Friday, 25 May 2018

Q68 in QLHeaven

A Q68 is here at last. It is a lovely QL replacement/development. Loads of memory, a 68000 compatible processor emulation making loads of old software run well, 16 bit colour and a range of screen modes that all display well on flat screen monitors. It comes supplied with a 4 GB SDHC card containing 8 QXL.WIN type hard drive files absolutely loaded with freeware software. The super QDock front end comes as part of the package.


The preferred display here is 16 bit mode 33 512x384 giving high colour compatible with modern software, a slighly larger display than the original QL and a speed that is the same a superGoldCard QL or slightly faster. All in all a super QL system. More later.

Saturday, 5 May 2018

More Stuff for QLers - are things hotting up??

Recently CueShell was released as freeware. This is not a program that QLHeaven ever thought to buy, mores the pity. The down loadable demos of the program did not do the program itself justice and so did not attract attention from this quarter. But now the full version is available and what a useful program. The only downside is that  the colours it can use remain locked in to the old mode 4 colours but even so on a modernish QL system it can be quite colourful.




Dilwyn Jones Q-Dock is also now freeware.It is an impressive development of Launchpad also now freeware.



On the hardware side of things the Q68 seems to be selling well.




There are also Qubide, Goldcard, Trumpcard and Backplane clones from Tetroid - see sell my retro

The Qubide hard drive roms have been updated to v3.10 with the Qubide drivers becoming part of smsq/e.

And Dave from Austin Texas on the QL forum has been discussing many new hardware ideas.

One thing there has been less of are 2nd hand QLs and peripherals for sale on ebay. While in the past there have been 2 or 3 pages or more of items for sale now there is only one and prices do seem to be going up. Does this mean that people are now hanging on to their old QLs as support for the system has been growing in the QL forum?   

Finally  there has been discussion of the future of the Q60 with a sadly heated exchange with the designer of the Q60 provoked by another longstanding QL figure.