RIP Sir Clive Sinclair 1940 - 2021
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Not very well. I didn't sell many games, only Fleet Tactical Command sold in anything other than small numbers. Even that sold only small numbers compared to, say, Genealogist.vanpeebles wrote:It's all very interestingCan you remember how well the games sold?
I was drooling over the ads for it, but it was just too expensive for me back thendilwyn wrote:Not very well. I didn't sell many games, only Fleet Tactical Command sold in anything other than small numbers. Even that sold only small numbers compared to, say, Genealogist.vanpeebles wrote:It's all very interesting
I think games had been and gone by the time i became a trader
I'm not sure when I registered QPC1 but it must be 1998 or earlier (the oldest files on my QPC.WIN are from October 1998). I still have some original disks of it, including the dreaded copy-protectionmk79 wrote:By the way, in case anybody is interested, the last time I requested a list of QPC owners from Jochen was in 2005 and there were 409 registered users back then. Not sure how many more were added in the following 8 years or so it was available, but most sales were QPCPrint in the end, usually for non-QL people.
The highest earning quarter was Q4/1996 after the release of QPC1, clocking in at a bit over 4000 DM. If I remember correctly a license cost 250DM back then, of which 80 or so stayed with me, the rest was taxes, the SMSQ/E license and Jochen's fee. Being an ordinary pupil at the time this was still a shitload of money. Never came close again, but it was still plenty enough so I never had to do any non-programming jobs in my life (except the year of civil service to avoid the military, which was great) and still could travel several times to the US shows and even many more times to England without any loss. Thanks
I'm 37 years now, QPC1 was released around my 18th birthday, so QPC has stayed with me well over halve my life.
Cheers, Marcel
. I've upgraded several times when Jochen was at the Eindhoven meetings, but this came to a halt somewhere in the mid-2000's. I was very excited when I found out that QPC is still being updated and these updates are now available freely. Thank you very much for making such a great piece of software, without it I probably wouldn't re-live my QL days as I do now!Hm yes, that wasn't the greatest idea we ever had. Speaking of which, the list of registered user was IIRC only introduced with QPC2, so people who only bought QPC1 were not counted.janbredenbeek wrote:I'm not sure when I registered QPC1 but it must be 1998 or earlier (the oldest files on my QPC.WIN are from October 1998). I still have some original disks of it, including the dreaded copy-protection
Well, the latest payable upgrade was in 2003 I think, so updates were free since then anyway. Speaking of which, there will be one bug fix update soon.I've upgraded several times when Jochen was at the Eindhoven meetings, but this came to a halt somewhere in the mid-2000's. I was very excited when I found out that QPC is still being updated and these updates are now available freely.
AFAIK the copy-protection relied on a disk sector that was deliberately made unreadable so a sector-to-sector copy failed, and just copying the files to a fresh disk got detected because the sector was readable againmk79 wrote:Hm yes, that wasn't the greatest idea we ever had. Speaking of which, the list of registered user was IIRC only introduced with QPC2, so people who only bought QPC1 were not counted.janbredenbeek wrote:I'm not sure when I registered QPC1 but it must be 1998 or earlier (the oldest files on my QPC.WIN are from October 1998). I still have some original disks of it, including the dreaded copy-protection
. Nice to hear! IIRC the upgrades from Jochen required sending in the disk or some other proof of registration so I didn't bother to upgrade for a long time until 2014.Well, the latest payable upgrade was in 2003 I think, so updates were free since then anyway. Speaking of which, there will be one bug fix update soon.
Might be worth trying QPC1 on dosbox not virtualbox if all it needs is DOS virtualisation.janbredenbeek wrote:AFAIK the copy-protection relied on a disk sector that was deliberately made unreadable so a sector-to-sector copy failed, and just copying the files to a fresh disk got detected because the sector was readable againmk79 wrote:Hm yes, that wasn't the greatest idea we ever had. Speaking of which, the list of registered user was IIRC only introduced with QPC2, so people who only bought QPC1 were not counted.janbredenbeek wrote:I'm not sure when I registered QPC1 but it must be 1998 or earlier (the oldest files on my QPC.WIN are from October 1998). I still have some original disks of it, including the dreaded copy-protection
In my archives I found a demo version of QPC1 from April 1997 (I believe v1.15) and a registered v1.46, and also a pre-release of QPC2 from August 1999 so I guess that must be the start of QPC2. I couldn't get QPC1 working on VirtualBox though, I added HIMEM.SYS /INT15=xxxx to config.sys and got the QL screen but then it locked up...