Turbo crash

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gregtaylor
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Turbo crash

Post by gregtaylor »

I have had a lot of problems trying QL emulators on my Windows 10 (64 bit) laptop. In the end I have built an old laptop with Window XP (SP3) 16 bit and am getting excellent stability. Having downloaded Q-Liberator, I thought I would do some speed tests also including Turbo. I am testing a very basic program:

100 start_time=DATE
110 FOR counter =1 to 30000
120 END FOR counter
130 time_1=DATE-start_time
140 PRINT time_1

Test emulator is QLAY2 , 2M, 768x512, speed 600 with Minerva 198 ROM, tk2 and nfa loaded.

Interpreted, time is 17 seconds. Qliberated time is 4 seconds.

Turbo is a problem, the program compiles with no errors but if I then execute win1_test_task then QLAY2 crashes instantly.

Anyone any idea why the turbo compiled tasks might crash? Lack of error messages is not helpful!

Greg


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tofro
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by tofro »

Your program compiles and runs fine on my QPC2 installation.

Because you say QLAY2 crashes, I'd rather say that seems to be a problem with this emulator. Whatever happens inside the emulated QL should not be able to make the emulator go haywire.

Tobias


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EmmBee
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by EmmBee »

I also use Windows 10, and have tried this program with Q-emuLator, Minerva 197 rom, running at original QL speed. My results are ...

Interpreted 43 secs
Turbo 9 secs
QLiberator 3 secs

After adding in the line IMPLICIT% counter, Turbo's time improved to 4 secs. Still not as fast as QLiberator, but normally I do find that Turbo is the quicker compiler. I have not been able to try this with Minerva 198 rom, which just won't work properly on my setup. I would suggest if you can, to use Minerva 197, and you may get it to work, then. Have you tried using QPC2? In my opinion, QPC2 is the best you can get, plus it's also free.

Michael


gregtaylor
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by gregtaylor »

I don't seem to have a copy of Minerva 197 so cannot test it. It does seem to work on Q-emulator though so it must be qlay2 having problems. I really need to try qpc2. I never seem to be able to get the QL screen big enough then run out of interest!!

The timing results are surprising as I always thought Turbo produced quicker code. It is only a FOR, END FOR loop so very restrictive so might try other loops. I always preferred QLiberator as it was happy with any code which would run in Superbasic whereas Turbo was much more fussy.

Greg


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Re: Turbo crash

Post by EmmBee »

I've attached the Minerva version that works for me - hope you can get this to work.

Also, QPC2 can be downloadwd from here ... https://www.kilgus.net/qpc/downloads/

Best regards,

Michael
Attachments
minerva197.zip
(38.38 KiB) Downloaded 132 times


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dilwyn
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by dilwyn »

gregtaylor wrote:I don't seem to have a copy of Minerva 197 so cannot test it. It does seem to work on Q-emulator though so it must be qlay2 having problems. I really need to try qpc2. I never seem to be able to get the QL screen big enough then run out of interest!!
Greg
When you mention QL screen, do you mean the resolution (use DISP_SIZE width,height command) or the 512x256 QL-compatible screen mode?

If the latter, it's easy in modern versions of QPC2: just drag a corner or edge of its window to stretch and scale it as required. As long as the PC supports this (most modern PCs do), no problem. Just move the Windows pointer over a corner or edge of QPC2 window, when the pointer changes to the double headed arrow, just drag the corner or edge outwards to increase the size.

Alternatively, in the configuration dialogue, set the resolution to whatever you want (QL 512x256 in this example) then set the Window Mode values to twice or three times the size to 'scale' it up, as shown in the example below, where I've set the scaled window size to 1536x768, triple the resolution value. Obviously, depends on the screen resolution you use on your PC.

Since stretching and scaling has to add intermediate lines here and there, the tidiest result is obtained when you use an exact multiple of the resolution, which is easier in the dialogue box version, but 'stretching' with the window edge is quick and easy on an ad-hoc basis
qpcwinds.jpg


gregtaylor
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by gregtaylor »

Thanks Dilwyn, that easy!!

I tried the exec task on QLAY2 with Minerva 197, on Q-Emulator and on QPC2, the first crashes the program the other two say invalid parameter so looks like turbo did something odd when it created the task file. I will download a fresh copy of turbo and try again.... unless one of you experts know what is wrong!! :D


EmmBee
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by EmmBee »

Hi Greg,

I believe you may have had this problem some while ago, see here ...

http://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1365#p11380

Michael


gregtaylor
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Re: Turbo crash

Post by gregtaylor »

Thanks Michael, tried that first. A new download sorted things out.

Thanks to all that replied, especially regarding QPC2. I had not really done anything more than open the application before but decided to persevere a bit more this time and glad I did. The performance is phenomenal, loading zip22_bas to compile an unzip program took just seconds. I am now reading the manual to explore everything else.

Greg


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