******************** QL CLUB INTERNATIONAL ******************** ISSUE 113 JULY 1998 MIKE KENNEALLY E-MAIL MIKEKENNEALLY1@COMPUSERVE.COM ANY AND ALL SOFTWARE SENT TO THE CLUB/NEWSLETTER WILL BE TREATED AS PUBLIC DOMAIN UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED. DEAR ALL, AS JULY AND AUGUST ARE A RELATIVELY QUIET MONTHS,SOME PEOPLE HAVE NOT WRITTEN FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS USUALLY HOLIDAYS. I OWE SPIKE A PROFOUND APOLOGY AGAIN!,HE SENT ME HIS LETTER FOR INCLUSION IN THE NEWSLETTER BUT FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON I LOST IT BETWEEN COMPUSERVE AND THE DISC,NOT ONLY THAT BUT WHEN HE SENT IT TO ME AGAIN THE SAME THING HAPPENED!I MUST HAVE GREMLINS.SO IF YOU WANT TO TRY AGAIN SPIKE I SHALL INCLUDE IT NEXT MONTH. IT HAS BEEN A VERY BUSY MONTH FOR MYSELF IN A LOT OF WAYS,SO I SHALL KEEP THIS SHORT AND SWEET. I HAVE FOUND OUT WHAT THE PROBLEM IS WITH MY PC THOUGH,IT DOESN'T LIKE THE QXL CARD,WHEN IT IS ON AND SITTING IN THE BACKGROUND THE PC THROWS A WOBBLER,IT HAS TO BE SWITCHED OFF COMPLETELY. MIKE. 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. Dear Mike, Martin Wheatley wrote in the last issue that stripping out address details in the email issues would stop people from replying meaningfully to some queries. I agree that it might be wise to strip out postal addresses for the email versions but would it be OK to leave in the email addresses, as anyone who gets it by email would by definition be able to reply by email to those who are on email, many members are not. However, a possible solution to this is that if a reply needs to go to a member whose address isn't printed, and isn't on email, can perhaps email a reply to Mike (or an appointed member) who will if necessary forward the reply by post without revealing the recipent's address? Just a thought for you all to think about... I THINK THE CONSENSUS OF OPINION IS THAT WE LEAVE IT UP TO INDIVIDUALS DILWYN. Please be aware that there is conceivably one more source of addresses going out, and that is the back issues service if the recipient has requested them is not a member. With only one back issues request so far, this should not be a problem. Be aware, Andrew, if you add the back issues offer list to the Web site, that the back issues I send out are almost all the POSTAL version, that is they include members addresses, etc. Just before I wrote this, I found out about BT's Telephone Preference Service, which basically allows you to reduce or stop junk calls - double glazing salesmen etc. The servce apparently takes 3 to 6 months to have any significant effect, depending on when the companies concerned take note I suppose, but it's better than nothing. To stop telephone (voice) calls, phone BT on 0800-398893. To stop 'Junk Faxes' call BT on 0541-554555. I have used the first one, and BT said that the service is absolutely free at the moment, and they send a confirmation letter in about a week, though it takes 3-6 months for the double glazing etc calls to die down. Another useful domestic hint (for people in Wales at least) for those who have suffered my latest little disaster, a leaking pipe under my front garden which turned it into a lake to the extent that when my hover mower found it, it sank. I kid you not - it was a well concealed lake of water in fairly long grass by the time I went to mow it, when the mower passed over it, it threw dirty water all over me and I stopped the mower (in case I got electrocuted) and it sank a few inches. Aaaarghh! I phoned Hyder (the water company supplying us here) and they said that the leak was my side of the mains stop tap, it was my responsibility to fix it. But, it turned out, that thanks to the pressures on water companies to fix leaks from their pipes, they currently have an offer to fix, free of charge, pipes leading from the mains stop taps into customers' houses. Obviously, they will only find and fix the leak, restoring your garden to its former untidy state is your problem! Freephone Leakline (in Wales anyway) is on 0800-281432. Not only was this service free, but they also turned up and fixed it the same day, although a few days later a second set of workmen turned up - their problem! Impressive. And exactly as they promised, they didn't leave the garden too tidy... Colin had written about directory structures, and the reply said that it was a personal computer, and the user should think hard and set it up himself. I've met and worked with countless computer users over the years and I know that there are two types, the ones who prefer to do everything their own way, and the others who would prefer guidance and to fall in line with what others are doing, which makes it easier to get help when things prove less than straightforward. When it comes to QLs, I'm happy to go my own way. When it comes to Potential Catastrophes (PCs) I prefer to take the latter route. Believe me, where I work, the full name for PCs given above is accurate. So it won't do any harm to list what we do with our directory structures to help Colin and others in the same situation. QL ROM images. I think you can get these from a Web site somewhere. Was it the QLay Web site, or were there pointers there as to where to get them? It's also the sort of information you'd get from QL Web sites like those of Thierry Godefroy or Jonathan Hudson. Suppressing pornographic images etc. P McPherson might like to hear of a little tale passed to me by an IT engineer at work. It seems that there is a type of pornographic image suppressor which among its ways of working includes skin tone detection. Exactly how this works I've no idea - how does it cope with black, white, etc flesh tones? Now some PC art packages allow you to 'pick up' colours with an eye dropper type icon/button. At some stage, some (completely innocent) guy thought of using this facility to create a nice flesh tone coloured background for his Web site, as these days you're encouraged to be more adventurous than plain old blue on grey or whatever, by sampling a skin tone from a photo in a graphics package. The Web site was harmless enough, information about an animal carers' group or something like that if I remember right. And the background was just skin coloured, no nude images or whatever. But all of a sudden the site got a bad name as it was being suppressed as potentially pornographic by this particular piece of software due to the skin coloured graphical background. Oops, I don't think it was meant to do that somehow! QPAC2. I have now finished converting the Pointer Environment Idiot's Guide by Norman Dunbar. Originally, this was a printed introduction to the Pointer Environment, something you'd read before tackling QPAC2 itself. I've made it into a plain text file, added the diagrams in the original and added my text file viewer. The whole lot zipped up comes to about 86kB, so once Norman Dunbar gives me permission, I hope to submit this to Club QL for inclusion on a monthly disk. Assuming it's on this disk, look for the file called PEIG_zip. You'll need the UNZIP program I've placed on the disk too. There's a short basic program called PEIG_bas designed to unzip the guide onto a blank formatted disk in FLP2_. Put this Club QL disk in FLP1_, and a blank formatted disk in FLP2_. Run the PEIG_bas program, this will unzip the PE Idiot's Guide. If you only have a single drive system, change the DATA_USE FLP2_ to DATA_USE RAM1_ to make it unzip to RAM1_ first, then copy the unzipped files from RAM1_ to a blank formatted disk in your floppy drive. THANKS DILWYN,I JUST HOPE EVERYONE HAS AN UNZIP PROG TO UNZIP IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! Mike said it was the wrong time of the year for "tupping". I didn't know what this word meant at the time. I do now, thanks to the biggest dictionary I could find. Thanks a bunch, Mike. Parcel bomb on its way to you soon, Mike, as it wasn't quite what I had in mind... ITS AN OLD ENGLISH WORD DILWYN,NOT FOUND IN MANY WELSH VERSIONS,I BELIEVE IN THE WELSH EDITIONS ITS CROSS-REFERENCED UNDER 'WELLIES'. Andrew-thanks for the network port sound hints. Probably beyond me, but you never know. I did write some machine code routines for the Spectrum, more years ago than I care to admit, to listen to and play back from the cassette ports. Good clean fun at the time (though the sound was anything but clean). In general you need to sample at more than twice the highest audible frequency you want to reproduce. Marcel Kilgus has mentioned some sound routines for QPC several times, but no joy yet. One day perhaps... For any Trekkies there are plenty of sites on the Web, with storylines, info and any other Trek facts you want. There's also a fair bit of info in Qubbesoft's Electronic Book Library and Steve Johnson has some files too. Frank Merrison has sent me some additional back issues, so the list of the DOC files themselves is now almost complete, issue 85 being the only one still missing. See the enclosed ISSUES_TXT for details. I still have some way to go to complete the list of programs that went with each monthly Club QL DOC file. As you'll see, I have some way to go before I have all the programs which went with the main Club QL DOC files each month. But thanks Frank. I also like your idea of someone compiling info about dealers' news and info releases. The QL dealers won't have time to do this themselves, but would probably welcome a volunteer to do it for them! I mentioned last month that I was hoping to host a little get together at my place this autumn. Jochen Merz, Darren Branagh and possibly Marcel Kilgus have said they hope to combine a visit and holiday here at that time (in the case of Jochen and Marcel to coincide with the Byfleet workshop). In fact, it should happen just before the Byfleet workshop (4th October). Anyone likely to be in North Wales that week, give me a ring, I'll tell you how to join Jochen, Darren, etc. Mike - you're nearest to me, are you likely to drop in, for example? I DO HOPE TO DILWYN,I'LL LET YOU KNOW NEARER THE TIME. Finally, a little piece of news. You may have heard of Peter Graf's Q40 board. While Tony Tebby is attempting to port SMSQ/E to it, a little email received reports that Mark Swift in Blackpool is currently attempting to port the Amiga QDOS emulator to the Q40. Mark is the person who currently maintains the Amiga version of the emulator, since the original author Rainer Kowallic no longer works on it. When I wrote this letter, the port was in its early stages. So the Q40 may start life as a dual operating system computer, both of which can run QL software. That's the attitude I like. Dilwyn Jones Michael Kite 25th July 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 Mike could you please send me a copy of QL112 and QL113 this month as I did not get time to sent for last months before I went to Canada on holiday. NO PROBLEM. I hope you had a good holiday Mike and did you manage to get the wife to drive on the wrong side of the road ? AS YOU WILL SEE FROM QL112,NO CHANCE ON BOTH SCORES. Our holiday in Canada to see my wife Wendy,s sister and her husband who live in Melville Saskatchewan was a very good one for use. The plan was for use to spend 4 or so days with them at there house and then for the four of use to take a trip to the rockies together. In the end just Wendy and I went for seven days as her sister was ill. We hired a car and shared the driving which included 800 kilometer the first day passing through Calgary to get to Canmore which is at the start of the parks in the rockies. We stayed at a ski lodge her for three days to see the area. From here on in it was mountings mountings and more mountings, some part covered in snow some up in the clouds. The next place is called Banff were the views from sulphur mounting which is reached by cable car are orsome. The town the river and the mountings can all be seen from there. There is a chateau in the town of Banff which is used as a hotel, it has small shops in side it and you can just walk in and look round. The next place going north from her is called lake louise, this has another Chateau/hotel and faces a lake with a glacier at the far end of the lake and the water in the lake looks very blue. We then moved on to to a place called The Crossing which is half way through the rockies. it has just one motel to stay at and the views from the restaurant while eating dinner were wonderful. We then went to a glacier in the ice fields just below the town of Jasper which is the northern end of the rockies. There are are special coaches which have large very wide tractor type tires on them and very low gears. These coach are driven out onto the glacier and some distants up it. You can then get off the coach and walk on the ice also there is a small stream of melted ice water which we had a drank from. Some of the crevices in the ice are very deep and very blue in colour. ON the way to Jasper we visit two areas of the river were ther are water falls . Thewater has worn away the rock into large ravines and the noise of the water and the spray is over powering. We then stayed over night in Jasper visiting some lakes. Some elk, antilop, coyotes, goffers and goates were seen on the side of the road while going through the rockies but we did not see any bears. Next we drove to Edminton were we went to a shopping mall. This is all in doors and has a full size pleasure park, an ice rink ,a swimming pool with a wave maker, a lake with a full size galleon, dolphins, which perform every hour, bungy jumping, go karts and all this in between the shops. The round trip back to wendy,s sister total three thousand Kilometers and it was a wonderful trip. We then stayed at our relations for the remainder of our holiday relaxing. We were talking to two people from Texas who were also on holiday in the rockies and when we said we had come from sacctawn he said "thats the place were you can still see your dog after he has left home three days ago". It is very flat around and in some places there are not any trees or bushes. I'LL DO YOU A SWAP NEXT TIME MIKE. Mike Kite. #! Martin Burke, 26th August, 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. Paul McPherson: You're right about there being problems with some ways of avoiding pornography. I believe Scunthorpe has had problems in getting a web-site that will actually be accessed. Spike: I agree with Mike: your Qascade "manual" might make some people mental. "Computer/program" manuals - and those for many other subjects - are renowned for not being "complete/logical". One problem is that the writers often assume that certain steps or ways of doing things - that are second nature to them - are what everyone does as well. (It may be so second nature that they do not realise they are doing it.) The actual "flow" - rather than a cascade - of the explanation can be very tricky to determine: sometimes it is necessary to explain why you are going to do something before you explain what you are going to do. It is important that the reader can differentiate the what, the how and the why. Where spacing - in the explanation - between words, lines, etc, is important to the flow - and sense, it is possible to foul everything up just by having the wrong blank bits ... or the wrong bits blank ... Spike did of course anticipate this. But someone still needs to figure out how to sort it. Yours, Martin Burke. #! *! Martin Wheatley martinw@ndirect.co.uk QL, SuperQboard, Twin Disc Drives, Green Screen Monitor Mersey Mouse, PC running Xchange and Qemulator Hi everyone, ------------------------------------------------------ Paul MacPherson wrote I have been up to my neck trying to help Bob with some Physics and Maths revision for his "A" level exams so have had little in the way of time for QL related matters except to wish that there were a few software packages around that could have helped. My knowledge of physics is fair, but the Maths goes happily sailing way above my head. Exactly which government twit was it that claimed "A" levels are getting easier a couple of years ago, I really would like to meet him in a dark alley with a piece of 4x2 after the last couple of weeks! ----------------------------------------------- That'll be a piece of 9 then ! ----------------------------------------------- Dilwyn wrote Sometime in the autumn, timed to coincide with a QL show in Britain, Jochen Merz hopes to come to Wales on holiday, and we plan to make a week long QL bash out of it if I can get time off work at the same time. Darren Branagh hopes to come along too if he can save up enough days off and Punts. Anyone else who'd like to indulge in some shameless (I mean QL-related!) activities in the lovely Welsh countryside on the outskirts of Snowdonia is welcome to join us if in the area at the time, ---------------------------------------------- This has echoes of a famous meeting in ClubQL history. Tell 'em about the exploding oven Mike! --------------------------------------------- AH YES,BUT THIS WILL BE AT DILWYN'S HOUSE AND FRANK WON'T BE THERE! I wrote I've just acquired a copy of the PC shareware Ql emulator Q-Emulator I'm still struggling with getting the QL ROM images I need to run it usefully. No doubt I'll crack it in time And Mike replied NO DOUBT MARTIN,IT'LL BE INTERESTING TO HEAR HOW YOU HAVE GONE ON WITH IT. ----------------------------------------- On the assumption that anyone is interested (most of you seem to either have QXL,QPC or nor be interested in emulators!) I'll talk a bit about this Q-Emulator is a software QL emulator for use on a PC running Windows 95 It is only available as a download from the writers Web page as a Zip file but since the prog is shareware it can legally be passed on so if anyone wants it and doesn't have Internet access just send a PC disc and a return envelope and I'll send you a copy For those who don't know shareware is a system where you can try the program first and then pay if you like it. In this case the trial version is both limited and times out after a few days so if you want to use it you have to register the program. This is easier said than done. The writer Daniele Terdina is Italian and for some reason has placed it with a US shareware registration company so the registration money has to be sent to the US(you can use a credit card). It is $40 (about £25) for the current version Onto the prog itself To use it you need a ROM image. These are available on the Internet or you can prepare one yourself on your QL with a simple program QL emulators fall into two groups - the expensive ones that have licensed all the bits and pieces (QXL,QPC) and the cheaper ones which haven't (Qlay and Q-Emulator) where you have to provide things like ROM images yourself The program is a Win95 prog and is run the normal way - by clicking on an icon or by using the Start menu It opens as a double window. The top part is the standard Ql window and beneath that are a series of slots that you can configure to point at virtual devices It opens with a display window and you then Start the Ql using the menu and it loads the Rom image and you get the usual F1/F2 screen There are a number of facilities which can set RAM - anything from 128k to 4M (it will depend on what you have available on the PC what is the best for you) SPEED - Full Speed/Original Ql/Gold Card You can configure up to 8 devicesThese can be floppy drives or PC directories (which you address as flp or mdv 1-8) Another option is that you can configure a second ROM (for Minerva or TK2) As usual you have to provide your own ROM image There is a built in RAM Disc You can save your preferred configuration and set it so that it autoloads when you run Q-Emulator It reads Ql floppy discs from the PC disc drive and you can copy files from one directory to another. One thing not yet implemented is formatting QL floppies Daniele says this is coming eventually as are level 2 drivers and reading QXL_WIN files Just as with the QL a 'boot' file in flp1_ will autorun. I have this configured to a PC directory so that all my extensions will autoload (which they do almost instantly) - software version of TK2, pointer environment and also a supplied mouse driver. Also other devices are pointed at directories containing my most used software I don't know how much of the recent QL software Q-Emulator will run as I don't have any of it - someone else will have to comment on that! For using standard Ql stuff like Xchange or Perfection it is excellent - much faster than my QL There are other facilities I haven't mentioned because I don't want to turn this into a book! All I can say is - try it if you think you'll be interested Martin Wheatley Bill Waugh email Bill@waughql.demon.co.uk Ql and stuff (for taking stuff off m/drives) QXL and stuff (for backup) Aurora,Qubide,Romdisq,SGC,S/Hermes,SMSQe,1.2Gig Hd,850Meg Hd (for pleasure) PC (for net and email and some frustration) Hi everyone I have just got around to reading 111 and someway through 112 so bear with me if I am somewhat behind. I managed to loose my wallet in Berwick some weeks ago and not being in a total panick managed to remember to cancel my credit card that was in the wallet, I did this as soon as I realised the loss wich was only a matter of minutes. When I got back home I did the 1471 phone thing and had been called by a mobile number, just as I was about to call the number back the phone rang, a welsh voice said "William I have your wallet boy" and he did. Two young lads from Dilwyns part of the world were up in Berwick to attend their mothers birthday and had found it in the middle of the road- intact and with nothing missing, seems like they know how to bringthem up the correct way in Wales Dilwyn. Anyway the upshot of all this is that I forgot to inform Demon of the number of the new card I was issued with so they froze my account (understandable as they were not getting paid) when I eventualy got round to telling them I had a backlog of 385 emails). So to issue 111 Frank Merrison writes > 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? The (lightning flash) Wake symbol is for bringing up a program that is already running, if you had two Quills in use and you wanted to look at the one that was not at the time visible (buried) then you can press both mouse buttons (or key ALT and . ) to bring up the button frame then simple HIt or Do the Wake symbol to bring the Quill you wanted to the top. In this situation the Wake symbol works like a selective CONTROL C and cycles through the Quills that you are using, if you had three running it would cycle through one at a time with every HIt or DO until you got the one you required. It should not matter if the program is HOT_RES or HOT_LOAD and should work with Abacus, Archive and any program that it is displayed on the Button. The same symbol is also used in Files and other menus as a refresh or read medium symbol. This being Qpac2 of course means thing are not just that simple and Wake can mean a bit more than this. A simpler method of selecting programs is HOT_PICK, you can set this up so that selected keys (the number keys are a good chioce) can be defined to PICK a certain program to the top or cycle through multiple version of the same program. If you had the following lines in your boot HOT_PICK ('1','QD') HOT_PICK ('2','Linedesign') HOT_PICK ('3','Text87plus4') HOT_PICK ('4','Quill') and you had the first three running plus two versions of Quill then if you were using Linedesign and wanted to use QD you just press ALT and'1' and Qd comes to the top, another ALT and '4' would pop up one of the Quills if it was not the one you wanted then ALT and '4' again would bring the next Quill up. I started to update the atricles that I did for Quanta but got a bit stuck, the present weather is creating havoc at work, we are behind with lots of stuff so I need to work overtime when the weather allows, its not that I dont have so much time as that I don't know just when the time will be free. I had intended to produce the articles printed on A4 four hole punched paper in a folder at a cost of about 3 or 4 pence per page, if I get this done I will send one to Mike (or someone else) to review and if anyone wants one I can print them out on and individual basis (thus not incurring any outlay). Ah the Star Trek stuff - thought I might flush out a trekie, it was tongue in cheek stuff Andrew (it was Andrew wasn't it I got a bit lost in the "bye Richard" stuff). Yes I confess to being a Voyager fan I got hooked on this stuff way back with Journay into space, bit before your time Andrew I suspect, I used to buy Horlicks just to collect the labels for a Dan Dare badge ah yes that miss Peabody - the fifties version of Seven of Nine? not quite. Funny that brings me to the Viagra jokes 1. A truck load of this stuff was stolen - police are on the lookout for a gang of hardened criminals. 2. Patient - Doctor my wife says I need some Viagra. Doctor - (jokingly) are you sure its not a au pair you need Patient - Oh I've got one Doc I don't need Viagra for her Bye all Bill -- Bill Waugh