Any Love for the QL? [Solved]

[pgimeno]

I can launch several Psion programs and everything, but from time to time I get keyboard issues, to the point that I sometimes can't type anything at all.

There's also no permanent storage. Any work I do is lost.

Could this core get a bit more love, to solve the keyboard and lack of storage issues? At least an option to save the microdrive back to SD.

Update: Marcel Kilgus' excellent work improving this core has finally put these issues to rest. Thanks a lot! viewtopic.php?p=10486#p10486

[danielb]

Hi,

Go to https://www.kilgus.net/ql/mister/ for Marcel Kilgus' QL core for Mister.

It has a Gold Card implementation with accelerated CPU, and can support .win files and a special version of SMSQ/E.

You have to boot into Minerva, and then LRESPR the SMSQ/E from your boot file. After a bit of head scratching. I managed to make a single boot file that boots the SMSQ/E, and then continues on to my main boot file.

D.

[tontonkaloun]

I tried, it's nice to be able to boot on a vhd!
I pretty much understood to create the vhd file.

[danielb]

I tried, it's nice to be able to boot on a vhd!
I pretty much understood to create the vhd file.

Hi,

The ".win" file is a native QL virtual hard disk file. It is often called "qxl.win" for historical reasons.
The QL is a very interesting and very unconventional system that still hangs on to life in the form of emulators, modern hardware replacements, and FPGA cores. You can also get modern hardware upgrades for original QL hardware.
An updated operating system, known as SMSQ/E, is still being developed, and now, thanks to Marcel Kilgus, runs on Mister.
New software is still being written.
Lots of QL software (probably all of it actually) is available from Dilwyn Jones' site http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/. You can also get preconfigured .WIN files with lots of stuff ready to use, e.g. here: http://www.sinclairql.net/repository.html. This distribution runs on Marcel's Mister core. Another is available here:http://www.quantum.altervista.org/bpuk.htm.

D.

[kathleen]

Very interesting @danielb, thank you for the information and for the links. To be honest, I put the QL aside as I was not that much interested by this model and now you made me want to try it.

[danielb]

Very interesting @danielb, thank you for the information and for the links. To be honest, I put the QL aside as I was not that much interested by this model and now you made me want to try it.

It's definitely worth a look, but be patient because it can be a bit quirky if you're not used to it. Hopefully, I might be able to post my preconfigured .win file of The Distribution later this evening, so that will give you somewhere to start.

BTW, this is the QL's chief claim to fame; a fully preemptive multitasking operating system that fitted into 48K of ROM (from Wikipedia :

"The earliest preemptive multitasking OS available to home users was Sinclair QDOS on the Sinclair QL, released in 1984, but very few people bought the machine. Commodore's Amiga, released the following year, was the first commercially successful home computer to use the technology, and its multimedia abilities make it a clear ancestor of contemporary multitasking personal computers. Microsoft made preemptive multitasking a core feature of their flagship operating system in the early 1990s when developing Windows NT 3.1 and then Windows 95. It was later adopted on the Apple Macintosh by Mac OS X that, as a Unix-like operating system, uses preemptive multitasking for all native applications."

[tontonkaloun]

I tried, it's nice to be able to boot on a vhd!
I pretty much understood to create the vhd file.

Hi,

The ".win" file is a native QL virtual hard disk file. It is often called "qxl.win" for historical reasons.
The QL is a very interesting and very unconventional system that still hangs on to life in the form of emulators, modern hardware replacements, and FPGA cores. You can also get modern hardware upgrades for original QL hardware.
An updated operating system, known as SMSQ/E, is still being developed, and now, thanks to Marcel Kilgus, runs on Mister.
New software is still being written.
Lots of QL software (probably all of it actually) is available from Dilwyn Jones' site http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/. You can also get preconfigured .WIN files with lots of stuff ready to use, e.g. here: http://www.sinclairql.net/repository.html. This distribution runs on Marcel's Mister core. Another is available here:http://www.quantum.altervista.org/bpuk.htm.

D.

Thank you so much !!!

[danielb]

Hi all,

Here is my slightly customised QLE Distribution for Marcel Kilgus' Mister core:

QLE.ZIP

(21.76 MiB) Downloaded 118 times

Download https://www.kilgus.net/soft/qlsd108_bin.zip from Marcel's site. Extract Minerva_1.98a1_qlsd108.bin and rename it to boot.rom. This is your QL Minerva ROM. Put it the QL folder on your Mister SD card.
Download and unzip the file.
Put it on your Mister SD card.
Start the QL core.
Press F1 at the Minerva screen. Not much will happen.
Mount the .WIN file with the F12 menu.
Restart the core
Press F1 at the Minerva screen. It should boot.

SMSQ/E includes the Pointer Environment, so it is best used with a mouse. Remember that the left button SELECTS and the right button EXECUTES.
Alt-f loads the file manager.
Alt-shift X loads Psion Xchange, a slightly more modern version of the Psion apps included with the QL.
On Mister, you are limited to the original QL screen resolution of 512x256 with 4 colours (red, green, white and black). Other systems allow much higher resolutions and up to 32-bit colour.

Have fun....

D.

[pgimeno]

Hi,

Go to https://www.kilgus.net/ql/mister/ for Marcel Kilgus' QL core for Mister.

It has a Gold Card implementation with accelerated CPU, and can support .win files and a special version of SMSQ/E.

You have to boot into Minerva, and then LRESPR the SMSQ/E from your boot file. After a bit of head scratching. I managed to make a single boot file that boots the SMSQ/E, and then continues on to my main boot file.

D.

Awesome! Thank you very much. I will try it ASAP.

My main goal is to run a Spanish version of Psion's QL Archive, but with the possibility of storage. Is that possible with that core?

[danielb]

Hi,

Go to https://www.kilgus.net/ql/mister/ for Marcel Kilgus' QL core for Mister.

It has a Gold Card implementation with accelerated CPU, and can support .win files and a special version of SMSQ/E.

You have to boot into Minerva, and then LRESPR the SMSQ/E from your boot file. After a bit of head scratching. I managed to make a single boot file that boots the SMSQ/E, and then continues on to my main boot file.

D.

Awesome! Thank you very much. I will try it ASAP.

My main goal is to run a Spanish version of Psion's QL Archive, but with the possibility of storage. Is that possible with that core?

Hi,

There is an early Spanish version of the Psion programs here: http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/psions/index.html.

It can be a little tricky to run the original Psion programs on a later expanded system. You might need a bit of trial and error to get it working with the WIN drive,.

Good luck,

D

[danielb]

Two updates:

I realised that the .WIN file that I linked to has almost no free space on it. I have transferred everything over to a bigger file and as soon as I am sure it is all working I'll upload it. I have noticed that all of the files have today's date and time after copying, so if that's a problem for anyone then ....
I managed to get the Spanish Psion programs to work, however they complain that "Este programa solo es para el QL español". Presumably it requires a Spanish ROM. I see that Dilwyn's site has a Spanish QL ROM, but I'll leave that for you to test...

[pgimeno]

Thanks! I'm about to try right now. I have it already working on the "official" MiSTer core, sorry if I wasn't very specific about that. It's just that anything I do is lost forever.

If it needs a Minerva ROM to use the win_ device, and a Spanish ROM to run the program, it looks like unless I can find a Spanish Minerva ROM (that I don't think exists), I'm trapped, right?

By the way, does "win" here stand for Winchester?

[danielb]

Hi,

I would try the core with a standard Spanish ROM and see if it works.... Good luck

And yes, .WIN is short for Winchester.

D.

[pgimeno]

I would try the core with a standard Spanish ROM and see if it works.... Good luck

Sadly, it doesn't. I mean, it works, but it hangs when I select a microdrive and run dir mdv1_. And selecting a .WIN file does not work (lack of driver, I suppose). When I do dir win_ it says "not found".

I've made .WIN files work with the Minerva ROM suggested in the page, which means that at least I can now work with SuperBasic and save my work. More than nothing, though it'd be a pity if that's what I have to settle for.

I imagine that adding the .WIN driver to the Spanish ROM is not as simple as concatenating them, and that it would require some patching, right? I have no idea of QDOS at any level lower than simple user level.

[danielb]

The correct syntax is "dir win1_", so if you did "dir win_" then "not found" is the correct answer.

[pgimeno]

The correct syntax is "dir win1_", so if you did "dir win_" then "not found" is the correct answer.

Same result. I didn't expect otherwise, as that ROM has no driver for that device.

dir win_ works with the Minerva ROM though. The result might not be the expected one but it doesn't say "not found".

[Edit: My bad; user error. The boot loader stopped with an error due to insufficient memory when I hadn't configured it properly, but it stopped after defining win1_ as the default. So, by typing 'dir win_' I was effectively doing a 'dir win1_win_'.]

Thanks for your help.

[danielb]

That's actually quite strange, because on my system, "dir win_" gives "not found".
SMSQ/E has configurable language codes, keyboards and messages, and the very latest version (3.36) - later than the one for the Mister core (3.34) - has Spanish. I kind of doubt this will help with the Psion programs though

Anyway, good luck with the QL core,

D.