SMSQmulator on RPi3

Another screen shot.

SMSQmulator on the RPi 3 is a very usable system. The screen shows Eddi the icon editor which is a large QLiberated program which runs exceptionally well under the emulator. On the screen it is possible to see that the emulator was producing 10.94 bogomips despite all the other programmes running. uQLx is a bit more quirky. This is probably not down to the RPi but to its design as a QDOS/Minerva emulator. Hence crashes occurred this morning when QPAC2 version 1.45 was loaded and also separately with the button frame extension. Also Launchpad which can be seen on the screen above had a "General Protection Fault" error with both LP1 and LP2.

The screen shots have been captured by the wonderfully named linux app called scrot - its command line seen above in the terminal window.

uQLx on Rpi3

Finally got uQLx running on RPi. Even although the emulator comes precompiled with an installer there is still a bit of a learning curve for the linux novice. For example, once the package had been unzipped on to the RPi where were the example configuration files .uqlxrc files that were mentioned in the text document and were required for the emulator to start correctly. Answer they were in the folder where they should be but were invisible as files beginning with "." in linux are hidden files.

How to boot qdos once the emulator was started. Answer again described in the docs. Either create a folder called mdv1 in the RPi file structure, save in the folder a file named boot, containing the boot instructions and add to the .uqlxrc file the location of the mdv1 folder, easily done one the .uqlxrc examples were found. 
Or using the linux terminal add a boot option -b as described in the instructions.

How to start the emulator without retyping the whole command line again etc.
Answer - learn to make a simple shell script under linux containing all the options required on start such as window size and boot file and save this to the desktop or to the files menu. Simple once you know how.

uQLx speed is good. It gets 23.62 bogomips on RPi3 no overclock. This compares to 10.73 bogomips for SMSQmulator on the RPi3 and with 5 or so bogomips for a Supergoldcard original QL.

Some quirks. Trying to open an SBasic window with a y dimension of more than 640 regardless of the emulator window size corrupts the SBASIC code in
memory. Some extensions do not work particularly the FLIM_X and FLIM_Y from DWJ Display code with both returning 0. Also Launchpad crashes with a serious error message. This needs to be explored and will perhaps be in the next post.

Despite the niggles uQLx is a great QL emulator for the RPi as is SMSQmulator.  

Black Box QL as USB keyboard for RPi2

This QL has been converted to act as a USB keyboard using Tynemouth Software's conversion kit. Everything seems to work except the power LED. But the keys are mapped and the screen shows SMSQmulator checking the key codes as each key combination is pressed using RWAP Software's short bit of code supplied with the new membrane. "REPeat loop: PRINT CODE(INKEY$(-1)),

The original membrane that came with this case had succumbed to age and was crumbling. Phase 1 and 2 in the lets put a "QL" back in the black box. So far so good.

SMSQmulator on RPi2

A picture is worth a thousand words or so it is said. The original RPi B was too underpowered to run the Java based SMSQmulator at anything like a usable speed. The original RPi reported that it achieved 3 bogomips in total. The new RPi2 manages 38 bogomips. and SMSQmulator is now well usable. Here is the picture showing that the emulator itself is managing almost 6 bogomips with the RPi 2 overclocked to 1000 MHz, GPU memory set to 256 MB and java v8 installed.

USB interface for QL keyboard membrane

Just found this blog of keyboard interfaces for retro computers -

http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2015/12/day-3-sinclair-ql-usb-keyboard.html

Anyone tried the interface?

QLToday is finished - a sad day for QLing

As predicted QLToday has gone under. The last edition was published this month and received here on Friday. Again a good read. It came with a bonus DVD with all past issues and a mega collection of software. And as an amazing bonus QPC2 v4 was released as freeware as an additional bonus. The most interesting article in this last issue was Marcel Kilgus  on how he came to write QPC.



QLToday is dead - Long live QLing

SMSQE emulation on a Raspberry Pi

Not much is happening as the RPi has been converted to an XBMC box with iplayer, 4on demand, itv player and channel 5. Setting up internet TV with the RPi was a dream as was setting up the wireless connection and finding that the HDMI link to the TV could also transmit the TV control commands to the RPi. Need to get another RPi to try SMSQE and QDOS.