The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi,

I considered fitting a Q68 board to a PS/2 mini keyboard, would this be something worth doing?

Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,

I considered fitting a Q68 board to a PS/2 mini keyboard, would this be something worth doing?

Guess that would be attractive to someone like me who is short of desk space to permanently set up a "QL".

The Pi 400 with emulator will be much faster than a Q68, and half the price.

While there's something satisfying about real hardware, for plain performance and ease of access, this Pi 400 is going to be a real boon.

Just waiting for the all black model to be released in February. Pink is not my thing.

Dave wrote:The Pi 400 with emulator will be much faster than a Q68, and half the price.

Which emulator?

Bearing mind Q68 can run SMSQ/E, where the PI can only run SMSQmulator with Java installed.

Dave wrote: While there's something satisfying about real hardware, for plain performance and ease of access, this Pi 400 is going to be a real boon.

I may buy one, but I hardly use the PIs I have.

Dave wrote: Just waiting for the all black model to be released in February. Pink is not my thing.

I thought someone said you look pretty in pink....

Derek_Stewart wrote:

Dave wrote:The Pi 400 with emulator will be much faster than a Q68, and half the price.

Which emulator?

Bearing mind Q68 can run SMSQ/E, where the PI can only run SMSQmulator with Java installed.

Just need the source code for QPC2 and a quick port to ARM and sorted for SMSQ/e

I beleve that some/much/most of QPC2 is written in assembler. I might be misremembering, but I'm sure (at my age, that's about 60% sure) Marcel mentioned this a while back.

Be gentle if I'm wrong though!

Cheers,
Norm.

Hi,

I think porting SMSQ/E to ARM be be easier than seeing the source code to QPC2...

XorA wrote:Just need the source code for QPC2 and a quick port to ARM and sorted for SMSQ/e

I'm almost tempted to give it to you to see how quickly you can port 10000 Lines of x86 Assembler to ARM

Well, it used to be a lot more lines, but for the upcoming v5 I rewrote everything but the 68k core in C, so it's easier now and one might just switch to a C-based core to get rid of the rest (which I expect not to be easy but doable). But then you'd still be stuck with some 15000 lines of C code that was exclusively written with Windows in mind, making plenty of use of the Windows and DirectX APIs and so on. I read people have managed to install Windows 10 on a Pi, but it doesn't seem to be a pleasant nor fast experience ("starting a browser takes several minutes").

I've been working on this thing code for over 25 years and few lines have not been refactored in this time, but god damn, that's a long time.

mk79 wrote:I'm almost tempted to give it to you to see how quickly you can port 10000 Lines of x86 Assembler to ARM

Hey! I was right!

And ARM assembly is just weird. (Dons flameproof suit.....)

mk79 wrote:I've been working on this thing code for over 25 years and few lines have not been refactored in this time, but god damn, that's a long time.

That's more than a long time, that's serious dedication. And thanks for all you have done over the years, without QPC, I'd have no QLing.


Stay safe.


Cheers,
Norm.

mk79 wrote:

XorA wrote:Just need the source code for QPC2 and a quick port to ARM and sorted for SMSQ/e

I'm almost tempted to give it to you to see how quickly you can port 10000 Lines of x86 Assembler to ARM

Well, it used to be a lot more lines, but for the upcoming v5 I rewrote everything but the 68k core in C, so it's easier now and one might just switch to a C-based core to get rid of the rest (which I expect not to be easy but doable). But then you'd still be stuck with some 15000 lines of C code that was exclusively written with Windows in mind, making plenty of use of the Windows and DirectX APIs and so on. I read people have managed to install Windows 10 on a Pi, but it doesn't seem to be a pleasant nor fast experience ("starting a browser takes several minutes").

I've been working on this thing code for over 25 years and few lines have not been refactored in this time, but god damn, that's a long time.

Sorry I missed the smiley I meant to put on the statement as I know youve detailed that before.

The DirectX/Windows APIs would not be my worry on that as wine project is also a linkable library so there is a native linux ARM implementation of those.