Hello from Midlothian
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 9:48 am
Hi everyone,
I'm just getting up to speed with the QL, having acquired a good-condition, original unit plus some Microdrive cartridges at the beginning of the year. I started by getting my cartridges re-padded (thanks to Dave Marling), which allowed me to read most of them (C1 Assembler and FORTH, Psion office suite, and a couple of blank cartridges). However, my mdv2 drive is very hit and miss, plus some other cartridges I have look to be partly corrupted, including Psion Chess and Magic Scroll Pawn games.
My next step was to set up a serial link to my PC, following the excellent information on this Forum [http://www.qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php? ... m+transfer]. With the cable in place, I was able to transfer data back and forth between the QL and my PC using @ppe's XModem receiver, and loaded up some simple Freeware. However, with 128kB of memory and only a couple of working Microdrive cartridges, I was unable to get the Unzip utility working, so I 'bit the bullet' and purchased a Trump Card clone and floppy-disk unit from SellMyRetro.
I've now got my Trump Card and floppy-disk unit set up and am making good progress. I managed to reconstruct the Unzip program following instructions on http://www.dilwyn.me.uk, plus have purchased a couple of books (Jan Jones, 'QL SuperBasic' and Andrew Pennel 'Assemby Language Programming on the Sinclair QL'), so it's now time for me to get to grips with programming and using the QL.
My aim is to properly understand the workings and inspiration for the machine. I have come from a Spectrum background, for which I wrote various machine-code utilities and magazine articles. I want to find out if the QL is as innovative as the Spectrum. I also want to find out a bit more about the micro-computing scene at the time the QL launched and find out why it didn't really succeed (I was too busy playing games on the Spectrum at the time, so it all passed me by). Elements such as the advanced SuperBASIC and multitasking support suggest the Sinclair team were once again pushing the bounds of micro-computing, though there's still lots for me to learn.
I have encountered a few obstacles on the way, which I'll quiz the experts on this forum about separately. Hopefully, I'll also be able to contribute to the forum in due course, to help other newbies or provide some useful software--subject to time and competence.
Looking forward to it!
Georgeo.
I'm just getting up to speed with the QL, having acquired a good-condition, original unit plus some Microdrive cartridges at the beginning of the year. I started by getting my cartridges re-padded (thanks to Dave Marling), which allowed me to read most of them (C1 Assembler and FORTH, Psion office suite, and a couple of blank cartridges). However, my mdv2 drive is very hit and miss, plus some other cartridges I have look to be partly corrupted, including Psion Chess and Magic Scroll Pawn games.
My next step was to set up a serial link to my PC, following the excellent information on this Forum [http://www.qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php? ... m+transfer]. With the cable in place, I was able to transfer data back and forth between the QL and my PC using @ppe's XModem receiver, and loaded up some simple Freeware. However, with 128kB of memory and only a couple of working Microdrive cartridges, I was unable to get the Unzip utility working, so I 'bit the bullet' and purchased a Trump Card clone and floppy-disk unit from SellMyRetro.
I've now got my Trump Card and floppy-disk unit set up and am making good progress. I managed to reconstruct the Unzip program following instructions on http://www.dilwyn.me.uk, plus have purchased a couple of books (Jan Jones, 'QL SuperBasic' and Andrew Pennel 'Assemby Language Programming on the Sinclair QL'), so it's now time for me to get to grips with programming and using the QL.
My aim is to properly understand the workings and inspiration for the machine. I have come from a Spectrum background, for which I wrote various machine-code utilities and magazine articles. I want to find out if the QL is as innovative as the Spectrum. I also want to find out a bit more about the micro-computing scene at the time the QL launched and find out why it didn't really succeed (I was too busy playing games on the Spectrum at the time, so it all passed me by). Elements such as the advanced SuperBASIC and multitasking support suggest the Sinclair team were once again pushing the bounds of micro-computing, though there's still lots for me to learn.
I have encountered a few obstacles on the way, which I'll quiz the experts on this forum about separately. Hopefully, I'll also be able to contribute to the forum in due course, to help other newbies or provide some useful software--subject to time and competence.
Looking forward to it!
Georgeo.