Another QL newbe...

[RWAP]

Hello RWAP,

I unfortunately have no possibility at the time to transfer the microdrives to the PC.I have read the thread here about connecting the QL to the PC over a serial line,but I am not that far at the time.It will need some time.I also do not want to use them too much to not worn them more.
But if you can transfer them to another medium I could send the drives to you to copy them for the preservation project.If you want,then write me a p.m. with your address where to send you the microdrives.
I would be interested in the assembler manual,maybe you have a pdf of it ?
The game is indeed the cuthbert in space.

My next step will be also to try to connect the QL to the PC over a serial line.I got a Centronics serial to parallel interface together with the QL so I have one serial cable when I desolder it.Maybe you know what jacks are used? Is it some kind of RJ-xx ? What jacks are used for the network ? is it 3.5mm mono jacks ?

Thank you and greetings,
Vassilis

By all means, you can send microdrive cartridges to me for preservation (if possible) and I transfer the programs onto PC folders ready for use within Q-emuLator (or copying to QL disks). My address appears on my website - http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk

I don't need Cuthbert in Space thankyou, as that is preserved (and is in fact now available to purchase again, through my website).

The Metacomco assembler manual is not really suitable for scanning unfortunately. You can have this for £3 plus postage (£1.50)

As for QL serial cables, I have a few of these which convert the BT style UK QL ports to 25 pin serial ports (originally for a printer). Presumably you could just add a null modem lead to this. I do also have a couple of file transfer programs, including Transform's QL to PC - I need to test it first though - only issue is the PC software for it is on a 5.25" disk!

[nichtsnutz]

Hello all,

@dylwin: Thank you for your explanation.I had already found your website,it is a great
resource for the QL.I look at it very often.Also thank you for the report about the
Quanta meeting.This small Robots are really funny! I have some old "fischertechnik computing"
and maybe I can connect them someday to the QL.As for the serial cable connectors,
I think it will be not easy to find them in Germany.Also I would need some special tool to
connect the cables inside the connector.Anyway I have one I can use at the moment to experiment with.
As for the SCART cable I have already bought the right connectors and I only need some resistors.
In another thread a link to a Spectrum site was given.I will give it a try.Using the composite PAL
output the image is much better on my TV so I think the modulator has a problem.

@RWAP: Ok,so I will send you the microdrives tomorrow so you can try to save them.

Also I have found this site: "http://www.speccy.org/sinclairql/archivo/docs/docs.htm" that has the
assembler manual.The quality is really bad,but it is somehow readable,so it is ok for me for
the first try.As I read in the manual,I think it will be a pain to work with this full fledged
macroassembler on a 128K QL with plain microdrives! I think I would need something like a small
interactive monitor program for the first assembler steps on the QL.I will stay with
learning SBASIC at the moment.

I will order a serial cable from you some time later,for now, I have one to experiment with,thank you!

At ebay I had also bought a QUANTA reprint of Jan Jones SBASIC book and also the
"QL Advanced user guide" from Adrian Dickens.On the web I found the "QL technical guide" and
the "QL service manual".I am also waiting for the "Advanced Programming with the Sinclair QL" Book
I have bought on ebay.
Is there any other essential books to look for,especially for the QL Hardware ?

Thank you and have a nice evening,
Vassilis

[nichtsnutz]

Hello all,

it is little late now,but it is weekend and I do not need to work tomorrow.I have continued exploring my QL and have also tried some serial communication over SER2 with my PC.Opening a channel printing hello and so on was ok.I have not tried sending binary data until now.The QL always sends ASCII characters and terminates the line with 10 or 13 and EOF.I will try with LBYTES and SBYTES maybe then it is possible.I will also write a small program to load and save SBASIC programs from and to the PC.I think I must just convert the editor ASCII from the PC with the line end and EOF that the QL wants.
I have also tried to explore the HSYNC and VSYNC signals of the ZX8301 ULA.I had some thoughts about trying to regenerate the HSYNC and be able to sample the RGB pixels digitally.I made some experiments,you can read little about them in my flickr photos in the QL photo set.I do not know if I will continue or succeed with this,I most think not!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atari600xl

Have a nice night,
Vassilis

[polka]

As for the QL to SCART cable, I took the time to do a paint-sketch of the two cables that I made myself :



and that work very well on my TVs, as you can see on this detail of a screenshot :



I said that I have two cables and there is only one sketch, why ?

One of my cables has everything except the "SWITCH" and works on any TV, even those requiring a "commutation" line on the SCART, which is provided by picking +5V inside the QL and sending it through the cable to the SCART connector. You have to modify somehow the QL to get this TTL voltage on a special pin beside the (or inside ? I did it beside) the QL video cable plug.

The other cable has not this special thread, so it works only on a monitor with only a SCART input base, that does not need it (and that I bought specially for use with my QL). But I added a double inverter (named "SWITCH" on the sketch) which exchanges the GREEN and BLUE signals coming from the QL, so that on the screen of the monitor in high-resolution-four-color mode, instead of the BLACK-RED-GREEN-WHITE classic colours, I get BLACK-RED-BLUE-WHITE which is more suitable for viewing stereoscopic images with RED-BLUE goggles.

Concerning your project to try other langages than SuperBasic (especially assembler), I think that with a basic QL with only 128K and 2 microdrives (no 3,5" floppies) it will be a PITA . Because the process of assembling and linking code will lead to microdrive very hard work, and considering the current state of these media (the old felt), there may arise a lot of frustration...

But why don't you give a try to FORTH ? It's a standard self-compiler language that was very well suited for "small machines" in the early eighties : the "Computer One" version of it (I see that you already have it - do you need the manual ?) is very compact (uses only about 22K for its code - to complement to 64K for your user space - and 64K is a lot of room for FORTH, you can believe me). It loads in one pass at the beginning of a session, and a 68xxx assembler is included for coding critically fast routines. I used it (and liked it very much) for 3D animations (on a basic QL) and also to cooperate with a signal processing module (running as a separate QL job, written in C) for which it acted as a command interpreter/sequence compiler (in an extended QL with 640K).

Paul

[nichtsnutz]

Hello Paul,

thank you for the reply.I have also tried with a scart cable I have build,based on the world of spectrum diagram that was posted on the thread about the GBS-8220 converter.I have used a 74LS125 buffer on the QL side to not accidentally destroy the ULA and it works well.But working longer time in high resolution is not so nice on a TV.So I am searching for a solution for the high resolution.In the world of spectrum forum there is a project for connecting a Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ to a VGA monitor going on at the time,unfortunately I have no money left for the hobby at the time,so I try to understand how it works and am tinkering a little the weekends with what I have! But it does not matter,I am not in a hurry...

As for the work with the assembler you are right.I have tried a bit with the Metacomco Assembler but it is really a pain! Also the editor "ed" is not loading any more,so I leave it at the time...
A small assembler packet like the "seka assembler" I had for the AtariST near 25 years back would be nice.

I have never tried Forth,have to find the mdv it is on.I have seen the Jupiter Ace computer that had also forth instead of basic and it has a really well written handbook from Steven Vickers.I had bought the TTL ICs to rebuil one like on one website but it is really a *lot* of wiring and I was to lazy!
I unfortunately have no manual for the computer one Forth.Maybe there is a scan somewhere out there,have to search...

Have a nice evening,
Vassilis

[RWAP]

Computer One Assembler is probably the smallest footprint assembler and from memory, it only has one pass!

[polka]

You really should try FORTH ; and QL-FORTH (there are several implementations, from Computer One, Digital Precision, and some later PD...) ! I tried the first two, and prefer Computer One because I find that it is better integrated with the QL machine (more high level functions to access Qdos). By the way, the Jupiter Ace ROMed forth and the ZX-81 FORTH (that I tried also), compared to the Computer One implementation for the QL, it is like "night and day".

Here is a screenshot of an output of a program that I coded with this langage :



It does perspective display and animation of 3D meshes (provided as DATA at will) and on a basic QL machine draws about 10 pictures per second (in mode 4, resolution : 512x256) for this simple mesh (for more complex meshes it goes a little slower).

It is so fast first because I programmed two basic display functions (PIXEL and LINE) in machine code with the FORTH assembler but second, because all the other code (programmed in FORTH) runs almost at machine code speed : by principle when you execute a FORTH program, it either jumps to subroutines of lower lever that call other jumps further down (and so on), until you arrive at the lowest level of preprogrammed machine code routines ; so that in FORTH, you do not have the time penalty of (SuperBasic) interpreters, only simple indirect subroutine jumps (even with no need to manage the stacks and register restoration).

If you need the documentation, I can send you a Zip file of the Computer One FORTH booklet (held in little more than 3Mb) ? What is your Email address ? Send me a PM...

Paul

[nichtsnutz]

Hello Paul,

WOW! that is really nice stuff what you have done! I will give FORTH a try.I have found one scanned manual for the C1 forth on a spain QL documentation site but the scan is really bad and I cannot read all details.Also I think some pages are missing,so I would be very happy to get your scan.I will PM you,thank you very much in advance.I will also have to backup my only C1 forth tape,hope it will work!
The principle of forth is very different from basic,so I will need some time to really understand it

@RWAP: Thank you for the tipp,I will keep in mind and will try to get a copy of it.

Greetings,
Vassilis

[nichtsnutz]

Hello all,

I have made a little progress with connecting the QL with my old PC over SER2 and transfering binary files from the QL to the PC.I have written a small C program in Visual Studio 6 to read raw bytes over the serial line with 2400 baud so that I can see what the QL sends when I do a "copy mdv1_xxx to ser2z".In the book from Jan Jones it is stated that a 64 byte header is send infront of the data,but I explored that only a 14 bytes header is send.So the QL sends: 1x $FF before the header, 14x header bytes then header_len bytes that are the file data and 1x $1A (CTRL-Z) as the end of file indicator.header_len is the length of the file and is coded in the first 4 bytes of the header,MSB first.
So I have written a small program to read and decode all this and write the file data into a buffer that is written to disk after the transfer completed.I have transfered many programs I have like the C1 forth, PASCAL, ASM, and some other and it seems thay they look ok in a hexdump.I have not written the other way until now,but at least I hope to get the programs I want out of these microdrive tapes.The programs are only quick hacks so they are of very little use to others.I also have not saved the default datasize of executable programs that is in the header,maybe the default datasize can be set to a reasonable value when writing the programs back!? I have to experiment more...

Also I played a bit with C1 forth,reading some pages in the manual and doing some calculations in interactive mode.Not very much,but I start to understand the concept.It is a long way...

Greetings,
Vassilis

P.S: I leave for vacation the next week,so the next weeks I will have very,very limited connectivity,but in Juni I will continue playing around with the QL.