Hello from Kent/London suburbs

[takbb]

Hi all,

Thanks for allowing me on here. I haven't used my QL in quite some time, but hoping to get it out and check it over just as soon as I can find somewhere to put it. I hadn't realised until recently just how much interest there still is in the golden years of home computing. The QL was my third micro, following on from the ZX81 and Jupiter Ace (both also in a box in the cupboard), and I spent many a long hour programming it in my late teens and early adult hood. I'm hoping to get hold of a disk drive in the next few days that can read my old DS DD floppy disks on my PC. I have a floppy drive for the QL but iirc the drive itself had stopped working. It'll be interesting to see if the disks are still readable though, and, if my memories of a couple of things I wrote aren't too rose-tinted, (and I am not too embarrassed by my coding), I might one day upload them. I particularly remember a clone of "Minesweeper" I wrote (I know... I'm not alone) just for the hell of it, a simple 2-player 2d "artillery" game, and a "rubik's cube simulator" ("Qube" I think I called it ) that doesn't solve it or anything clever like that, but does allow you to turn it... (again... just because I felt like it!).

I saw on this forum mention of an SD card addon, which sounds amazing... that would be of interest as a way to keep it alive. I think to myself what a different beast the QL would have been back in the day had such technology been available to us then! But I guess it wouldn't have felt anything like as quintessentially "Sinclair-nerdy" as fighting with a microdrive which was still the bee's knees after cassette tape... lol

Anyway, just thought I'd say hello. Good to "meet" you... oh and my apologies for rambling on...


Brian.

[vanpeebles]

A warm welcome! I believe Jupiter Aces are quite sought after now!

[NormanDunbar]

Welcome!

Hopefully your floppies are still readable. I had a few boxes of originals and backups -- about 200 -- only 12 survived. The collection was lost. I wasn't happy.

Stay safe. Have fun.

Chees,
Norm.

PS. Was the Jupiter Ace that one with buttons instead if keys, and which ran Forth rather than Basic?

[vanpeebles]

Welcome!

Hopefully your floppies are still readable. I had a few boxes of originals and backups -- about 200 -- only 12 survived. The collection was lost. I wasn't happy.

Stay safe. Have fun.

Chees,
Norm.

PS. Was the Jupiter Ace that one with buttons instead if keys, and which ran Forth rather than Basic?

White speccy with a hunchback.

[NormanDunbar]

Found details here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Ace -- it was the one I was thinking of.

I wanted one of these way back then, couldn't afford one.

Cheers,
Norm.

[Chr$]

Kent/London suburbs... like me originally (Sidcup, Welling, Eltham).

Wow, Jupiter Ace. Never had one but would like to add one to the collection one day. Not an easy one to find... if you ever want to sell it.

[Pr0f]

You can run the Jupiter Ace ROM on the harelquin boards

[takbb]

Thanks all. Yes the Jupiter Ace... or as I affectionally used to call it... "The programmable yoghurt pot" on account of it's incredibly creaky white thin plastic case. Great little machine though, and after getting bored typing in pages of hex codes, or trying to learn z80 assembler to make things go faster on the ZX81, the Ace and its native Forth were a dream... I could suddenly write "fast" arcade-style games without the need for assembler. All in black-and-white and limited sound capabilities but still a lot of fun. I got an add-on keyboard for it too, which was a big improvement over the rubber keys.

After that, (after a considerable wait of erm... "28 days", lol ... between my dad ordering it in February 1984 and its arrival in July that year ) my life turned from black-and-white to colour. I loved the QL but it was not an auspicious start. The first one we received was an AH version and it kept freezing for no apparent reason. It was returned and subsequently replaced with a JM version which itself had to be returned no fewer than 3 times because mdv2_ kept failing to read any microdrives that weren't formatted on it. I discovered the other day, all the letters of complaint my dad wrote to Sinclair over the period. He was clearly frustrated by the whole saga, but I'm grateful he persevered. Finally though, it got fixed properly (or replaced) and when I started work and had saved enough money of my own, while still living with my parents I purchased a floppy drive, matrix printer, 512K expanderam and a Microvitec (QL version)-Cub monitor, and life went from good to flippin' amazing!

I'm certainly hoping something will still be readable on the floppies but I'm not getting my hopes up too much.

[dilwyn]

Hi all,
I saw on this forum mention of an SD card addon, which sounds amazing... that would be of interest as a way to keep it alive. I think to myself what a different beast the QL would have been back in the day had such technology been available to us then! But I guess it wouldn't have felt anything like as quintessentially "Sinclair-nerdy" as fighting with a microdrive which was still the bee's knees after cassette tape... lol
Brian.

More than one SD card option available for QL.

The original QL-SD allows the SD card to be used as a sort of hard disk. Probably sold out by now, they still become available second hand occasionally on SellMyRetro.com and eBay.

Marcel Kilgus is working on a newer QL-SD derivative called QL-SD ROM - details on his blog: https://www.kilgus.net/2020/03/28/ql-sd ... arly-days/

The vDrive is Charlie Ingley's add on for a QL (Spectrum version also) which stores microdrive 'images' on an SD card and functions largely like the original microdrives. https://vdrivezx.com/vdriveql/. He sells them via SellMyRetro.com (he also makes a replacement QL power supply unit).

There is also the Qubide card and its derivatives on some interfaces such as Tetroid's floppy disk/RAM expansion units. Qubide is basically a QL IDE interface, intended originally for use with hard disks, but some have used it for connecting compact flash cards. With suitable IDE adaptors, a few SD cards could be used with Qubides, although it was never an 'official' thing and it was sometimes hard to find a combination which would work together. AFAIK, the Qubide is not made any more, apart from the variants Tetroid builds into his interfaces. That said, they occasionally become available second hand.

[bwinkel67]

The SD options for the QL are great. They each have different flavors, one purely emulates the microdrives (vDrive) so the QL won't even know it's there (but you lose speed), and the other (QL-SD) is more integrated and requires a bit of mod on the QL but I believe you gain speed and size of image. There is one in the works that will fit into the ROM socket. But SD cards are just a great substitute for microdrives or disks.

I was able to use a USB floppy on my Windows 7 machine and I believe got Q-Emulator to read the floppies. I think there are also utilities that do that so if you just want to reclaim your stuff and not use the floppy, get yourself a cheap USB floppy.