I just came across an email from Tony Hetherington about the QL titles published by Prospero Software.
There would be no objection to copies being made of the software if you have any originals, but the position on the documentation is a little more difficult as parts of the text are shared with other products. There would be no problem with reproducing the documentation if it was bundled in some way with the software (for example by putting it in the same zip file), and hopefully that would meet any practical requirements.
We have preserved Pro-Fortran 77, but unfortunately do not have Pro-Pascal - does anyone have this?
If anyone wants to scan in the manuals that would help!
For starters, no, I don't have Prospero Pascal (Used to, but it was lost in space and time...)
Re-distribution of the compiler would be difficult, however - The Prospero Compilers were copy-protected through delivery of the run-time library on an EPROM cartridge. (Compiled code didn't need the ROM, though)
RWAP wrote:We have preserved the ROM contents - it seems to be the same ROM contents for both compilers so that makes it easy.
New EPROMs can be made, or the code can be added as an external ROM to q-emulator. Not sure if it would work just LRESPR'd....
Some early QL software which needed a ROM dongle actually tried to write all over itself as a copy protection mechanism - if you tried running the software with a copy of the dongle in RAM, it failed to work as it corrupted itself. As I never owned any prospero software, I don't know if theirs did this.
dilwyn wrote:Some early QL software which needed a ROM dongle actually tried to write all over itself as a copy protection mechanism - if you tried running the software with a copy of the dongle in RAM, it failed to work as it corrupted itself. As I never owned any prospero software, I don't know if theirs did this.
Quite right. But the PRL is mentioned in the SMSQ/E manual as an example for Eprom_load, so it should be safe .
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