Reasons for buying a QL ?

Pilsener · March 2007

It seems, from what I have read, that the QL was a bit of a failure back in the days. But apart from being a collectible, is there any useful/interesting/entertaining software around for it ?

robert@fm · March 2007

I suppose, if you've got one of those awkward doors which just won't stay open... :lol:

Matt_B · March 2007

The QL was never going to be a powerhouse games machine, but it did turn up a few decent efforts. The Pawn is probably the most notable as it was ported to many other formats, including eventually the Spectrum.

rwap · March 2007

Crikey - where do I start?

http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/qword.html shows what is possible on a modern QL.

The QL stalled due to the fact that it was released early with half the ROM sticking out the back on a dongle, and with unreliable microdrives and slow Psion business software. However, that was soon put right and the QL has not looked back since.

Programs have been written which make use of the full memory available on the QL (128K standard, with expansion cards to take this to 640K, 896K, 2MB or 4MB). Add to this the fact that you can run multitasking software (including BASIC interpreters) and you just begin to touch the tip of the iceberg.

Later changes to the QL included the ability to use much faster processors (68000, 68020, 68040 and 68060), higher resolution graphics - up to 1600x1200 at 16 bit colour, and an operating system that continues to be developed and runs much quicker than the original operating system.

The reality is that a QL emulator is probably the best bet, as the higher end graphics and memory cards are like gold dust.

Well that is a taster anyway....

DEATH · March 2007

I've got a QL in the cupboard needing a membrane. I'm not gonna bother, in fact if it would fetch more than a tenner, I'd stick it on Ebay! I've got an Amiga with a 40MHz 68030 CPU if I want retro power, and a whole box full of speccies if I want some serious retro gaming ;) I never did like the QL - for the reasons Rich mentioned (slow software, Rom n a dongle etc). Wouldn't have been so bad had Clive used a proper CPU not a half databus crippled 68K. It may look like a Spectrum, but it isn't grrrrrrr

Pilsener · March 2007

Can anyone recommend a free PC-emulator for QL ? Or maybe an emulator for the Amiga ? I have a pretty prepped Amiga with a 68060. But I can't find any QL-emulators on Aminet.

DEATH · March 2007

Do you mean a QL emulator to run on your Mig, or a Mig emulator to run on a PC?

Try Amiga Forever from Cloanto - pretty good IMO.

beanz · March 2007

QL is still alive and well (and looks like a PC now), dont have the website handy but its still pretty popular (amongst the fringe element). They even make QL based motherboards for the new PC looking ones.

I have a nice QL, dont mess with it much but people make a really big deal about how pleasant it is to program, Linus Tor-dude wrote linux after learning to program on a QL apparently.

Not a big programmer anymore but from what I read and see from the newsletters I get, thats the big attraction.

Geoff · March 2007

I bought a QL and although the cost was reasonable, the price of software and books was way too high. I did network it to my Spectrum and pass data back and forth. The design was brilliant and it should have been aimed at the masses and allowed to find its niche.

David Karlin who designed it is now the managing director of Sage Accounts in Gateshead. ( a FTSE-100 company )

http://www.logisticsit.com/absolutenm/templates/article-critical.aspx?articleid=840&zoneid=31

Winston · March 2007

I bought a QL when I was a teenager (from a school fete boot sale, for a fiver!). Unfortunately, it was one of the early ones, and the BASIC ROM was pretty buggy (it didn't have a dongle though). I tried to learn 68K asm on it, but I didn't have an assembler and I couldn't afford one - and the problems with the BASIC ROM meant I didn't get very far writing a bone-simple one.

But I did use its RS232 port quite a bit for getting online with a crummy old 300 baud acoustic coupler that I had been given (which was constructed entirely out of TTL logic and a handful of discretes). I wrote a simple terminal emulation program to go on BBSes etc. I kept getting killed on Shades though with all the players with 1200 or 2400 baud modems!

Shame I don't still have it!

Kiwi · March 2007

I have a QL as well.
Would be one of the nicest machines in my collection as it is almost brand new.
I don't program it - too busy programming PC's and Spectrums.

Although I do agree it would of been a better success if it didn't use the crippled 68K and was released on time and intact with all its bits present.

Also its nice to see people still producing hardware/software for it.

DEATH · March 2007

Winston wrote: »

I tried to learn 68K asm on it, but I didn't have an assembler and I couldn't afford one

If you had an Amiga, the PD market could have supplied your programming needs very well.

I've still got shedloads of Amiga PD, anybody want a list?

Pilsener · March 2007

Pilsener wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a free PC-emulator for QL ? Or maybe an emulator for the Amiga ? I have a pretty prepped Amiga with a 68060. But I can't find any QL-emulators on Aminet.

Mistyping. I meant of coz QL emulator for running on my PC or Amiga

Matt_B · March 2007

Right, that's enough QL love for now. Time to put the boot in. :-)

I thought the design of the QL was terrible; probably through no fault of the designers, as they were given an impossible specification to work to. The CPU, the dongled ROM, the microdrives, the dodgy serial port and the Psion business software have already been mentioned. I thought the keyboard was awful too and never liked the Spectrum Plus for the same reason.

Even some of the machine's better points worked against it. Although the graphics capabilities were excellent for their time, they used up so much RAM that the underpowered CPU was incapable of fast full screen updates which gave it little gaming potential. Also, the modes available were also liable to overscan slightly on many TV sets meaning that you needed to use a monitor for any serious use.

By the time you've put the machine's faults right, you basically end up with a different computer. Cynically, I might say that you fix it by turning it into a Mac, ST or Amiga.

rwap · March 2007

Shame no one has a dongled QL - I would think one of those would sell on ebay for quite a lot of money as they are now extremely rare. A boxed standard QL in good condition and fully tested will fetch around ?125 on ebay.

There are still a lot of die-hards and an ever popular email list (ql-users), and I guess the QL is the only Sinclair left with its own user group (Quanta) and printed bi-monthly magazine (QL-Today).

Ql emulators - there are plenty - have a look at
http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/emulators.html

Q-emuLator is an excellent shareware version (which you can use without payment). Amiga was represented by QDOS4Amiga (no longer available) and QDOS Classic which you can still find out there (written by Mark Swift and with some input from Simon Goodwin).

The Psion business software (later to become Xchange) was eventually finished and had some very powerful capabilities. I always found 68000 assembly language much easier to program than Z80 assembly code. The BASIC is also very similar to Spectrum BASIC, but has a lot of very powerful elements - still makes me smile when you used to see job adverts asking for people skilled in writing modules - the QL forced you to do that in 1984 !

Still, each to their own, and it is a shame that the QL never reached mass market appeal. The keyboard, microdrives, serial ports and graphics were its downfall, although admittedly, these were fixed over time, with replacement chips and expansion boards.

Matt_B · March 2007

It's one of the ironies of the retro scene that the most valuable kit now is the stuff that nobody wanted back in the day. I think there were only about 100,000 QLs produced which makes it even rarer than the ZX80 which managed a total run of around 130,000. The latter still seems far more collectible though.

Despite what I said in my previous post, I think the QL still could have succeeded if Sinclair hadn't lost touch with their core market of gamers and enthusiasts in trying to sell it as a business machine. The Spectrum had many similar flaws but we were prepared to overlook them on account of its low price, user-friendly nature, and excellent gaming performance.

neoncherry · March 2007

Matt_B wrote: »

The QL was never going to be a powerhouse games machine

It was never intended as one either, it was always meant to be a serious business machine.

Interestingly, the Spectrum wasn't intended as a games machine either! :-)

Matt_B · March 2007

neoncherry wrote: »

It was never intended as one either, it was always meant to be a serious business machine.

Interestingly, the Spectrum wasn't intended as a games machine either! :-)

True, but I think we can take it as read that Sinclair missed the business market by a million miles with the QL.

At least if the QL had been a decent games machine it could have sold to the same people who'd bought the Spectrum.

Winston · March 2007

Some of it, I'm sure - is Sinclair always wanted to make small stuff (physically). Look at all the pocket TVs he tried, matchbox radios, the ZX80, ZX81 and Speccy - all physically small. So was the QL.

Trouble is, business wants big. Look at the typical business PC - a mostly air-filled monstrous tower unit. Most of the things are gigantic. How many Mini-ITX systems do you see in businesses? Hardly any. Look at laptops business types buy - usually 17 inch widescreen monsters that are impracticably heavy. Sure, a few buy the 10 inch Vaio or 12 inch PowerBook, but largely they go for these gigantic things. So even if Sinclair had made the dream business system, it'd have had a hard time because physically it was too small.

Matt_B · March 2007

Winston wrote: »

Some of it, I'm sure - is Sinclair always wanted to make small stuff (physically). Look at all the pocket TVs he tried, matchbox radios, the ZX80, ZX81 and Speccy - all physically small. So was the QL.

Trouble is, business wants big. Look at the typical business PC - a mostly air-filled monstrous tower unit. Most of the things are gigantic. How many Mini-ITX systems do you see in businesses? Hardly any. Look at laptops business types buy - usually 17 inch widescreen monsters that are impracticably heavy. Sure, a few buy the 10 inch Vaio or 12 inch PowerBook, but largely they go for these gigantic things. So even if Sinclair had made the dream business system, it'd have had a hard time because physically it was too small.

I think the main thing was that, regardless of their requirements, people were prepared to pay well over the odds for IBM compatability. Sure, you could run a decent word processor, spreadsheet and database on just about any computer around at the time, but the gold standards of Wordstar, Lotus and dBase were seen as sufficient justification not to do things on the cheap.

The same thing happened with the Z88 which, unlike the QL, was actually a very decent bit of kit. It was thoroughly snubbed for Compaq portables (i.e. luggables) and the like which were ten times the price and weight. I seriously doubt many of the latter were used for much that was beyond the functionality of the Z88 either.

Pyjamarama · March 2007

Hi!

I never had a QL but I always had the same questions left un-answered...:(

1)Does QL "suffer" from colour clash
2)Are there any decent commercial arcade (arcade="not text adventures") games released? Can u post a list in order to track them down?

thanx in advance!

Matt_B · March 2007

Pyjamarama wrote: »

Hi!

I never had a QL but I always had the same questions left un-answered...:(

1)Does QL "suffer" from colour clash

No. It has fully pixel addressable 256x256x8 and 512x256x4 colour modes.

2)Are there any decent commercial arcade (arcade="not text adventures") games released? Can u post a list in order to track them down?

thanx in advance!

I'm not sure if you'd call anything arcade quality, but QL Karate was probably as close as it came. It was written by Steve Kelly (of Bitmap Brothers fame) and later ported to the ST as ST Karate.

rwap · March 2007

QL Cavern was the most famous platform game.

Damon Chaplin also wrote soom excellent games, including a table top car racing game (Speeedfreaks). He also wrote Spook (Pacman lookalike), Assauly & Battery and Pudge (Boulderdash).

Jungle Eddi was another excellent platform game - have you looked at http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/games.html ?

By far the best games ever released have to be Match Point (a 3d tennis game) and QL Chess (the first 3d chess game), both by Psion.

Plenty more games are listed on my site:
http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/updates.html
(these are all still copyright and therefore I can only supply disk versions if you have the original cartridges!)

Pyjamarama · March 2007

Τhanx!
I ll definately have a look!

BTW I cannot recall stepping into QL World magazine in the WOS archive..
i didn't even know tha such a magazine xisted
Are there any scanned mags ?

Spector · March 2007

Any links to screenshots of QL games? I'd like to see what they look like.

rwap · March 2007

Alas the only screenshots of QL games are on my website and possibly on Jochen Merz's website (http://www.j-m-s.com/smsq/).

There are no scans of QL World.

The QL had several magazines - the ones I remember most were:
QL User
QL World
(Later merged to be Sinclair QL World)
QL Adventurer's Forum
QL Technical Review
QL Review
QL Today (still published - see http://www.qltoday.com/)
Quanta Magazine (still published - this is the user group's magazine)

Matt_B · March 2007

Sinclair User had a fair bit of QL coverage too, which is quite handy as scans of the mag are on WOS.

Here's a page with screenshots of QL Karate and Vroom:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=SinclairUser/Issue052/Pages/SinclairUser05200081.jpg

rwap · March 2007

Well the good news is that after a request, I have dug out some microdrive versions of QL Matchpoint - one has already been reserved.

However, I still have a cased version (without manual). Alas the master cartridge is corrupt (I have a couple more somewhere), so if anyone wants a copy, give me a shout.

I should be able to provide a working microdrive version from this, or else can provide a disk version (I will not provide the disk version unless you own the original!). The game is fairly self-explanatory, so no real need for a manual.

rwap · March 2007

Matt_B wrote: »

Sinclair User had a fair bit of QL coverage too, which is quite handy as scans of the mag are on WOS.

Here's a page with screenshots of QL Karate and Vroom:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=SinclairUser/Issue052/Pages/SinclairUser05200081.jpg

Ah Vroom brings back some memories - Hyperdrive was very similar, and I have that on microdrive cartridge if anyone wants it!!

Pyjamarama · March 2007

Vroom?????
Was it eventually published??

rwap · March 2007

I certainly believe it was published though I do not have a copy... Can ask around though !!

Also found some more screenshots: http://m.nu/datorer/speccy.html

Reasons for buying a QL ?

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