Minerva change requests...

[Mr_Navigator]

How is that going Dave?

[Cristian]

It can make a considerable difference to the time taken to load large files!
[...] I suggest a change to this default action might be worth considering?

Yes, it's true: the loading of "big" files (e.g. uncompressed _scr) becomes almost 3 times slower! (QL with 768K TrumpCard)
I agree on changing the default, if possible...

Thanks

[lostcarpark]

While the pipe dream of support for UTF8 in QDOS might some day become reality, I think replacing character 181 with the Euro sign is probably the best interim solution. I can't even figure out what the default character is supposed to be, or managed to find it in Unicode.

[programandala.net]

Ill just dump a blurb from my former website, knoware, below:

"These toolkits add the extended date functions found in Smsq/e to Qdos and Minerva,
(...)
The functional part of the code was pinched from the Minerva V1.98 sources, © Laurence Reeves, which are released under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 2, June 1991. The code was cobbled together by me, pjwitte. Any bugs found will in all likelyhood be mine.

The sources can be viewed by clicking on the links below. You can cut and paste them into an editor and alter them freely according to the license."

If theres any interest in these toolkits, let me know and Ill ax Dilwyn kindly to host them.

I'm interested in the sources, but web.archive.org does not have your former site witteware.com/knoware archived. The sources could be added to the current package hosted by Dilwyn.

[pjw]

Marcos, I dont have a compact package of the Dates sources available, only an HTML-ised, browsable version. I could always ask Dilwyn if he has room for them (40Kb) on his site.. In the mean time, if you - or anyone else - PM me, I could send them to you directly.

Per

[Cristian]

There has been a long-standing problem with Minerva >v1.93 using FLP on non-Gold machines. The reintroduction of the IPC interrupt can add enough overhead to upset disk sector interleave. The solution was simple enough, use POKE!!53,128 in boot files to disable it (restored using POKE!!53,192 or upon reset). It can make a considerable difference to the time taken to load large files!

Warning:
the problem is even bigger. It not only slows down the loading. It is also impossible to load (at least from microdrive) softwares like Easel and Quill. What a nuisance! Should everyone add POKE!!53,128 to all the Boots in all the cartridges (usually Prion ones are write-protected), disks and so on?