Q68 New users and general usage thread

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Peter
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by Peter »

By the way, did you try ACT on the Q68 already?


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Peter
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by Peter »

Sparrowhawk wrote:By the way, does the card have any hidden system files, or can copying the contents of the card onto a PC/Mac act as a full and true backup which can in turn be restored just by getting a new formatted card and copy+pasting onto that?
No hidden files. You are right that copying all files to a PC/MAC represents a full backup.

The only thing we must keep in mind, is to make sure that the container files never get fragmented. The Q68 User's Manual has an explanation on this issue, and reading it is better than trying to put it in a few words here.


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vanpeebles
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by vanpeebles »

Peter wrote:By the way, did you try ACT on the Q68 already?
That's number one on my Christmas Holiday to do list :D


Derek_Stewart
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by Derek_Stewart »

vanpeebles wrote:
Peter wrote:By the way, did you try ACT on the Q68 already?
That's number one on my Christmas Holiday to do list :D
Hi

I tried ACT, Super Sprite Generator on the Q68 in DISP_MODE 1, all seems to work OK. But I do not know how to use the software. I am reading the manual at present.

I am in the process of converting my DP Software to Floppy disk images, just in case the older DP software does not like the WIN drive access.

I had the Conqueror SE running, but do not have any MSDOS boot media. Maybe a floppy disk image will get the system running and I will be able to use DOS based software and games.

The floppy disk and microdrive images can be accessed used FDI or MDI drivers by Martin Head. Which I included on the Q68 SD Card. There is also some example images in a subdirectory called FLP for floppy images MDV for microdrive images.

Use the MOUNT_FDI or MOUNT_MDI to load the the image. I also change the FDI device driver name to FLP usng the command FDI_USE "FLP" and MDI to MDI_USE "MDV", this should give the Q68 FLP and MDV access to image files.


Regards,

Derek
daniel_baum
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by daniel_baum »

Hi all,

Mine arrived this morning. It is all set up and running very nicely. It took me a little while to work out that the mouse and keyboard labels on the splitter are reversed...

Thanks very much to all involved for the work put into this excellent product.

Once I've worked out how to get everything set up, I'll probably put my QXL.WIN file from QPC2 on the SD card and boot from that. After that, I should be able to boot QPC2 from the SD Card too, I suppose, and run an identical system on both environments.

One question: is there a safe shutdown command in this version of SMSQ/E, like QPC_EXIT? It feels a bit scary just to turn it off.


D.


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Peter
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by Peter »

daniel_baum wrote:Once I've worked out how to get everything set up, I'll probably put my QXL.WIN file from QPC2 on the SD card and boot from that.
Good luck. If you had not used many PC specific functions, it should be easy.
daniel_baum wrote: After that, I should be able to boot QPC2 from the SD Card too, I suppose, and run an identical system on both environments.
Yes, but your bootfile might need to check if it runs on hardware or emulation. Especially huge highcolour resolutions are not very suitable for the Q68.
daniel_baum wrote:One question: is there a safe shutdown command in this version of SMSQ/E, like QPC_EXIT? It feels a bit scary just to turn it off.
Don't worry. The SMSQ/E manual says that QPC_EXIT just quits the emulator. This is equivalent to turning off the Q68.


daniel_baum
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by daniel_baum »

Peter wrote:
daniel_baum wrote: After that, I should be able to boot QPC2 from the SD Card too, I suppose, and run an identical system on both environments.
Yes, but your bootfile might need to check if it runs on hardware or emulation. Especially huge highcolour resolutions are not very suitable for the Q68.
True, but 1920x1080 on QPC is not really usable for me because of the tiny characters, even on my 28" monitor, so I usually run it at a lower resolution anyway.
Peter wrote:
daniel_baum wrote:One question: is there a safe shutdown command in this version of SMSQ/E, like QPC_EXIT? It feels a bit scary just to turn it off.
Don't worry. The SMSQ/E manual says that QPC_EXIT just quits the emulator. This is equivalent to turning off the Q68.
:D

Thanks,

D.


FrancoisLanciault
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by FrancoisLanciault »

Also received my Q68 yesterday.

Everything works fine. The only problem I have is that on the monitor I currently use, the right end of the image is missing. The monitor has sideways adjustment setting but even when I move the image has much as possible to the left, there are still missing pixels on the right. I would say about 50 to 75 pixels are not visible. Before adjustment is was around 200.

I will try other monitors in the coming days.

François


daniel_baum
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by daniel_baum »

Hi all,

Some minor niggles and a question, none of which detract from the Q68's overall awesomeness.

- The Q68_SMSQ.WIN disk image file is not in fact configured by default as WIN8_, as mentioned in the manual, because in the configuraton block the card is configured as "none" instead of "1".

- PRINT WIN_DRIVE$(X) always returns "buffer full"

- The desktop wallpaper in the QLE configuration takes a crazy amount of time to load. Might be better to remove it from the default config.

- what is the "SUB" device?

I think I've finally figured out how to configure devices etc :) I do actually like the default configuration despite its complexity, because it gives a very good idea of what the system is capable of. The manual is very good, but you do actually need to read it to understand what's going on.

D.

PS. Thanks for including the latest version of QBase in the default Q-Dock configuration!


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tofro
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Re: Q68 New users and general usage thread

Post by tofro »

daniel_baum wrote: - what is the "SUB" device?
This device is similar to the "dev" device and has the capability to disguise an arbitrary subdirectory as another device. Different from the dev device, it hides the subdirectory even a bit more, while

Code: Select all

DEV_USE 1, "win1_somedir_someotherdir_"
DIR dev1_
Will return the filenames as "somedir_someotherdir_filename"

SUB is different in this respect:

Code: Select all

SUB_DRV win
SUB_USE 1,somedir_someotherdir
DIR sub1_
will return the plain filenames without the directory path which is a bit closer to what for example a floppy driver would do. This can be useful for older programs that are confused by the dev_device returning a different path. As you can see from the code, the usage also is slightly different.

daniel_baum wrote: I think I've finally figured out how to configure devices etc :) I do actually like the default configuration despite its complexity, because it gives a very good idea of what the system is capable of. The manual is very good, but you do actually need to read it to understand what's going on.
Important point. A lot of care has gone into the manuals to get beginners on SMSQ/E up to speed - Even if reading manuals seems to be somewhat out of fashion these days, it makes a lot of sense to read them. The full SMSQ/E environment has simply grown a bit too complex (and powerful) to be fully intuitive.

Tobias


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