The Sinclair QL Forum

MrReset wrote:After a little flu I'm on board again!
I've found in the QL-Package a ROM called
"CARE Electronics Supertoolkit"
I've found an entry in the QL-Wiki to this, but what is the benefit in this "Supertoolkit"?

Hi Mr Reset, the CARE Electronics Supertoolkit was an addon piece of hardware that plugs in to the back of the QL ROM port and gave you more software features especially an improved editor for programming. No serious QL'er would be without one. However, before you rush out and purchase one, please note that many of the disk interfaces, especially the Trump Card, Gold Card and Super Gold Card had these extensions or most of these extensions to the SuperBASIC language built in.

http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/pe/index.html#tk2

http://www.theql.co.uk/Iwant2learn2/backtotheql

Super Toolkit is indeed another name for Toolkit II.

Toolkit II adds lots of extra commands, as well as making the QL network more reliable and allowing you to set up one QL as a fileserver for other QLs. Toolkit II became a fairly standard toolkit used by a lot of software since about 1986 - it is built into lots of disk interfaces (at least a subset of it is).

Amongst the commands provided in Toolkit II are:

WCOPY, WDEL - wildcard copy and delete commands
RENAME - commands to rename files
PROG_USE, DATA_USE, PROGD$, DATAD$ - commands for handling default devices/directories for programs
A print spooler
Commands for setting character sets
Commands to help with formatting PRINT statements on screen.

ermm.... can't think of any more off the top of my head - there is a full manual on Dilwyn's site:
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/manuals/Mi ... 20Card.pdf

Welcome! Your story is similar to my own, except it was my brother and he bought a BBC micro rather than a QL.

My top tip is take your time working out how to best upgrade your QL. I rushed it and bought a lot of stuff that became obsolete (ha ha) within days of buying it. Also, be careful of the books that are out there: most of them are not very good. Rich Mellor (RWAP) has an excellent CD based manual which I strongly recommend.

Getting a Disk Interface with some RAM is a great idea, but Gold Cards and upwards are very pricey.. I bought a Sandy Q board which came with 512k RAM (and also has TK2 on it) for about €85 on eBay. I am currently building a disk drive system, but it is not simple, as you need to tweak the cables to get it working, and get a power supply.

Like many others, we are awaiting the arrival of an SD card based system; there is one just coming out, but this entails making internal modifications (replacing a microdrive unit), which I personally am not so keen to do right now.

Anyway, welcome aboard, this forum has been very helpful to me, and everyone is very friendly (much more relaxing than the spectrum boards!), even if, like me, you ask really silly questions!

Again a big Thank you to all who helped!
I now have the QL, a TFT & GB8200. The only thing i'm missing is a proper cable to connect the QL with GB8200. Paul has spoken of some, but that was before my illness, two weeks ago.
Has someone an idea where to buy a RGB-QL cable to connect the QL to GB8200 and then to an TFT-Screen?

I have a neo geo pocket too

MrReset wrote:Again a big Thank you to all who helped!
I now have the QL, a TFT & GB8200. The only thing i'm missing is a proper cable to connect the QL with GB8200. Paul has spoken of some, but that was before my illness, two weeks ago.
Has someone an idea where to buy a RGB-QL cable to connect the QL to GB8200 and then to an TFT-Screen?

Hi, see in this forum topic about GS8200 card, write that in search field and you could fid it quickly