Extra RAM "killer app"?

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llopis
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Extra RAM "killer app"?

Post by llopis »

Hi everybody,

I'm working on a new video on Sinclair QL upgrades and one of them is a RAM expansion. I get that more RAM probably means you can have larger documents when working with office apps and development.

But is there a "killer app" for having more than 128K RAM? Something that most QL uses would want to do but can't with just the default RAM. I wasn't able to find anything in my initial research

Thanks!


--Noel


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mk79
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Re: Extra RAM "killer app"?

Post by mk79 »

Well, for me it's the other way round, what DOES work with 128KB? Almost nothing in my world except the oldest of games. When I add a QL-SD (I liked your previous QL videos, so contact me if you are interested) to my machine with a 50MB partition the FAT alone will not fit in that kind of RAM. Besides that, all the Basic and system extensions I usually load fill up a 640KB QL to the point where it gets unusuable (notice only 121KB of free RAM without having done much yet):
qlsd_demo.png
This only worked for me back in the day because most of the extensions lived in additional EPROM space and didn't subtract from the RAM, otherwise 896KB is almost the minimum to have a usable machine with.

The QL is a real multi-tasking system so having 10+ Jobs running at the same time is not unusual. On a 128kb machine you have to quit your editor to run the compiler or whatever, but in reality you want both running at the same time. So the "killer app" is really the pointer environment, which allows overlapping and non-destroying windows so you can switch between many jobs seamlessly.

Then of course there is the whole eco-system of high-colour capable QDOS compatible systems which can easily consume RAM in the megabytes, but that is I think a bit outside the scope of the question in regard the original black box hardware.

Cheers, Marcel


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Cristian
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Re: Extra RAM "killer app"?

Post by Cristian »

There are 2 aspects to consider:

1) Even if many useful applications and games can run in a 128K QL (the PSION suite, Chess and so on), I suppose the general problem is their obvious restrictions due to limited RAM space.
2) The necessity of getting a more reliable and compatible mass storage media. Disk interfaces usually come with RAM expansion.

Having said that, even if I'm not sure of the memory requirements of the Pointer Environment itself, I think it may be considered as a "killer app". Also Psion XCHANGE may be a good example.


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tofro
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Re: Extra RAM "killer app"?

Post by tofro »

Well, one of the things the QL definitely didn't really ever have was the "killer app" that urged you to want to have it (probably because of its limited market life).

There are, however, quite a few essential applications that won't run without memory expansion. The most urgently required is probably (even for all of its lack of visual attractivity ;) ) unzip - how else yould you bring software onto the machine? unzip won't work properly without at least a minimal memory expansion.

Besides that I pretty much agree with what the others wrote: PE (and, as it doesn't do much on its own) its related applications. The range starts with PE games like CrazyCards and Lonely Joker to "business applications in earnest" like LineDesign.

Games that didn't use PE but still required significantly expanded memory were "Fleet Tactical Command" and "Type 22" (unfortunately both very hard to find these days, there is, however, a demo version of FTC on Dilwyn's page)


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llopis
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Re: Extra RAM "killer app"?

Post by llopis »

mk79 wrote:Well, for me it's the other way round, what DOES work with 128KB? Almost nothing in my world except the oldest of games. When I add a QL-SD (I liked your previous QL videos, so contact me if you are interested) to my machine with a 50MB partition the FAT alone will not fit in that kind of RAM. Besides that, all the Basic and system extensions I usually load fill up a 640KB QL to the point where it gets unusuable (notice only 121KB of free RAM without having done much yet)
Thanks! This is and what @Cristian and @tofro mentioned is exactly what I was looking for!

I'm still a QL noob, so most of my use is pretty superficial and all about the early, official apps. That's why I hadn't ran into any of those uses yet, but that makes a lot of sense.

I just finished a video on the vDrive (coming up in a few days) and I just spent a while reading about the QL SD and it seems quite different. I also love that the two can live side by side, so I would love to give it a try. You're the one who designed them, right Marcel? I'd love to buy one from you. Send me a PM and we'll hash out the details. I already have a ROM with Minerva and Toolkit 2. I guess I would need to replace that with the EPROM with Minerva plus the QL SD ROM, right?

Thanks again to everybody!


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