Spare GoldCard

No new hardware developments in QL Heaven since 2001/02. There is some quite good hardware out there - Goldcard, Supergoldcard, QXL ISA card, Qubide IDE interface, Aurora mother board, Hermes and Superhermes chips and the Q40 and Q60 successor QL motherboards. One weakness of the hardware scene is that there is no way to say upgrade memory or processor independently of changing a card. There have been various attempts to do so but have foundered due probably to the massive scale of the project attempted by a few individuals who also have families and day jobs.




Why I wonder is it not possible to upgrade say Goldcard's memory. Supergoldcard is after all Goldcard v3 with an upgraded processor and more memory. Is it possible to say replace the memory chips on a Goldcard or Supergoldcard? Has anyone tried?

Think of the QXL card, a 68040 processor and 8 MB memory designed to slot into an ISA slot on a PC. Yet at one point Miracle systems were marketing a slot converter to let a Supergoldcard plug into an ISA slot on a PC. Did anyone get one? Anyway what this observation suggests is that it is possible to convert an ISA slot to the QL expansion bus. If so could it be possible to use a QXL card with an Aurora motherboard or basic QL motherboard thereby expanding memory and processing power for these. Just a question.

Did You Know

The position of the EE pointer can be monitored without resorting to any of the QPTR or WMAN easyPTR extensions. The pointer record is in the channel#0 driver.

This may be found as follows :

chbas=PEEK_L(SVbase+120)
firstdev=PEEK_L(SVbase+68):REMark device list
:
channel0_driver=PEEK_L(PEEK_L(chbas)+4)
addr=channel0_driver : REMark pointer record is in this driver
:

ptrmove=PEEK_L(addr+126) : REMark read x+y position !!
ptrkey=PEEK(addr+49)+PEEK(addr+50)

Or slightly more robustly - this one finds all window channel definition blocks #0 being the first in the list :

DEFine FuNction Find_driver
REMark LOCal chbas,chmax,cnt,chp
cnt=0
chbas=PEEK_L(SYSBASE+120)
chmax=PEEK_W(SYSBASE+114)
DIM Drivers(chmax)
FOR chp = chbas TO (chbas+chmax*4) STEP 4
IF PEEK(chp)<>255
addr = PEEK_L(chp)
driver=PEEK_L(addr+4)
Definition_length=PEEK_L(addr)
IF Definition_length=defn_block
Drivers(cnt)=driver
cnt=cnt+1
END IF
END IF
END FOR chp
:
pop=0 :cntmax=cnt-1
REPeat TestDriver
IF pop>cnt/2:EXIT TestDriver
TestDriver=Drivers(cntmax)
FOR i=0 TO cnt-1
IF Drivers(i)=TestDriver:pop=pop+1
END FOR i
cntmax=cntmax-1
END REPeat TestDriver
RETurn TestDriver
END DEFine Find_driver
:
What use is this?

QL QDOS SMSQE Qx0 QPC2 Secrets

As promised. Although I do not pretend to know any top secret information only things that I have noticed or discovered myself over the years. There are some however in QL Heaven who believe in the official QDOS secrets act and have complained bitterly about it over the years. And then there is the dirty washing sometimes found on the ql-users forum and in QLToday.

Any here's one for for starters. The MOVEP instruction was removed from smsqe to improve compatibility with the 68060 processors of the Q60. But if you plan to use Text87plus4 on the Q60 you still need to LRESPR the MOVP4SMSQ60_cde extension as Text87plus4 also has MOVEP instructions.

When smsqe moved to version 3.04 or higher the channel definition block for console channels jumped in size from 304 to 432 bytes without warning.

Thats all for the moment, but more to come.

Coventry QL is 25

Simon Goodwin blew some eproms, there was a display of the history of the QL, loads of 2nd hand items, both software and hardware. Talks on the history of computing and design of electronics boards.

Steven Poole delivered a passionate analysis of what happened to home computing from its explosive inception in the 1980s to its almost complete absence now except for those left on the QL scene. Superbasic he argued was actually what made the QL a system worth continuing with. Superbasic released the power of the imagination.

Worryingly the meeting had an apparent lack of imagination amongst the attendees. Other than a sticky badge it was just another QL show with even less to show than before. So, disappointing underneath the surface. Perhaps the second day will be better. Perhaps new plans will be hatched over dinner. More later.

Software Writers

Here's a question - who are the all time most prolific software writers for the QL and systems?
Bearing in mind that I said prolific and not important the answer may be suprising. Is it Steve Poole, Dilwyn Jones, Thierry Godefroy, Simon Goodwin or someone else. With over 100 sofware versions maintained and listed on his site it must be Dilwyn Jones.

As for important - its got to be a dead heat between Tony Tebby and Marcel Kilgus.
Any other ideas out there?

QL is 25

Off to Coventry today. What on earth could the QL is 25 meeting have thats new and interesting. Will report later.

QL World SBASIC Programs or where have all the ideas gone?

Which QL World programs are worthy of the 21st century and the 25th Anniversary of the QL and deserve an update to utilise the power of the latest versions of smsqe? At the 25 Anniversary of the QL this might be an idea worth pursuing. Continuity with the past and a direction for the future.

The QL World published a lot of SBASIC and some m/c programs in its time. This is one thing that QLToday does not do so well. Are you listening Geoff Wicks? Some of the programs were useful utilities, some were games and some were downright weird.

There was a wild card file finder utility, designed for floppy disks, and might be again be useful if tweaked to do the same for hard disks. There was also a calculator. I typed both in and have used both in the past before progressing to hard disks and the extended environment. When I have time they are both on the list for updating perhaps. There were graphics programs like a contour plotter, a bit weird - what was the point. If you know - do tell. There was also a biorhythms program. Convert that one to run on a PC, make it shareware and become rich. There was a clipboard which I think was updated by at least 2 programmers. There several file browsers. Did anyone ever complete SNG's browser? There were many more> this is one topic that Quanta could usefully revisit for its members as well as QL Today. More useful than the sniping that often goes on at QL Today

Anyway which were your favourites and could they be usefully updated for today. I ask only because the ideas seem to have gone.

Finally I need to dig out some more snippets of code from any handy source and also any QDOS/SMSQE/QPTR secrets that I have stumbled across over the years for future posts.