the deadline. (It's currently the 4th of september.) ------------------------------------------------------------- AAAARGH! I accidentally deleted QL103 (overwrote it with the REAL ql103 when I was downloading to the clubql page at Geocities..) I asked for it to be restored from backup, but, they haven't, yet.... So this is Sig Halliwell, signing off, for now.... *! Martin Wheatley martinw@ndirect.co.uk QL, SuperQboard, Twin Disc Drives, Green Screen Monitor Mersey Mouse, PC running Xchange (Ql currently out of action until I can afford to repair it!) WHATS THE MATTER WITH IT MARTIN? Hi everyone Frank wrote about Quanta and Mike replied -------------------------------------------- The main costs are printing and posting the magazine and paying for workshops. I feel that this last item might well be looked at as the workshops are not well attended now and members who do go, or even the arranging sub- group, might well assist with the costs in some way. I AGREE FRANK,LOCAL SUB GROUPS COULD WELL SUPPORT THE LOCAL MEETING AS THEY BENEFIT FROM THEM AS WELL --------------------------------------------- I'm curious about this. In what way does the local group gain? The people who gain are the traders who get a shop window for their product. The London Group had what was generally regarded as a succesful workshop in April. As far as I can see all we got out of it was the honour of doing the work - there wasn't one extra person at our next meeting! THATS A GOOD POINT MARTIN,BUT THEY DO KNOW YOU ARE THERE IF NEEDED.I SOMETIMES THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE GIVE UP THE QL BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THAT NO-ONE ELSE USES IT! --------------------------------------------- Mike wrote THERE YOU GO FRANK,ITS LIKE ME.I USE MY PC 5% OF THE TIME AND AS A QL 95% OF THE TIME.IT SOMETIMES MAKES ME WONDER WHY I BOUGHT IT! ---------------------------------------------- We wonder that too!! The answer is that you are using the PC when running the QXL - you use the PCs input/output, storage and processor PLUS I CANNOT E-MAIL VERY EASILY FROM THE QL. ---------------------------------------------- Dilwyn asked Can anyone help me with a little Unix problem this time? I was asked to convert a more recent version of the CIA World Factbook I convertd a coupel of years ago. For anyone not familiar with it, it's an electronic book of data about the countries of the world, containing such data as population, language, and so on. I've been asked by so many to update it (the most recent version on the Web is the 1996 one) that I want to get it done but have run into a big, big problem. We have managed to download the file WFB-96_T.GZ and I'm guessing that .GZ means it's GNU-ZIP (an Unix compression system). I have a copy of GZIP on the PC, and both QL versions in Steve Johnson's PD library. However, all report the same error message, that the file contains additional data and the format has been violated. Having downloaded it twice and got the same results each time, I think it must mean that the decompression routines are too old. I used the standard command EX GZIP;'-d FLP2_WFB-96_T.GZ' (-d meaning decompress) and it startd OK, but quickly failed. -------------------------------------------------- At the usual risk of getting slagged off for addressing a non-QL specific problem I do have a suggestion to make. You'll not the file name ends _T.GZ This suggests to me it is not just GZIPped but also TARred. TAR is a UNIX systemn for collecting together several files into one archive - it's not strictly a compression system so it usually goes together with GZIP. To get your original file(s) you would have to UNTAR it first then UNGZIP it. How do I do that you say. Well there do exist UNTAR utilities - I noticed one in the SIMTEL shareware archive the other day. However the easiest way is to just run the file through WINZIP (if you don't have that on your PC you should have!) which handles both TAR and GZIP. Having said that it may just be that your file is corrupt! It has been known! TECHNICALLY IT IS A QL RELATED PROBLEM MARTIN,BECAUSE THE FILE WILL EVENTUALLY BE USED BY QLERS. At the last London group meeting we had a visit from a gentleman who has 2 QLs which he has been using for a number of years. He has written a book using Quill and also uses Archive and Abacus. Both machines are completely unexpanded with no extra memory and using microdrives only! You see such people do still exist. He has just acquired a cheap 386 PC and is moving across. One of his problems is sorting out how to get his files across! He is not computer literate and has no wish to be any more computer literate than required to do what he wants to - to him it is not a hobby but a tool - he is not interested in computers as such - not even the QL!. I have given him PC Xchange so he will have something he is comfortable with. Before anyone starts talking about emulators he is retired and has no wish to spend any money (the freeware software emulator is far too technical and too slow - remember it is not a hobby for him - he has no wish for any sort of learning curve that he can avoid - even the idea of Xchange as an integrated prog rather than 4 separate ones is new to him). MARTIN WHEATLEY Terry Williams 25/09/97 GEAR: 2 JS QLs, 1JM QL,SGC,GC,TRUMPCARD,TWIN EHD DRIVES,TWIN HD DRIVES,TWIN DD DRIVES,14", QMIMI MOUSE, GOLD STAR COLOUR MONITOR , 9"SONY TRITRON MONITOR, 12" FERGUSON GREEN MONITOR, SPECTRUM 48K WITH TELETEXT ADAPTOR Darren: Thanks for your idea for the HD/ED conversion. I have tried one on a new IBM disk which I had previousley formatted to HD. I formatted with: FORMAT FLP1_TEST_ED and it came up with 6400/6400 sectors! . I then loaded TASKMASTER FROM the MASTER DISK and copied a previously used working TASKMASTER disk and files to it, and they both give 2832/6400 sectors. It seems to be a marvellous idea as you suggest for backups, only time will tell! MIKE: Reading about your French trip reminds me of the our experience, when I bought a 7 year old VW transporter caravanette conversion, back in 1968. We arranged to take Marians cousin back to her place in Sunbury, and stay the week. We loaded up with our gear packed away in all the cubby holes about the van together with our three kids and us three adults. The Severn Bridge was in opperation but the rest of the M4 was still being built so we had to go on A4 from there on. Everything was OK to Chippenham but going down the hill into the town I found that the top gear would not engage but we soldiered on . Having stopped at some lights on the way out I tried to start off, but as soon as I let in the clutch the engine stalled! The gear box had died with two gears engaged at once!! Luckily we had stopped opposite a garage and once the traffic chaos died down we were towed over. We then had to hire a Vauxhall Victor car, take whatever we could from the cubby holes and pile into it for the rest of the journey. A week later we went back to Chipenham, to return the hire car, followed by John and Gaynor in their car. We all then piled in to their car, four adults three kids and all our gear, for the rest of the journey home. All went well untill the Severn Bridge services, where we found "Murphy" had not deserted us and the engine overheated!!!. The RAC man came along, John joined on the spot. The man had a look, disappeared for half an hour, and came back with a second hand water pump, and we made the rest of the journey OK!. I had a lift a couple of weeks later back to Chipenham to collect the repaired van. I sold it some seven years later, after many holidays, for the same as I paid for it, to a bloke who intended to go touring the Alps. Nothing ever was heard from him again!!. I HOPE THE RAC WAS AS HANDY FOR HIM AS IT WAS FOR YOU! Terry Email : dilwyn.jones@bbc.co.uk GEAR: JM/Minerva QL+Gold Card+ED drives; 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; Pentium 75 Amstrad Integravision PCTV and QPC;Toshiba T2100 486DX2/66 with QPC. Dear Mike, I did not have a copy of the earlier issues of ClubQL, but I did have a copy of issue 66, which you will have received some time ago. A thought, why not contribute the earlier issues to a PD library, who could keep copies for collectors, I'd even offer to act as back issues librarian if I had a complete collection and anyone thought that would help. THAT WOULD BE VERY HANDY DILWYN,JOHN SOUTHERN HAS GOT ALL THE EARLIER EDITIONS TOGETHER AND SORTED THEM OUT.HE HAS PUT THE NEWSLETTERS AND PROGS THAT CAME WITH THEM TOGETHER,SOMETHING I FAILED TO DO IN THE EARLY DAYS!DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE AN OPINION ON THIS,AFTER ALL IT IS YOUR NEWSLETTER NOT MINE! I have been using my 486 laptop for some time now and have had some good times with it, carting it to Ireland and to the Byfleet workshop. One little laptop shoulder bag takes my "QL" with me anywhere. It's a second user machine, and "only" cost me about 600 pounds, and apart from a floppy disk drive failure has given me no trouble at all. I expected a 486 DX2/66 to be rather slow with Windows 95 or QPC, but it's been quite useable on the whole. QPC runs at quite an acceptable speed, despite the warnings that you really need a Pentium machine to deliver with QPC; that just isn't true. It keeps up with me with no trouble, the only time I notice a slow down is when compiling a program with QLiberator, where the line count is rather slow (I wonder if screen output is to blame - a lot of programs which output to the screen a lot seem to be rather slow on it). By and large, it feels much better than a Trump Card QL, and without doing timings, I'd estimate somewhere around the speed of a Gold Card from the 'feel' of using it. I think that it may be responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of pounds from Darren Branagh's bank account sometime in the near future, as he seemed to fall in love with the machine at the Irish QL show, must be all the black stuff! Look forward to meeting you again at the Bristol workshop, Darren, where I may teach you to use Line Design to see if that will persuade you to retain your Prowess. I must admit, I've never got to like Prowess, but that's me, not Prowess. With the rumours of a new windowing system from Tony Tebby while he's been working on the colour drivers for SMSQ/E, we seem to have a bright Christmas ahead of us with several positive developments happening or about to happen. THAT'S GOOD NEWS DILWYN,ITS ALWAYS NICE TO HEAR ABOUT NEW PRODUCTS. At the Byfleet workshop, Tony Firshman announced a new product called RomDisq. Based on a design idea by Stuart Honeyball of Miracle Systems, this device plugs into the ROM port of a QL or Aurora and gives either 2MB or 8MB of flash-memory style storage which can be used to hold your startup files (QPAC2 boot if a QPAC2 user) and your favourite programs. It can be written to up to 100,000 times, so can be used as a semi-hard disk style storage, but it's rather slow to write to and to erase especially, so Tony said it was best to think of it as a rewritable ROM rather than a mini hard disk or something like that. 8MB in QL terms is quite a lot; apart from huge works like Line Design you cn get most of your favourite programs into 8MB (a surprising amount into the 2MB version in fact). The ROMdisq will have a ROM based device driver on board, accessed as directory device ROM1_. If the ROMdisq contains a basic program called BOOT, it will start up from this. Tony expects the 2MB version to cost less than `50 while the 8MB version will be about `100. The PCB is wonderfully small and dense, about the same size as a standard plug in EPROM board. It's expected to be available before the end of the year. Also available at the Byfleet workshop was Q-Route from Q-Branch. This is a QL port of a program called Route Master originally written by Brian Henderson for the Atari. Rich Mellor has converted it for the QL. You may have heard of Auto-Route, for example, that's broadly the functions of this program, finding routes between given places in the UK. You can add new roads etc to the database as they are built. The version I've seen is a bit slow, but useable. One more important application hits the QL. I HAVE SEEN IT DILWYN AND IT DOES GIVE THE PC VERSION A RUN FOR ITS MONEY AND PROBABLY A LOT CHEAPER AS WELL! I agree with Colin Baskett in the last issue saying that we have to present the QL in a positive light. It's something I've tried to do with QL Today, but he's right to point out that I've spent too much time being negative about the PC and not enough promoting the benefits of the QL. Those QL users who are on the Internet can help here, but extolling the virtues of the machine and its operating system especially. The rumoured new windowing system from Tony Tebby will give us a new edge, and once Web browsing facilities arrive there'll be little we can't do for ourselves. As it is, we may have to use the PC to actually access the Web at the moment, but there are HTML and Lynx readers courtesy of PROGS and Jonathan Hudson, while someone else is working on the libraries needed to implement full browsers. The likes of Dave Walker are working on library managers, so the whole thing is coming together, albeit gradually. People like Mike and I have and use PCs for whatever reason. OK, we use them 10% as PCs and 90% as QLs, what's the problem with that? I can't (yet!) buy a portable QL, so the next best thing is to buy the PC hardware and put the preferred operating system on it as well (SMSQ/E). End result, a machine which gives me the best of both worlds. Equally, anyone who uses a Mac, Atari, Amiga or any other machine capable of running a QL emulator is really getting the best of both worlds, and the sheer fact that QDOS/SMSQ is now available for so many platforms is a positive selling point for trying to attract back the many users lost to other computers - I've seen this happen, at a show in London a couple of ex QL users walked in having heard on the Web that QPC and QXL and even QLay were available and wanted to find out a bit about them to see if they could be used to run their old QL software. One wanted to do this for nostalgia's sake, the other said his PC was a wonderful machine, but far too difficult for him to understand. We're probably being over-optimistic in hoping to attract new users, apart from a few tinkerers who relish the challenge of implementing a new operating system on their PCs or whatever, but it ought to be possible to attract back former QL users if we do it in a positive and co-ordinated way. IN THIS DILWYN,I AM IN TOTAL AGREEMENT.ALTHOUGH WE MAY ATTRACT A LOT OF EX QL USERS BACK IF ONLY WE COULD LET THEM KNOW WHAT THEY CAN DO WITH QLAY,QPC AND QXL IN THEIR PC'S.EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY HAVE GONE ON TO A PC,THEY WILL MORE THAN LIKELY STILL HAVE THEIR QL SOFTWARE AND LONG TO USE IT AGAIN. In terms of what makes SuperBASIC a good programming language, QL users are quite used to being able to write their own applications in a short time, rather than have a team of programmers take weeks to produce something on a PC (albeit, the PC one will probably look prettier and be finished to a higher standard, until it goes wrong anyway). We shouldn't be competing with that kind of computer software, the type which takes several people months to prepare, but look at the QL scene where good software is produced by one-man operations (witness SMSQ/E by Tony Tebby, a complete operating system produced mostly by an individual). THIS IS ALSO TRUE,THE ONLY PROBLEM BEING THAT THE PC PROGS ARE AIMED AT THE MASS MARKET AND THEREFORE ARE UNLIKELY TO DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU WISH THEM TO DO,WHEREAS IF YOU CAN PROGRAM IN SUPERBASIC YOU CAN GET EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT.OR IF LIKE ME YOU CANNOT PROGRAM AT ALL AND YOU WANT SOMETHING SPECIFIC,YOU COME TO A GREAT CLUB AND MEMBERS LIKE THIS LOT. BJC4200 - I have a BJ10/BJ20 programmer's manual, but it makes no mention of control codes to switch between emulation modes, so it must be something specific to that printer, or else there is an undocumented facility to do this. Canon have a helpline number, 0891-616151, fax 0181-773 0941. The address on the back of the programmer's reference manual is: Canon (UK) Ltd., Canon House, 2 Manor Road, Wallington, Surrey, SM6 0AJ. Yes, Mike, my boss missed the issue sent by email. Doesn't mean I'll get away with it next time though! There was an internal memo at work which went round recently which warned us against personal use of company email, as the company's name is part of the email address and so we can be 'done' for bringing them into disrepute via use of email. That's why I'm cautious about what goes in and out of my email at work until I get a personal account at home somtime in the future. NO PROBLEM DILWYN. Dave Walker helped me un-gnu-zip (if that's the right term!) the 1996 CIA World Factbook at the Byfleet workshop. Thanks Dave, if you're reading this. Much to our surprise it went from 800KB compressed to almost 4MB uncompressed. So that's why they used GNU-ZIP not ordinary ZIP! This gives me an unexpected problem, none of the QL text editors seem to be able to cope - QD for example gave up because it has a 16 bit line counter and funny things happened after about 32,000 lines!!! So, back to our wonderful simple programming language and write a few little programs to chop up the file into a manageable set of sections, add a viewer utility and the upgrade will be with your PD libraries before long! I DO HOPE YOU SEND US A COPY DILWYN,IN MANAGEABLE BITS.PLEASE. Dilwyn Jones. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Darren Branagh, Rep. Of Ireland. 19th October, 1997. QL & COMPUTER GEAR INCLUDES: One Gateway 2000 Pentium PC running QPC (demo), 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_), 150+ 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. Dear QLCI Gang, Another month rolls by... nearly Xmas again! Speaking of Xmas, if Dilwyn is reading this, I'm going to attempt to use a Pal's colour printer this year to make my own Xmas cards and calendars.... I think somewhere In the vast clipart collection you have there are a few Xmas type scenes - carollers, Xmas trees, Bells, snowmen etc, - any chance you could send a few in for the Xmas issue??? Ah, another bead of News (keep this under your hats, though - its not certain to happen yet) but....... I was talking to Steve Johnson of SJPD on the phone on Friday last - I had ordered some PD stuff from him, over two weeks previously, and hadn't recieved it yet. Seems the reason was poor ol' Steve had recently connected to the internet (only 3 weeks previously) and downloaded a really nasty virus, that destroyed the ENTIRE QL SOFTWARE LIBRARY ON HIS HARD DRIVE!!!!! Not to bad, as he had it all backed up on floppy (lucky) but now has the misfortune of having to reload everything back onto the hard drive - quite a few hundred disks of stuff, which brings me to the News scoop..... Steve is going to bring out his entire catalogue on a single CD-ROM !!! Hes been thinking about it for a while, and this trouble with the Hard Drive has only enforced the idea. He is going to buy a CD-Writer drive (a CD-ROM drive with the added benefit of being able to write to a CD-ROM as well as read from one) soon, and then put the entire catalogue onto one, and make copies to blank CD's on order!! Nothing for definite yet, but hopefully it will happen - obviously it will only be of benefit to QXL/QPC owners with CD-ROM drives (or people with access to one!)but it should be a cheap and handy way of getting LOADS of PDware!! (Similar to the EZdrive and ZIP cartridges Ron Dunnett of QubbeSoft sells). NOW THAT IS A NASTY SURPRISE,A QL VIRUS FROM THE NET.STRANGE IF IT'S TRUE.IF THAT IS THE CASE THEN ALL HIS CD'S WILL BE SUSPECT. Oh, Mike - I've included a few blank HD disks in my bag this month - could you but ZIPped files of QLCI prior to the QL89 edition on them please? - as many as will fit, as I found myself with a glut of HD disks, so I thought I may as well fill 'em with some useful stuff!! NO PROBLEM,I DID WONDER WHAT THEY WERE FOR. Sorry to talk of PC's, but I'm currently looking for a 486 colour Laptop - 50Mhz or higher - as I'm starting a new job soon with Bank of Ireland and it would make life easier with one. I'm also using it as an excuse to get the real QPC (I'm currently using the demo version) and run it on that too!! Quite expensive over here second hand - `800-ish, I know Dilwyn did really well on the price of his one - can anybody help out here?? HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO SPEND,LET ME KNOW AND I SHALL HAVE A LOOK FOR YOU HERE,WHERE ITS BOUND TO BE CHEAPER Mike was wondering who Jeremy Reeves was last month - no, Mike I didn't mean Stuart Honeyball - smart-arse!! :-)) Jeremy Reeves used to work for Miracle some time ago, left, to persue a "job" of his own (namely a `30-ish SOUND CARD for the QL that was due to attach to the ROM socket at the rear - an idea now since shelved, in favour of incorporating the Sound features into the new Miracle ULTRA GOLD CARD instead!!) - which is the reason he is now back working with (or should I say for) Stuart again. Nice fella - Similar age to me (mid-twenties), so we got on quite well. SORRY MATE,I'D NEVER HEARD OF HIM. The Sound features should be interesting too, when the UGC arrives, as Windows .WAV sound files should work on it - which are plentiful in the PC world. (only gossip so far though) My conquest to find an affordable photoconductor drum for my Laser printer is over too, I found a guy flogging off his old office stock, and bought 3 Epson EPL-4100's off him for `120!! (these are exactly the same as my EPL-4000, but with extra features - internally they're identical) I'll probably sell the other two soon, maybe keep one as a backup of parts - but they all work!! `40 each for a Laser printer, not bad eh? Frank Merrison was asking about SMSQ/E last month - well, basically its just an update to the original QDOS, a new and much improved operating system for the QL. It adds a whole host of extra features - faster , flexible disk format, the ability to read and write to MS-DOS format PC disks directly from the QL, multiple faster BASIC's, (meaning you can multitask LOADS of basic programs together at once - neat, huh?) faster screen drivers etc. I only have the demo version - bundled with the demo of QPC I use on my Pentium, but it is much bettter than even SMSQ on the QXL ( the /E just means "extended", SMSQ can stand for (I first discovered this from an article in QLtoday - THIS IS THE BEST MAG FOR THE QL - SUBSCRIBE TODAY!!) Small Microcomputer System for the QL, or Single-User Multitasking System fo QL. Basically you just load up SMSQ/E from disk; and it replaces the original operating system - it wouldn't make sense to put it on a ROM or EPROM (unlike Minerva) as: 1) its bigger that the original 49,152 bytes (48K) of QDOS, and 2) its being updated and improved constantly, currently on version 2.85 or so. The advantages of SMSQ/E over SMSQ (or QDOS) are quite enormous; SMSQ/E for example has the full pointer environment built-in, so you no longer need PTR_GEN, WMAN, or HOT_REXT (MENU_REXT is possibly included too - I'm not sure) loaded in your BOOT file - ditto for TOOLKIT 2, as this is incorporated in SMSQ/E too.(this is where the "/E" extended comes in - extended to include the P.E. and TK2, among other things!!) One of the more useful features (besides the MS-DOS disk handling, very useful in my job, and no need for XOVER anymore!!) is the vast array of extra commands; I use DISP_SIZE in my BOOT on my QPC for example, to set the screen to VGA. Just typing- DISP_SIZE 640,480 Sets the display to VGA - 640 pixels by 480 pixels. Dead easy, and a damn sight easier that using the blasted WINDOW commands of QDOS!! There are a heap of other simple to use commands like this too. Using the demo version has excited me enough to get the full version (included with the full version of QPC for `100) when I get my Colour Laptop!! I don't claim to be an expert though - Dilwyn is definitely the best person in the QLCI world to ask about SMSQ/E - All questions on the back of a `50 Note to Dilwyn's house then!! :-)). Hopefully a few people have decided to rush out and buy SMSQ/E imediately!! Oh, and Mike - TAFN at the end of my letter last month stands for "thats all for now" (see the last issue of QLtoday, as Jochen has done a full article on this, as well as the :-)) thingys on the 'net) TTFN is also OK, "ta ta for now".....see, it wasn't the beer after all!! :-) = a smilie face, (turned 90 degrees to the left, used to convey a laugh within a letter or text!) :-)) = very smilie face!! :-(( = dissapointed; There are LOADS of others, see QLtoday!! I DO REMEMBER THEM MATE,IT JUST SLIPPED WHAT LITTLE BRAIN CELLS I HAVE LEFT! Martin Wheatley was talking about QLAY last month - the free QL emulator for 386 or higher PC's, with lots of RAM. To allow those who want to, I've included it in a ZIP file on this disk!! All you need to do is transfer this file (QLAY.ZIP) to a PC disk (using XOVER, DiskOver, SMSQ/E, or the MULTIDOS or IBMDISK programs I sent in last month)and then use PKUNZIP on the PC (also FreeWare) to UNZIP it. I use WINZIP, ( a Windows version of PKUNZIP/ZIP) as its the easiest to use (also free). Sorry if this seems an awkward method, but I'd have but it on the disk unzipped, but It is just over a meg. when unzipped!! (1,084,390 bytes - although not all these files are needed to run it) It fits OK on a HD disk, but not all QL'ers have a HD setup, and the disk goes out to most on HD (me included!) For Anyone thats confused, take Martin up on his Offer, or its also available from Steve Johnson. Also on the disk are copies of the ZX81, ZX80 and SAM coupe computer's ROM images, now PD - they where on the same directory on my Hard Drive as QLAY, so I've included them - someone may find 'em useful. I also took time to modify an old PD program, called GLAZIER. This was really useful to define windows of any size, but as it was written some time ago, was incompatible with the higher resoloutions of the QXL or QPC, i.e. It couldn't handle windows bigger than the normal QL 512x256. I rewrote a few of the lines in the program to handle VGA resoloutions on my QXL - for a better idea, just LRUN flp1_WINDOWS_VGA_WPROC, which defines a procedure called VGA - typing VGA at the command prompt when in VGA mode on the QXL will re-define the familiar 3 window monitor display of the QL to fill the entire Screen, rather than just the top, left hand corner. I've found it quite useful, and was handy before I discovered the DISP_SIZE command of SMSQ/E. LRUN GLAZIER_VGA to define your own. And another freebie on the disk - DOCVIEWER_OBJ - This really is great, a pointer driven Quill_doc Viewer!! I've been using this to read QLCI each month since I got it around July or so!! I also use it to multitask with Xchange - I load last months mag in the viewer, and write this months on Xchange, flipping between them, to answer last months queries (if I can, that is.) It needs the usual pointer files (PTR_GEN, WMAN etc.) to run, and just EXEC it!! (The reason I don't load both files into Xchange and multitask those is because I can MOVE the viewer to the bottom of the screen - thus having BOTH files visible at the same time on my QXL!!) Heres a question - Does anyone have any good PD Bird Books for the QL or PC?? - Don't get smutty, I meant the feathered kind, not the ones in bikini's!! I haven't found any in SJPD's books collection, but I'm sure there are loads on the 'Net that could be transferred to the QL (Martin?? Dilwyn? Can you Help?) My dad has been a crazed ornithologist since his childhood - so I'd like to get a Bird book, or related ramblings for his old Laptop he uses, and then he would bring it with him!! AND I THOUGHT HIS 'TWITCHING'WAS DOWN TO THE BLACK STUFF! Moving on, I agree with Mike too (last month) about the QXL - great thing altogether. I was considering getting a Tower Case, Qubide, Qplane, Hard Drive, Aurora, etc. for myself - But as I already had a PC, the QXL 2 was a MUCH cheaper option!! (especially as you really have to buy SMSQ/E for the Aurora, as this is needed for the higher than 512x256 screen modes - it with work with QDOS, but only in 512x256!! The likes of 640x480 (VGA standard) or the stunning 1024x768 resolutions are only accessible with SMSQ(/E) running!! I too would like an Idiots Guide to ACP (Archivers Control Panel) and FileInfo II. I can't make head nor Tail of them, and as for ProWesS...........(!) ACP IS VERY,VERY EASY TO USE,TRY IT YOU'LL LIKE IT! Thats all of my Pathetic ramblings for this month. TTFN (there, happy now Mike!!) DARREN. P.S. It also seems likely that I will be editing a new Z88 related Mag for Z88 owners - nothing concrete yet, but Bill Richardson and myself have been chatting about it at the Irish Show and on the Phone since. However, now QUANTA has decided to allow Z88 related material into the Magazine, it may not materialize..... have to wait and see!! +_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_- +_+_ P.P.S. Crikey, 4 pages!! Howzat for knitting a flag?? I'm getting a bit like Frank Merrison (I've nothing to say, so hears a bookful..) #! Martin Burke, 20th October 1997. 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. Plus Super Goldcard!!!! I've finally taken the plunge and bought myself a Super Goldcard (at the Byfleet bash). I fitted it and .... nothing works. So I've taken it out again and plugged my Trump card back in. This does work. When I've finished my contribution I will probably retry the SGC but first things first. I would like to echo Colin Baskett's request for "pithy sentences about the selling points of the QL". I have already made a similar request to Colin Murphy and John Southern: any worthwhile results may get surprising activity. Colin Baskett says that there are problems about "whom to contact and how" ... Funny he should mention that! THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.......... Terry Williams mentions QPAC2. John Southern firmly believes that the last thing one should do is to read the QPAC2 manual. I must admit I would prefer the automatic to the manual. Yours, Martin Burke. #! #! Colin Baskett 28 October 1997 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. Various other pieces of software I am hoping to learn in order to edit QUANTA better. Dear Mike, To deal first with your points:- Thanks for the suggestion about the "old" mailing lists. Bill Newell and I are trying to work something out along those lines. Thanks also for the point about Windoze being fancier (than QPAC2) and looking good. Food for thought there. I SAID IT LOOKS GOOD,NOT THAT IT'S BETTER.THERE ARE FAR TO MANY MENUS TO GET YOU TO WHERE YOU EVENTUALLY WANT TO GO.THEREFORE MAKING LIFE THAT LITTLE BIT HARDER.ESPECIALLY IF YOU ACCIDENTLY HIT THE MOUSE BUTTON TO EARLY AND YOU LOAD THE WRONG BIT OF THE PROG! I note that you are inclined to agree that our software, in some cases, lends itself to programming by the user more easily. But like me you would like the views of more experienced progammers. THIS IS TRUE,WITH QL SOFTWARE,IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG IT TELLS YOU WHERE AND WHAT PART OF THE LINE THE PROBLEM IS,THEREBY AT LEAST GIVING YOU A CHANCE TO 'HAVE A GO'.THE ONLY PROBLEM IS WHEN IT IS CODED IN ANY FORMAT.THEN I'M KNACKERED! I like your point about making the emulators INEXPENSIVE AND SOME OF THE "OLDER"SOFTWARE FREELY AVAILABLE TO THEM,SO THEY CAN SEE HOW GOOD IT IS AND MAYBE PERSUADE THEM TO BUY THE "MODERN"PROGS. HOW ABOUT SENDING THEM ONE OF THE FREE ISSUE EMULATORS(PD)WITH INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO LOAD AND USE IT,WHEN YOU GET IN TOUCH WITH PAST MEMBERS!WHAT WILL IT COST?PENNIES ONLY,AS DD DISCS CAN BE PICKED UP FOR SONG AND IT ONLY COSTS A 2nd CLASS STAMP TO SEND THEM!ANOTHER WAY OF DOING IT AND NOT VERY POPULAR AT ALL,I AM BOUND TO GET BLOWN OUT ON THIS,IS TO 'SPAM'THE NET.O.K. I CAN HEAR EVERYBODY,JUST A SUGGESTION.BUT THERE MIGHT BE SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO CAN DO IT.SEE NOTE IN MY LETTER. Point taken about the cumulative cost of all the bits and pieces you need to put together to get a state of the art 'QL'. THE CUMULATIVE COST IS DECLINING SOMEWHAT OF LATE,BUT IT IS STILL EXPENSIVE.WHEN YOU THINK NOW YOU CAN BUY A PC FOR LESS THAN `500 NEW AND SECOND HAND EVEN CHEAPER,STICK QPC,QXL OR QLAY IN IT AND STILL SAVE MONEY.WHAT'S THE ANSWER? My daughter is using her BJC4200 with a QL. If she had a PC it would presumably be simple to use the software provided to change the emulation to and fro. YES,BUT THEN THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING IT TO WORK ON A QL HAS GONE! Darren:- Thanks for the promise of more articles. Great! Remind me. Did you once offer to review software for QUANTA? I have just tried your HDtoED dodge. I only had (DOS) formatted HD disks available and so I wasn't surprised, following your warning, to get repeatedly formatting reports such as 1568/1600. To my surprise when I dir'ed the disk just before abandoning it I found that it had formatted something like 6336/6400. Confusion. I had just recently started using SMSQ/E and this was the first disc I had formatted under it. I tried other genuine ED discs and these two gave format reports 1600/1600 although they had formatted successfully to 6384/6400. Odd. Back to QDOS and it kept formatting to various numbers below 6384/6400 such as 6336/6400. I could hear that the formatting was not completing smoothly. Once it formatted completely satisfactorily, but only once. Up to this point I had been using Cellotape to close the HD slot. Next morning I tried a hard filler (actually Woodflex Polyfilla because that was what I had in the garage). Since then the disc has formatted perfectly a number of times and is now holding part of my ClubQL archive. Was it just coincidence or was the switch from Cellotape to Pollyfilla responsible? Incidently even when the HD slot was left open, the disc still attempted, unsuccessfully, to format 6384 sectors, in response to the command 'format "flp1_TestingN*E". What are other people's experiences with HDtoED. Any disasters? Martin:- I suspect a lot of us don't yet know everything you can do with Quill, let alone XCHANGE. These are jolly good programs with a Super Gold Card and SMSQ/E to give them a bit of speed (does SMSQ/E do this? It is certainly my impression but I am too busy to do any bench-marking). I too find QPAC2 stuffed with features that I don't know how to use. What little I do know I have mostly picked up from tips in QUANTA or CLUBQLI. So, those of you have found out something useful, send it in. There's bound to be someone who didn't know and who will benefit from the info. That goes for SMSQ/E too. I'm sure there is lots to know. That's all for now. Cheers! Colin B. #! Dennis Smith. NET1(downstairs) = (installed in a mini tower) Aurora, Super Gold card, SuperHermes, Qubide, 420Mb hard disk, 2 ED drives, (SER3)Pace 33.6 modem, (SER6)3 button serial mouse, Printers: (SER1)Star LC10, (PAR)HP 540 Deskjet, 15 inch SVGA monitor. Operating system = Minerva 1.97, SMSQ/E. NET3(upstairs) = (installed in a mini tower) Gold card, Hermes, Qubide, 540Mb hard disk, 1 HD drive, 2 DD drives. Printer: (SER1)Brother HR5 thermal with fax roll paper. Operating system = SMSQ/E. Hi, First the advert. Our local sub-group (SeQueL) presents for November Roy Wood of Q Branch and Tony Firshman of TF Services. They will be talking about and demonstrating the latest hardware and software, answering your questions and generally giving advice. We will see the prototype of the RomDisq with 2 mbyte and 8 mbyte of flash memory and Q Route etc. The venue is the same as last month when we had Ron Dunnett of QUBBESoft visit. I have held this text back a few days so that I may confirm a new BBS in Codnor, Derbys. run by Derek Stewart. All the usual stuff PBOX etc. 24 hrs. the number is 01773-741335, give it a try. The file area is being increased as you can imagine with a new BBS but all the other facilities are complete. Try the local echo for our sub-group 'Local QL chatter'. Darren Branagh: Multi-dos. Yes I know, I've had it for approx. couple of years. It's ok but limited to DD disks or maybe a new version might handle HD it doesn't matter as its been superseded and is now unnecessary. Look at what we have. SMSQ/E will read and write to QL DD, HD, ED, of course but it will also READ AND WRITE to DOS disks DD, HD, and ED plus Atari if you really want to. The ability is built into the system you do not have to find and execute a program, don't forget to load the pointer system first etc. etc. No not now, just pick up a PC disk whenever you're ready slam it in flp1_ or flp2_ or flp3_ or flp4_ and off you go do what you like. If I remember correctly (talking of Multi-dos) it looks for a DOS disk in flp2_ and if you don't have a flp2_ you have to wait then correct it and start again. Anyway, from the above SMSQ/E performance you must agree it is very adequate as it stands and is thrown into the device driver for you to use or not, built in convenience. :-))). The Alarm line in the boot. Well, yes it is to do with Coronation St, I imagine we all have this line in our system boot don't we? The answer to what happens next is when the alarm sounds I jump up from the QL and make the wife a tea or coffee ready for the above soap, well guessed. Martin Wheatley: Yeah, yeah, right. So you admit to not being able to see my new line, so therefore you admit guilt. Patronising, yes certainly. All remember, patronisations are freely available but do book early to avoid disappointment. Mike: You asked about FaxeQl - quick recap. FaxeQl (free) drives Qfax (free) or Lfax (free) which in turn uses a fax modem, nothing to do with a fax machine. You do not need a fax machine to send and receive faxes. If the modem part of your fax machine can be driven externally (i.e. by computer) then yes. BUT WOULD I BE ABLE TO ACCESS THE EXTERNAL MODEM ON THE PC,FOR USE WITH THE QL? Got to get this in the post now, sorry about being a bit late but I did want to verify the BBS news. Bye. FRANK MERRISON, 8-10-1997 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! Dear Mike, Thanks for the return of my disc which holds, among lots of other files, "QL103_doc". Although this was much shorter than earlier issues, never-the_less it gives much pleasure to read the legible parts! Which leads me to again repeat an old complaint. I KNOW,YOU GET HEADACHES FROM MY TYPING IN WHITE BOLD! On the disc are 14 files in total. Of these; two are what I sent in, one is QL103_doc, and three are from Ireland. IrishQL_doc, Junk_doc and Junk2_doc. This leaves 8 files that give no indication of what they are for or how they are to be used or even if they might just possibly be of some use to me. I have left these on the dsic in hopes of some enlightenment. I thought that cuboct_min_bas looked pretty straight forward - a simple basic program that I should be able to 'Lrun' - not to be however - even when I removed or 'REM'ed out the mode commands I only got an error message "at line 760 bad line" I guess it's just not my day!! I DO NOT WIPE THE DISCS CLEAN ANYMORE FRANK UNLESS IT WARRANTS IT,THEREFORE YOU DO GET BACK THE FILES YOU SEND.PEOPLE USUALLY SEND IN AN EXPLANATION FRANK,SO FOR THE UNENLIGHTENED AMONGST US(ME FOR ONE)PLEASE SEND AN IDEA OF HOW TO USE AND UNDERSTAND THE PROGS YOU SEND. When I am in my usual frame of mind, as I begin my contribution and don't know what to put in, will it be OK if I take the easy route and fill a disc with totally illegible junk with some sort of fancy name that sound terribly technical but means absolutely nothing to anyone else? This is, to me no different to sending out compressed files as I explained last month. Just imagine the rumpus it would cause (in certain nearby circles) if MicroSoft sent out files for the PC either in a form that could not be used without going through some complicated de-compression routine or if there was no explanation of what the files were for or how they were to be used! I don't think that Bill Gates would now be the richest man on earth. He must know something that we don't! AH!BUT LOOK AT THE MONEY THEY CHARGE FOR JUST THEM SORT OF DE-COMPRESSION PROGS FRANK! 31-10-1997. I have just re-read the above and I now wonder how Bill feels having lost some BILLIONS of dollars this week? I DON'T THINK IT WILL HAVE HURT HIS POCKET THAT MUCH MATE. Colin Baskett asked about changing his daughter's Canon BJC4200 printer from Epson LQ mode to Canon BJ mode. As far as I can make out from reading my son's manual(s) for the Canon BJC4100 model (which I am sure is almost the same) I get the impression that there is no code, as such, that can swiftly be changed to alter these modes. It looks as if the utility program has to be run each and every time the mode is changed. Presumably because anyone would only do this once. His daughter is using the Epson mode and should find no reason for a change! It is almost certain that you have the same manuals Colin but if you feel that a copy of my son's might be a help I will willingly bring copies of the relevant sections to the next London sub-group or post them to you... just ask... These explain in simple terms how to use the setup program with many illustrations. BesT wishes to all.... FRANK MERRISON.