******************** QL CLUB INTERNATIONAL ******************** ISSUE 111 MAY 1998 MIKE KENNEALLY MIKEKENNEALLY1@compuserve.com Well Mike, if your reading this your back home, and I hope you had a nice time sampling the plonk. I will apologise on Mike's behalf for the rather short issue last month, he explained to me that he doesn't really konw what happened, but a few letters were missed out. Frank has re-sent his, as his was one of the unfortunate ones to be lost. FRANKS LETTER GOT LOST LAST MONTH (AS DID A FEW OTHERS), SO HERES LAST MONTHS CONTRIBUTION FIRST FRANK MERRISON, 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! Mike: Thanks again for sending me the new issuue of ClubQL newsletter. I had meant to ask you a couple of things last month but I forgot --- that's what comes of leading such a hective life! I have had my PC for just over four years now and - apart from a dodgy motherboard when it was new - I have to say that I am very pleased with it's reliability. I would not say that I use it a lot although there are occasions when it gets a bit of a bashing for short periods. I mainly use it for writing various docs. in Word for Windows vers 6.00. The rest of my work is done on "old faithful". You won't believe this but I use a disc with all the Psion progs. on and load the one I want from a menu. After many years Quill refused to load when the newsletter arrived. Hurriedly copying over a new version, of Quill, from my backup disc and all is well again. I was going to ask you to do what all the others do and list your equipment but you have decided to drop this feature along with members addresses, a policy I do NOT agree with. I find it very useful, at times, to see what others are using. Your case being a good example. If we knew exactly which make & model your PC is we might be able to suggest what is going wrong. What is the processor and it's speed, the size of the hard disc, the type of disc interface, how much memory you have, which program gives you trouble if a single one is the cause. Have you looked up MSD? Have you tried using Scandisk? I cannot believe that so many hard discs can be faulty - they are so reliable these days. When it packs up can you start the PC up at all? Does it start from the "A drive" start-up disc? Have you made such a disc? With regard to members addresses and phone numbers; can I suggest that if you have these on a data base you send a copy of the file or a printout to all regular postal members for future reference? This information could surely be included to those using discs sent by post? CLUBQL HAS CONTAINED SUCH DETAILS FOR MANY YEARS WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS, AND I AGREE, IT COULD CONTINUE AS SUCH. HOWEVER, I ALSO BELIEVE THAT WE ALL NEED TO BE AWARE OF THE LACK OF SECURITY USING ON-LINE TRANSMISSIONS SUCH AS E-MAIL. MY OWN SUGGESTION WOULD BE TO CONTINUE TO LEAVE IN ADDRESSES AND HARDWARE CONFIGURATIONS FOR MAIL USERS, AND STRIP OUT THESE DETAILS FOR E-MAIL USERS. AN E-MAIL ADDRESS IS ALL THATS REQUIRED. I'm glad to see that there is quite a lot of support for my suggestion about compiling a new set of directions for Qpac2. Call it a manual, instructions or whatever, so long as it is written in a manner that beginners can follow I am sure it will be welcome by many. I sorted out the articles by Bill Waugh and hope to give them some deep thought when I get time to relax! I am beginning to think that I have a blind spot such as others have for printer drivers. Like everything else it will prove to be "simple when you know how" Now 23-4-1998.............. As you will see Mike much time has passed since I began this letter. Two reasons for this: 1) I've been busy (as usual) and 2) Every spare minute that I have had has been spent reading and trying to understand the articles in the 1995 editions of Quanta by both Bill Waugh and Wolfgang Lenerz. If it is any satisfaction to Bill he might like to know that on many occasions I have been reading his learned treatise at 2 or 3am when I couldn't sleep. I am sure that he knows about the following but, as I have said previously, I seem to have a blind spot for Qpac going back to Qpac1 when it was much simpler than now! It didn't help when Fig 8 & Fig 9 turned out to be missing from Quanta (Feb 1995 page 19) Another problem left me ready to commit hari-kari when, having typed in the boot file as per the same page 19 I found that whenever I tried to load Archive from the button all I got was the Rjob menu. Not understanding what was happening (at first) I selected Archive (in this Rjob menu) and did a "DO", in the expectation of it loading up, only to find Archive had gone!!!!! Why should the button bring up Rjobs? Going right back to the boot file I discovered that line 330 had a capital R as printed in Quanta even though I had, in fact typed in an "r". When I tried to alter this my QL insisted in changing the lower case "r", that I typed in, to a capital "R". Much scratching of the dome. I replaced R with chr$(114) and it now works OK with Archive loading as it should. I must try putting the "r" in quotes and see if that works... Back soon ----- I hope. Well I tried it and it does work. Another question for Bill. As I understand it - the lightening flash alongside the Quill button is because line 220 uses HOT_RES for Quill and it stays resident in memory. Why is there a similar flash beside Abacus and Archive when these are called up by HOT_LOAD? Quanta March 1995 Page 7 item 4 reads " CTRL F3 - A hit or DO on this symbol etc...." The sketch on page 6 is correct in referring to CTRL F2. Quanta March 1995 Page 12 para 4. Refers to the destination menu listing the sub-directories. I could only get these displayed by putting the cursor in the blank menu space and hitting the space-bar - a HIT - when the help files were listed. Finally I added lines 360/370 for separate disc directory buttons. The button with D flp2_ lists flp1_ until I use F2 to change it to Flp2_ whereupon it remains as it should be. Any further use of this button bringing up the directory for flp2_. There! I have at last worked my way through the first of Bill's articles. Apart from the minor printing errors I found them all very clearly explained. All I have to do now is try to remember what everything does and how it does it. In other words I need a lot of practice. On to the April issue. Having worked my way through this issue and continually switching into Quill to add to this letter I began to get a rough idea of just what Qpac2 might be used for. I think I managed to understand most of this issue but it was only when I moved to the August issue of Quanta that I saw a different way of entering lines 370 & 370. with the \ character before the D Flp2_. Ahha! said I - another printing error by Quanta! However adding these backslashes made no difference. My next plan is to study the writings of Wolfgang Lenerz in the hopes of the dawn of understanding! Many thanks to Bill Waugh for showing me more than I ever thought to grasp on this subject. I am sure that a few members with his level of knowledge could produce a guide that would cover all that anyone would wish to know and what is more be able to understand. I look forward to more comments on this subject. Monday, 27-4-1998. Try again..... Since reading through the copies of Quanta that included Bill's articles I decided to work my way through the whole of that year's issues while I had them out of the file. Only then did I find another session by Bill in the June copy. The final printed words from Wolfgang Lenerz in the March issue promised more in April. This never appeared and I now remember writing to the Editor of Quanta a few months later asking what had happened to it. It was at this time that Phil Jones took on the job and I suppose my letter got lost in the changeover. I guess that this was the reason why I never continued to study the problem at the time and it got overlooked with my volume of other interests. I have now made enquiries directly to Wolfgang by post and I'll keep you informed of any reply I get. Again I would like to thank Bill for his efforts. I feel sure that someone among us must have both the time and knowledge to put together a set of instructions that the beginner can follow. I hope..... Best wishes to all..... Frank Merrison. AND NOW FOR THIS MONTHS CONTRIBUTION (SOUNDS BETTER THAN BURNT OFFERING). FRANK MERRISON, 23-5-1998 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 Graham: Mike says that you are filling the hot seat this month. Isn't he lucky? We can never find volunteers to assist the various local groups, I'm connected with, to carry on their good works! I do not know what happened last month but the newsletter was only half complete. If you noticed there were anly about four or five contributors to this issue and my piece was certainly missing. I phoned Mike at the time and he was sure that he had included it but he was mistaken because I checked with others who, also, only had the short version of ql110_doc. My bit, for last month, is still on this disc under the filename of "MIKES_DOC" and my latest burnt offering is called "GRAHAM_DOC" Some 2/3 months ago I made the suggestion that knowledgable members of the club might consider producing an up-to-date manual for Qpac2. This suggestion seemed to meet with much support and I believe one member was already moving along these lines. Last month Dilwyn Jones reported that he used to distribute something similar, when he was a trader, written by Norman Dunbar. Unfortunately, due to the missing letters, I do not know what other ideas have come forth from members. Two month ago Bill Waugh said that he had sent a series of articles on this subject to QUANTA in 1995. Since then I have worked my way through QUANTA issues for 1993/1996 and found quite a lot of information that I had forgotten existed. There is no doubt tha Bill Waugh's series covered the topic extremely well and it so happened that at the very same time Wolfgang Lenerz also wrote, more or less, covering the same ground. The final article from Woolfgang was never printed and I did write to QUANTA asking about it. I got no reply and time went by until the whole thing slipped my mind. I recently wrote to Woolfgang in Paris asking if he still had a copy of this missing information but again - no reply. I worked my way through these articles and learned a lot. It certainly looks as though it is possible to use QPAC2 in a fairly simple fashion but I consider that this manner of operation serves no useful purpose - in fact - in my opinion Qpac2 only gets in the way. Experts can get involved very deeply in programing to use it as intended. I would still like to see someone compile all this information into a logical manual that would be easy to follow and make progress with. When PERFECTION (and some other multitasking programs) are loaded there is no cursor to use as it remains in basic and has to be switched into PERFECTION with CTRL/C. If WMAN and PTR_GEN are loaded this is rectified and the cursor is present and PERFECTION is ready to use. I believe this is due to WMAN and that PTR_GEN is not necessary but it is in my boot file anyway. As I said I have been plowing through back issues of QUANTA seeking information on QPAC2. This is very laborious and it would be helpful if an index could be produced so that all the articles on any particularr subject could be found easily. I have a vague recollection that a program exists to do this somewhere. Any suggestions? Last month Dilwyn commented on the idea of using Video cassettes forback-up storage. He mentioned trying to get a video signal through the network port. I am fairly ignorant of the technicalities but it seems to me that it would be possible to do a 'save' through the TV output port but there is no way of reading it back as there is no TV input port. I think Martin covered the other problems to this idea, the difficulty of locating a file in the middle of the tape for example. With hard drives, both fixed and portable, being so cheap this seems to be the way to go if only for the speed of saving and reading files. See Mark Knight's article on QUBIDE in QUANTA September 1996 issue. This gives a great deal of info. on installing and using hard discs. I would like to thank Dilwyn for his very useful explanation of the 'dev_use' command in TK2. Only the very day before my newsletter arrived I had spent a lot of time moving many files into sub-directories after seeing how it is done at the last London sub- group meeting. I copied loads of quill_doc, archive, abacus and Perfection files onto new sub-directories only to find that quill refused to load them. I know why now --- if only my newsletter had come a day earlier - ie. before I put them back where they were in the first place!! Like you Paul I went through the Hi-Fi craze being very interested in the reproduction of music as near to perfection as possible. I have a BBC program recorded on 7" reels and when I first heard it I thought my wife had come into the room and was standing by the end of the settee I was sitting on. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she started talking only to realise it was part of the broadcast and the room was empty! I am convinced that not more than one person in a million has heard true 3D HI-FI sound where the person speaking can be seen (in imagination) moving around in the room while taking or singing. Did you hear the BBC program called "Oil rig"? If it is of any interest I have Armstrong 600 series tuner & amp (separate units) Akai R to R recorder, Connoisseur BD102 turntable with automatic pickup lift off (as it nears the centre) done with a solonoid, not mechanically with wear pressure on the stylus or track of the record, and Twin KEF Concerto speakers. Ah! happy days! I don't get time to sit and stare now and the little room where I spend my spare time on the old computer is too small to store all the HI_FI gear. If I brought the speakers in there would be no room for me! Over the years I have begged and pleaded for members to give details of programs that come my way on the discs. Last issue there were five compressed files with no word of what they are for or do, how they might be useful or how they are used. Please - any info still welcome!!! There are times when I suddenly notice people using some unfamiliar computer term in a very familiar manner - terms that I seem strange to me. Have I been asleep and missed their arrival? The latest I've come across is "Events" as in "SMS/E can handle events without any problem" Can someone tell me what this expression means and where it seems to have sprung from? I think that is all for now .... Frank Merrison. #! Dennis Smith. NET1 (installed in a mini tower) Aurora, Super Gold card, SuperHermes, Qubide, 420Mb hard disk, EZ135 removeable 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. Hi, It is your turn for the bargins. For sale: QL 20 QL power supply 8 Twin DD disk drives 25 Trumpcard 2 25 Expanderam 512 15 Disk drive interface 15 Falkenburg keyboard interface 15 Qimi mouse interface 12 Real time clock 12 All prices include post & packing. The real time clock will retain the correct time on your QL when it is switched off, no need to set the time each time you switch on. That's all for this month, bye. - Dennis. ANY TAKERS !!!! Michael Kite 28th May 1998 Equipment: Gold Card; QL Minerva 1.97 mk.1; Hermes; Two 3.5" Disc drives; One 5.25 Disc Drive; Philips colour Monitor; SERMouse; Seikosha SP-1000AS 9 pin printer Epson RX 80F/T+ 9 pin printer with parallel port and added serial port. 486 PC with 540 meg hard drive and C.D.: The PC is only used for things which are compatible with the computers at work. Hello all Graham could you please send me a copy of QL110 and QL111 this months as I did not get QL110. I phone Mike Kenneally last night to find out if he had sent it. CONSIDER IT DONE! What had happened was the disc I sent him would not copy and had nothing on it, so I do not know what has been said. I have now finished the modifications to the utility room in our house and the decorating of the second bebroom. I have been very busy at work having also to go away to do work at other factories installing or setting up packaging machines. This has left very very little time to have fun on the QL. Also we are off to Canada to see my wife Wendy,s sister later in June, which will be a good break. Graham I will save this document to the disc and then reload it to make sure it is on the disc. I will also include a second disc for the other mag. Mike Kite. #! Colin Baskett 27 May 1998 Dear Graham, Dilwyn wrote about directories: I find the big problem with directories is to devise a directory structure that will satisfy my future needs. Or alternatively to find a fool-proof way of copying files from an old unsatisfactory structure to the new, gleaming structure, that inevitably suggests itself shortly after I have set up a new directory structure. To give one or two examples off the top of my head: whether to arrange executable programs in, say, win1_progs_, with separate directories for resident extensions, ancilliary files, and data files, OR whether to arrange, say, all Quill files under win1_quil_, all LineDesign files under win1_LD_, etc.. together in both cases, of course, with a further division into sub-dirctories as appropriate. QUESTION: Are there any model structures ?? Dilwyn wrote about "things" - " These little utilities are loaded into memory, and the operating system keeps a list (called a Linked List) of these facilities, so that it can find them. These have identifiers, which may be recognisable names or just a short pattern of numbers (commonly a 4 byte string). So if a program knows how to use a particular thing it can search through the linked list to find the name, then once found it can make use of the thing." I wonder if Dilwyn, or someone, could give a concrete example of something a program can do through the 'thing' system. And explain why a "Linked" List ??? Many thanks Dilwyn for the time you spend helping us !! Martin Burke. Sorry to read about your accident. I hope you are fully mended by now. May I support Paul McPHERSON's suggestion about a "special" disc full of QPAC2 examples, boot files and tips. And similar tutorials for the new QL hardware and the more complicated software. QUANTA (i.e. the Association) keeps a list of hardware, software and public domain suppliers in the "Welcome Booklet". The problem is getting in the information to update it. Paul McPherson's suggestion would be a valuable service and I should be glad to publicise it through Quanta (the NewsLetter). Paul also wrote - "Similarly, perhaps QLCI members could write in and detail how they have upgraded their QLs with any DIY projects they have undertaken to improve their basic machines, thereby advising the rest of us on the costs involved, the advantages, the pitfalls and just how they managed to do it all?" I should be glad to give further publicity to such contributions through Quanta. Martin Wheatley wrote: - about limitations on what the holders of legal copies of software may do with their "property". Is there a definitive write up available. If not, would someone like to clarify the position so that we may understand better what we may and what we may not do with other peoples' intellectual property. I must admit I had once imagined that I was free to use software I had bought on any machine, I might have, provided it wasn't installed on more than one machine at a time. But now I understand that, if I had QPC, I would be allowed only two installations, irrespective of any un-installations I might make or machines I might trash. MOST COMMERCIAL PC SOFTWARE IS NOT EVEN YOURS LEGALLY. YOU EFFECTIVELY BUY A LICENCE WHICH ALLOWS YOU TO USE THE PACKAGE (UNDER CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS). Thanks Martin for the info about the ATAPI driver etc. I don't suppose you would like to do a bit for Quanta ??? Thanks also to Andrew for explaining about Spamming. Even with snail mail, it's remarkable how many people want to share with me their skills at self enrichment. And in return for such trivial subscriptions, relative to the enormous gains they say I would make. IMPORTING INTO QUILL Last month I sent in a contribution discussing "importation" into Quill. This was too late for inclusion in QL110 and will presumably appear in this issue along with this contribution. I now suspect that I may have described a means of importing basic programs etc that does not work. If so sorry. No time to check. Really grateful for any guidance on how best to import into Quill. And what guidelines to give contributors. Reformatting can be quite apain. Best wishes Colin B #! --------------------------------- Darren Branagh, 25th May, 1998. QL & COMPUTER GEAR INCLUDES: One Gateway 2000 Pentium PC running QPC (demo) and PC Xchange, 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_), 280+ 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,Psion MC600 Laptop, Compaq Contura 486 Laptop......... ...........and a Partridge in a very heavy pear tree !!! Dear Mike and Gang, Another Crazy month for me... very little time to do anything, and it seems set to continue for a while. I'm seldom home before 10pm everynight and it leaves little time for QL's..... I was missing from last months mag, sorry for the late arrival of my contribution Mike - As I said I've been mega busy - hopefully you can print this contribution and last months together in QL111, if this one arrives in time!! Anyhow, the major news from me is that I've become the chairman of a new IT centre to be opened next month in the village nearby. WRP, a local group (The Wicklow Rural Project) have been awarded over 2.3 Million by the National Lottery for rural development - and an IT centre with full internet capabilities and a scanner, network printer and ten DELL 233Mhz Pentium II's is just one of the new ventures. It at least means I'll have FREE Email and Internet use!! I keep you posted... Anyway, short and sweet from me this month - hopefuly back to normal again next month... I'll end with a funny :- Guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head. The barman looks at him in amazement then asks: "Wow, what happened to you?" To which the duck replies: " I don't know, I just woke up this morning and this human was growing out of my ass!! " NUFF SAID!! INDEED!!! DARREN B. Ps. DILWYN: I absolutely LOVe the new format for QL TODAY - It has improved no end, much better. I particularly like the little bold print intro you do to each piece, very good. OOOPS!!! THAT REMINDS ME, MUST RENEW MY SUBSCRIPTION.... PPs. PAUL McPHERSON - Sorry for the delay with Monitors Paul, I have a Sanyo Colour Display Monitor which I will send you this weekend - Promise !! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ #! Martin Burke, 26th May, 1998. 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. If the plans for dummies guides for QPAC2, etc work, we may all shortly be singing "Things ain't what they used to be". One "thing" I have recently acquired is a Panasonic KX-P1170 printer. Unfortunately I don't have a printer lead (36 pin) to try it out with. Does anybody know if it is worthwhile getting one? Yours, Martin Burke. #! >From - Fri May 29 10:09:31 1998 To: Graham.Lutz@virgin.net From: Martin Wheatley Subject: ClubQL111 Contribution Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset"us-ascii" X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 *! Martin Wheatley Flat 3, 45 Canterbury Grove London SE27 ONX martinw@ndirect.co.uk QL, SuperQboard, Twin Disc Drives, Green Screen Monitor Mersey Mouse, PC running Xchange Hi all, This is a shorter letter than usual because I've got less to write about! Normally I write my contribution by going through the previous newsletter and cutting out things I want to comment on and build it from there. Last month unfortunately a lot of contributions got missed out leaving me with little to respond to. Hurray say you! Paul McPherson wrote ............................................... And now to the question of the month: Can anyone explain why several of Bobs PC discs will not load within just a few weeks of last being used. They are a mixture of mediocre to high quality discs and all present the same problem in that his PC claims there is nothing on them, yet he knows there is. It seems to me as though they might have been erased by a magnetic source, but they have all been carefully stored well away from loudspeakers etc. This is a proving to be a major problem that he, and several of his mates, are having both at home and on their college computers, and they have lost some irreplacable "A" level project work as a result so it is not just his PC that is at fault. (I keep warning them to back up their work but it's also happening to their back up discs as well). Could this be because some PC disc drives do not produce a strong enough magnetic field when writing to discs or am I missing something? TRY READING THEM UNDER SMSQ(E). I CAN USUALLY READ ANYTHING IF ITS FAINTLY THERE USING THE QL AND SMSQ/E. .................................................. This is a question where you can't give a generalised answer that would be any use because it depends too much on individual circumstances which we don't know about It may be possible to eliminate some things. For example the variety of discs means it isn't just a bad batch of discs. One question is. You say the discs have failed to read on more than one machine but were they all written to on one machine? You might be able to narrow it down to a faulty drive. There is nothing particular to PC disc drives that differentiates them from those used with other machines. That leaves the environment. This is not normally a problem but there can be exceptional circumstances. When I used to work for the Railways the building I was on was on a platform with trains going close by and we constantly got corrupted floppies. One possible problem could be if the computer is close to an industrial 3 phase electrical supply which carry much higher voltages than the standard mains cables. The solution would be to move the computer. There has been some past discussion about QL emulators for the PC. There is a new one which could be the best yet called Q-Emulator. It is a Windows95 prog only. It has just gone from the trial stage to being a full product and is available for download from the Internet as a shareware product. For those unfamiliar with the concept - you get to try the prog first and then pay if you want to keep it. In this instance the trial period is only 3 days and then the prog cuts out. The snag is that paying for it is difficult. The guy who wrote it is Italian and for some reason he has registered the shareware with a collection company in the US. This means you have to pay $40 in US funds. It can paid by a UK credit card but this gives Uk buyers a hefty premium on the price once everyone has added their currency changing fees. I've writen to the writer to try to persuade him to set up some means for people to pay in UK funds but he hasn't yet figured one out - if he goes to a UK QL dealer they will want to take their profit and he isn't going to make much out of it. Since the actual software is coming from the Internet all he would want them to do is change money and I guess he feels he doesn't want to give them too much of a cut for doing that Maybe he should wait a couple of years and we can all pay by Euro! I MUST ADMIT, I HAVE DOWNLOADED THE DEMO VERSIONS IN THE PAST, AND THEY ALL WORKED QUITE SOLIDLY IN THEIR OWN WIN95 WINDOW. THEY DID HOWEVER HAVE A LOT OF THE NEWER FEATURES MISSING, SUCH AS BEING ABLE TO RUN SMSQ/E, AND USING EXTENDED RESOLUTIONS. ARE THESE FEATURES NOW AVAILABLE ?? Martin Wheatley Andrew Halliwell, e-mail:- u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk u5a77@elfs1.elec.keele.ac.uk (Although, for how long, I don't know) u5a77@uga.keele.ac.uk spike1@cyberspace.org clubql@geocities.com >*phew*< Gear:- Supergold card QL with various pointer thingies, Qubide 1.55 ROM, TKII (of course), 40 Meg Hard Drive (Now a slave) and now... a 250Meg quantum 3.5" harddrive as master, twin floppies (One DD and one HD as FLP2_ and FLP3_) Minerva 1.97, 24 Pin Dot Matrix Printer... And loads of little toys I download off the internet... (Including Qascade, which is nice...) Well... It's that time again. Hope I'm not late..... First, the news... Well, as you can see from my kit list, I've upgraded slightly. I now have a hard drive that's 1/4 the size of my old one, but has over 5 times the capacity. No need to worry about running out of space again for a while. (I only had about 1Meg left on the 40Meg one). I'm in the process of making my Qascade look quite snazzy, to the point of getting rid of all the other button frames in QPAC, and having just the Qascade button. HAS ANYONE DARED TO LABEL THEIR QASCADE BUTTON 'START' YET !!! On a less (well, none actually) computer related front, in a couple of weeks I'll be off to Cornwall for a two week army camp. (Panhale near Newkey). This will (assuming I survive) make me another 300+ quid richer, get rid of my overdraft, and make it even more likely I'll be getting a Goldfire card, and maybe even Aurora.... I WANT ONE! I WANT ONE!I WANT ONE!I WANT ONE!!! My bounty at the beginning of April didn't end up being 250 quid in the end after all.... . It was actually 300.... And, as of September, I'll be changing my e-mail .sig file, because I'll no longer be doing electronics >*YAY*<. Single Honours Computer Science, here I come... Anyway, on with the show. As last months entry was actually for the previous month due to a boo boo, I'll start by answering QL109... Mike: I found it rather strange that you decided to edit out all the address info last month as well. I'd be extremly disappointed in you if you haven't even looked at the Clubql web page.... Anyway, one thing that did spring to mind in this is.... In order to make it easier for me to edit, could people put their name on one line, the info that's to be removed for the web page on a seperate line, and e-mail addresses on another line. (Or any similar way, keeping the sensitive info seperate...) e.g. Joe Bloggs 26 bibbleberry ave wibbleford dorsetshire wb3 bb4 1038765 555 5555 bibbler@wibble.co.uk It doesn't matter WHERE horizontally the info is, just as long as it's all on a separate line. (It makes it much easier to block delete). Now on to the next bit... Mike said.... "WELL HOW ABOUT THAT!AFTER EVERYONE SAYING THE QL CANNOT GET A VIRUS,GUESS WHO MAY HAVE ONE?WELL NOT THE QL PER SE,BUT THE QXL CARD,APPARENTLY A VIRUS CAN INFECT THE CARD THROUGH THE QXL.BIN FILE ON THE PC,BECAUSE IT IS BOTH A QL AND A PC FILE AND BECAUSE IT IS A PC/QL FILE IT IS LOOKED UPON BY A VIRUS SCANNER AS A QL FILE AND THEREFORE A 'FOREIGN'FILE AND IT IGNORES IT!" Mike... The QL *CAN'T* get a virus. The QXL is a PC with add-ons, and therefore, is still vulnerable. No-one has ever written a virus for the QL, and I can't think of any way one would work. Mike then went on to say... "IT HAS GOT TO THE STAGE THIS WEEK WHERE I WOULD QUITE HAPPILY THROW THIS MACHINE THROUGH THE WINDOW,IF DOUBLE GLAZING WASN'T SO EXPENSIVE!" It might help if you opened the window first... Bill Waugh asked.... "Would someone like to tell me a bit more than I know about this email stuff - how do you send attatchments and what can you put in these attachments - how do you get onto the qlusers mailing list I have been trying for some time but had little luck, haveing said that the last email I sent got posted but I have had no reply - I sent the message to qlusers-@nvg.ntnu.no with the subject "subscribe" and a short message saying I would like to be placed on the list." Right... Here goes... E-mail is a 7 bit ASCII transfer protocol. (Or to put that in English, the only things that can be sent through e-mail are the standard Alphanumeric characters (Upper and Lower case), punctuation, and control characters. Anything with character values above 127 will not send correctly, and will most likely appear as junk. This is where attachments come in. Many e-mail programs can do this quite easily, just by clicking on a menu item called "Attachments", and specifying the filename to be attached. What this does is copy the file, and process it in such a way that it is transformed into something that appears to be pure text gibberrish. This is then added to the end of the e-mail, a line is added to the e-mail header telling the receiving e-mail program to expect an attachment, and the e-mail is sent. This is the nice, fluffy way of doing it. However, some e-mailers are better than others in this respect. (One of the e-mailers I've used just does not LIKE ZIP files for example, which is why Mike sometimes has trouble with stuff I send him.... I think....) Now, the e-mailer I normally use is called ELM. It has attachment decoding abilities (via a program called Metamail available for the QL as part of MIMETOOLS), but it doesn't have the ability to attach files on for sending. My normal preferred method is to uuencode a file, which can be added manually to the end of an e-mail and then uudecoded at the other end. Alas, Mike has trouble with this as well... I'm not even sure if he has UUD. (The C68 UUDecoding program) As for the ql-users mailing list. You were doing it wrong. That is the address you send thing that are to APPEAR on the list. The list itself is managed by a listserver program called Majordomo. You send commands to the program, which then carries them out. Then you can send messages to the list. Also, even if you'd got the address right, which is majordomo@nvg.ntnu.no, you were still doing it wrong. The subject line is not used to pass commands. That can in fact be left blank. You issue commands in the body of the message... Like this.... -------------------- BODY TEXT OF MESSAGE --------------------- subscribe ql-users end Finally, in response to his query about Floppies. I don't think so. The twist technique appears to work fine for PCs, but it doesn't want to work for me either. I've just bought a HD drive (Only cost me 7 quid), and now I'm stuck with FLP2_ and FLP3_. I can't get the old one and the new one to work on the same cable. Mike Dodd... Subdirectories... This one should be pretty easy to explain. On your average floppy disk, you have a lot of files. Many of them might be related, but as the disk is so small, structure and tidyness doesn't really matter. You can see exactly what's on the disk with a simple DIR FLP1_. With larger disks, like ED or Hard disks, this can be VERY messy. This is where subdirectories come in.... Subdirectories are a way of placing a "Tree" on your disk. The main part of the disk (i.e. WIN1_) can be called the "ROOT" directory. A lot of files may exist in this directory, but also, other directories may. These other directories can be envisioned as branches springing from the root. (Or roots sprouting from the root stock). As an example, this is vaguely what my WIN2_ root directory looks like. C -> Docs -> Emul -> Ghost -> lx -> There an no idividual files in my WIN2_ directory, only subdirectories. This keeps things very neat and tidy. Now, if I were to look at my C directory (DIR WIN2_C_), I would see a LOT of files, and a few subdirectories.... Similar to this... C_INCLUDE -> C_LIB -> C_CC C_CPP C_AS68 C_C68 C_C68Menu Again, the first 2 files are actually subdirectories denoted by the '->' marker. These contain still more files, hidden away unless I actually want to see them. As to your EDIT and AUTO problems... Why use them at all... TK2 has a wonderfull little editor called by typing ED . This is much nicer than EDIT or AUTO. In fact, I can't remember using EDIT once since I got my first Trump card in 1989. DITTO!! Malcolm Roberts was saying that his disk drive doesn't want to work properly. My recommendation would be to get another one. They really are 10 a penny nowadays... (OK, one a fiver, but you know what I mean). And now... QL110. Dilwyn said... "This has given me another idea. On a QL, the network socket can be accessed by directly accessing a hardware address somewhere in memory. I wonder if it would be possible to write software to look at what's coming in here and to write out to it - result could be that the QL could listen to what was coming in to the otherwise idle network socket (speech recognition? audio recording?) and play out sampled audio to an amplifier and speaker connected to the network socket allowing the computer to play back sampled sounds, for example? We'd probably find that we couldn't get a high enough sample rate for good quality audio. I get the impression that this is such a wonderfully simple and obvious idea that if it was possible, it would have been done by now?" On the spectrum, it was relatively simple to access. (Just a simple use of the IN instruction). The problem is... HOW exactly *IS* the network port accessed? It must be possible to do something with it, because it is used in the Ergon spectrum emulators to produce sound. (And I believe that in the registered versions, there's a program that allows direct TAPE to NET loading of Spectrum games. Also, as the QL is a lot faster than the Speccy, I think a respectable sample rate could be achievable. Now the BIG problem... Does the network port actually have more than one BIT of sampling capability? Sound sampled is after all subject to severe distortion, which can be minimised by using more levels of "quantisation". (In english, this means that an 8 bit convertor can see 256 different "levels" of voltage. With only one bit, you would only see two levels. On or Off... One final problem.... Is the network one of the peices of hardware covered by the 8049 co-processor? If this is the case, then youy'd have to know what instructions to send to that, and that would SERIOUSLY affect speed. I've looked at the system variables, and I have no idea what the address is. I'll have a dig though my files. I'm sure I've seen something.... (Just checked... It's gone. Looks like I deleted it... DAMN! Maybe Tim Swenson can help???) Well... As last months was rather short due to a boo boo, I'll call it quits there... Next month, I *should* have something on using Mtools (wot was included last month), and I might do something on QASCADE as well... -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |u5a77@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk| Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a | | | graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit | |Andrew Halliwell | operating system originally coded for a 4 bit | |Principal Subjects in:- |microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that| |Comp Sci & Electronics | can't stand 1 bit of competition. | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |GCv3.1 GCS/EL>$ d---(dpu) s+/- a- C++ U N++ o+ K- w-- M+/++ PS+++ PE- Y t+ | |5++ X+/++ R+ tv+ b+ D G e>PhD h/h+ !r! !y-|I can't say F**K either now! :( | To: GRAHAM.LUTZ@VIRGIN.NET From: Bill Waugh MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charsetiso-8859-1 X-Mailer: Turnpike (32) Trial Version 3.05 <3JoBsSw2whxbCMNKfs24txT7I3> Hi Graham and everyone Many thanks to those who anwered my last request for info about attachments, I regret I have not had time to look into these any further due to work commitments. I enjoyed the Selston workshop and meeting some of you, I probably met more of you than I know. I would have liked to have stayed a bit longer (by the bar at night) but the present Mrs Waugh was beginning to show signs of technofatigue so we went back to the hotel.(chivalry has its price) Interesting talks at Seston, Ron Dunnet was quite brave I thought (stateing that they are aiming for a price of around 150 for Goldfire). I will have one at that price, if I can still afford it after the next couple of weeks when my car comes back from the garage, I drove (slowly) into a flooded road and the engine stopped, this I thought was strange as the car is a deisel and I have driven through deeper water, it turns out that the narrowness of the road had caused a wave to bounce back from the stone wall(dyke we call them up here) and sloshed some water up into the air intake. I managed to get the car home and going but there is lots of white smoke erupting from the exhaust, seems it may have damaged the cylinder head, it will be more expensive to put right than a computer head crash thats for sure. But enough of my worries. Glad that QLusers list has at last found something other than Deadlocks to talk about, the subject meant about as much to me as Dreadlocks, but interesting to many no doubt, I suppose the good thing about this newsletter is that it all comes at once and we dont spend lots of money on downloading email that is not of particular interest, speaking of email I had quite a lot of stuff about Pc graphics that I did not ask for, after about the fourth I sent an email back asking for payment of phone charges for recieving their mail, I dont know if this has worked yet but live in hope. I have been trying with no joy to change the name of a linedesign driver, the name is embedded in the code of the driver. I have tried the Editor, QD9 and Master spy with out any luck, joacham Progs has told me I need to make sure the file is saved back as type 7. This is part of the problem i think as I seem to be able to save it as type 0 or 1 but not 7. In case your wondering why I want to change the name of the driver it is so that I can configure the same driver to use both A4 and A5 paper and then save the A5 one with a different name ( Epson styluscolour to Epson A5yluscolour). Proforma wont allow the addition of another printer driver if a driver with the same name already is loaded. Any advice would be welcome chaps. AHA, I'VE HAD THIS BEFORE. THE EPSON 360DPI DRIVER IN THE LATEST LINEDESIGN SUFFERS FROM THE SAME FEATURE AS THE OLD ONE, I.E. IT DOESN'T WORK WITH ALL EPSON COMPATIBLE PRINTERS (NAMELY MY CANONS). I INITIALLY HACKED THE FILE TO CHANGE THE 2 BYTES WHICH CAUSE THE PROBLEM, BUT COULD NOT GET IT TO LOAD. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE I COULD SEE BETWEEN MY AMENDED AND THE ORIGINAL FILE WAS THE FILE TYPE, WHICH WAS REPORTED AS TYPE 1 FOR MY AMENDED FILE, AND TYPE 0 FOR THE ORIGINAL. CHANGEING THE FILE TYPE OF THE AMENDED FILE TO TYPE 0 CURED THE PROBLEM. Now for something completely different, I see that Janeway women is back, still lost though, you have to wonder how on earth she ever got in charge of that ship, Kirk and Picard might have had there faults but they never got lost for long, always back on course by the next episode. This woman has been flying in circles along a terrestial M25 for nearly two of our earth years, and the crew she has leaves a lot to be desired. Chickatay - a disposessed apache or something, no sense of fun, plays with a couple of coloured stones (wel I soppose a rain dance is a bit pointles in space), Ryker would have the shirt of him in a game of poker. Toovok - a black Vulcan (see Enoch was right) A female Klingon !! - are the men not bad enough A Doctor with more attitude than the Klingon. Nelix - now he is good, feeds the crew of several thousand from a couple of cauldrons on gas rings, so what happend to the replicators, Janeway probably lost them somewhere. Last but certainly not least the Borg - Seven of nine - now thats what I call a body, she can stun me with here phaser anytime, hey "you will be assimulated" yes please wheres's the problem.. Yep Seven of nine or Dax, either could tear me away from a keyboard. Well time to go - warp five Ensign Crusher - make it so Bye All Bill Waugh For Dilwyn Bill@WaughQl.Demon.co.uk -- Bill Waugh !##! Colin.Murphy@virgin.net London My gear includes :- A PC ? Hi guys and gals, remember me? I know it's been a long time since I last wrote to ClubQL, pressures of time management between work and home have put to temporary rest lots of my hobbies, and the lack of a QL compatible has put paid to Qling in particular. My QL (if you can call a Pandora92d SuperGold Card, Aurora, Minerva and SuperHERMES setup a QL still) died last autumn. I felt the hard disk was starting to fail, so I was very keen to arrange for a back-up. My keeness slipped to recklessness when I tried some desperate means to connect my 270MB Syquest up to do the job. It all went horribly wrong from there ? I now, for my sins, am writing this on a PC, which, for most of its time is running Windows95. Err, sorry! I have to admit that as I write I have no idea how I'm actually going to get this Word document through my email programme or what it will look like by the time Graham gets to see it. The sad emoticon face that I did at the end of the last paragraph turned itself into a single sad emoticon symbol. I look forward to finding out what it will look like once it goes through the rigmarole of getting it into ClubQL. Update - Having looked at my document in Notepad, the nearest I get to a text editor in Windows, I see all my emoticons have disappeared, to be replaced by humble question marks. Maybe this goea a long way to explain all of Micro$ofts literature, it's been typed in with a smiley at the end ;-))) I am still interested in the comings and goings of QL life. I take the QL mailing list that keeps me up to date on most things. I have also been taking ClubQL via Email, so I know that the faith is being maintained, in good hands. I am looking forward to getting uQLx running so that I have access to a QL compatible, but the going is slow. I will be running uQLx under the Linux operating system, which I have running on my system. Much of my computer time is used up be me trying to get to know Linux better, and there is so much to know. I enjoy the learning, and it remindes me of much of my time with the QL, the struggles and frustrations. I have failed totally to get uQLx to compile, lots of error messages and not enough understanding for me to fix. I suspect that I may not have all of the C libraries installed or that those that I do have aren't quite compatible. Has anyone else set up uQLx under Linux? I am using a RedHat 5.0 distribution. ******************** Last month Mike K said THE MAIN THING IS THAT NEXT MONTH I SHALL BE AWAY SO ONCE AGAIN GRAHAM LUTZ IS STEPPING INTO THE BREACH,YOU ALL HAVE BOTH HIS ADDRESS AND HIS E-MAIL ADDRESS SO ALL MAIL SHOULD GO TO HIM FOR NEXT MONTHS ISSUE. I'm sure that I will be able to found out Grahams' email address, but a new correspondent would not. The could easily get disheartened should there first message go astray for a month. Has anyone considered using one of the free email providers like 'bigfoor.com' or 'dejanews.com'. These people allow you to register an email address of your choosing, 'ClubQL@bigfoot.com' for example. You can then have all the mail which arrives for this address forwarded to another address of your choosing, again, for free. The neat thing is, you can change this forwarding address as much as you want, so, Mike, should you be going away on holiday, all you do is change the forwarding address to that of whoever is deputising for you. If you think it's a good idea, take a look at http://www.bigfoot.com or http://www.dejanews.com. ******************** Has no one else suffered the problem of transplanting a QL hard disk, of QubIDE format, into a system of other hardware like a PC with QXL or , like me, uQLx. There appears to be no software that would allow me to read a QL hard disk directly. I no longer have access to QL hardware, so I can not network the two machines together. Has anyone any idea how I'm going to get all my QL data back? ******************* Speak soon, Colin Murphy. !##! Email : dilwyn.jones@bbc.co.uk dilwyn.jones@dj.softnet.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; P90 Black PC and QPC;Toshiba T2100 486DX2/66 with QPC. At last, the back issues scheme is up and running. With this issue you should find a plain text file called ISSUES_TXT which lists what's currently available. You'll notice that there are some gaps, so if anyone has the missing disks, please get in touch so that we can make the collection complete. To obtain back issues, just send me a disk for each issue required, with return postage (UK) or International Reply Coupons (elsewhere). I can handle 3.5 inch DD, HD or ED disks, and also 5.25 inch 80 track disks. The 18 disks of Club QL software mentioned in the ISSUES_TXT file are program files from issues 1 to 60, which have not yet been fully sorted. This will be done as I get time to read through all the issues to work out what belongs where! Alternatively, if anyone knows or has complete copies of these disks please get in touch with me. You'll see I can also supply back issues of QL Hackers Journal disk based QL magazine (all issues). I've included a program for you all with this issue, assuming Graham and Mike have space on the disk. Graphics Viewer is a little pointer driven viwing program for QL graphics files. Full instructions in GV_DOC on the disk. The program needs pointer environment, toolkit 2, and MENU_REXT (from QMenu or The Menu Extension, also supplied with several commercial programs). In addition to most QL formats, it will also view monochrome PCX and IMG files from the PC and Atari ST. Dilwyn Jones To: GRAHAM.LUTZ@VIRGIN.NET Message-ID: <199805120942_MC2-3CAF-93CF@compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charsetus-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 For QL-International Ian Pizer e-mail 100675.632@compuserve.com ------------------------------------------------------------ My Gear: AURORA, SGC v2.49, Minerva v1.97, SuperHermes v1.05, QPAC2 v1.38 SMSQ_GOLD v2.85. 2 key mouse via QIMI. 2 DD/HD/ED drives. QUBIDE v1.56, 2 Hard Disks (Connors 420MB, Seagate500?MB). All in a Mini-Tower. Soon with Romdisq. EPSON Stylus 800 BW Printer. ZyXEL U-1496E modem. Sony monitor Multiscan 200sf. And a PC. Hi all, Here is my PC problem: When using DIR in MS-DOS I prefer to first use the command SET DIRCMD/OEN /P before doing DIR. So I think great, I put that in AUTOEXEC.BAT and it will already be set when I start with windows and go to MS-DOS. But NO, that does not work! Here is AUTOEXEC.BAT : SET BLASTERA220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6 SET LMOUSEC:\MOUSE SET TMPC:\WIN95\TEMP SET winbootdirC:\WIN95 SET PATHC:\WIN95;C:\WIN95\COMMAND;C:\DOS SET TEMPC:\DOS C:WIN95\SMARTDRV.EXE C:\QPC\MOUSE.COM SET DIRCMD/OEN /P PC Experts, any ideas? I admit that for important work like e-mail and Bulletin boards, etc. I am much happier with AURORA and continue to use that as my principal workhorse. Having and learning a PC allows use of CD-ROMs and connection with the Internet. Cheers, Ian Pizer IAN ALSO SENT IN THIS QUESTION. ANY ANSWERS ???? To: GRAHAM.LUTZ@VIRGIN.NET Message-ID: <199805281331_MC2-3E64-EACA@compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charsetus-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 *********************************************************** Ian Pizer e-mail 100675.632@compuserve.com ------------------------------------------------------------ Hi to all who read this! I wonder if there is somebody who uses SCRIPTING with QTPI? I go a little way in using script but not enough to justify its application. I call up my e-mail server (compuserve) quite often so I would like that to happen more or less automatically. That means: call the number, recognise the messages sent back and do the necessary until I get to reading messages. Here is an example of what happens: ++ QTPI Review log opened 1998 May 28 18:50:20 AT&D0m3dt7389740 ; I choose the phone number in the phone book RINGING ; this can be ignored, or checked to see if contains CONNECT CONNECT 38400/V32b 14400/V42b/SREJ ; This must be recognised and so send CR ENTER chr$(13) 0020GNA ; can be ignored or check if Host Name Host Name: CIS ; they send Host Name: I must reply "CIS" User ID: 100675,632/NOINT ; ditto for User ID Password: ; ditto for pass ; the next is further down (go mail) CompuServe Information Service 18:51 CEST Thursday 28-May-1998 P Last access: 13:03 28-May-98 Copyright (c) 1998 CompuServe Incorporated All Rights Reserved GO RATES for new pricing information CompuServe Aktuell(FREE) GERNEW COMPUSERVE AKTUELL 1 Business Consulting - jetzt und hier 2 Web-Publishing fur Profis 3 Wer wird Weltmeister? 4 Monster Trucks... 5 Be in control 6 Grose Geschenk-Aktion AKTUELLES WELTWEIT 7 Grosbritannien Aktuell 8 Frankreich Aktuell 9 Aktuelles weltweit Enter choice ! go mail ; I need to send "go mail" I would like all that to happen automatically. I have read the manual and see several script programs and I can choose the phone number but have not succeeded in recognising text sent. HELP! ********************************************************************