The Sinclair QL Forum

Dea readers,
I am a newbe on the QL Forum and found here notes about running Prospero Fortran on the QL (I believe from 2017/2018).
On one of the boards problems were mentioned about overwriting the PRL code (ROM) of Prospero Fortran
on the QPC2 emulator and SMS/QE.
One member mentioned it would be possible to run Prospero Fortran on the emulator Qemulator.
I recently bought the latest version of Qemulator (version 3.3 of 2020) and tried to install Prospero Fortran from the zip file.
All unzipped within the QL environment (by using QL_wxqt2 on win) and I successfully unzipped it (fcheck of Fortran tells me its OK) and then I
tried to compile the program prime_for by installing all code on ram1_ and ram2_, but I got the message:' unable to execute pass 1'.
The PRL code is still OK, but what did I do wrong.
Has anybody on the Forum succeeded in using Prospero Fortran on the Qemulator, and if so, how did you do this?
Thank you for your attention, greetings from Paul.

Paul,

the secret lies in the file "pas_config". This looks like so on my QPC2 system:
Pas_config must be in the same location as pass1 ("pas") of the compiler.

From top to bottom, this file holds

• default compile time options (e.g. /GL)
• device holding PROPAS1 (here "dev8_")
• device for PROPAS2 (pass 2 of the compiler, here "dev8_" as well)
• device for PROPAS_ERR (the compiler's error messages, I have this on dev8_ as well)
• device for intermediate files - I'm using a RAM disk.

If you don't put ProPascal into a sub-directory as I did, you don't need the dev_ device. You can put all the files to a drive on Q-Emulator, then configure pas_config to use that drive for all files. I wanted the compiler in a sub-directory of my win1_ drive, and thus had to point dev8 to win1_ProPascal (ProPascal doesn't normally know QDOS directories as it was released at a time when QDOS didn't have them).

Tobias

Dear Tobias, thank yoy for your advice.
You give details about running Prospero Pascal, I want to use Prostero Fortran on Qemulator version 3.3 (from 2020).
It was a good advice from you to make a config file, in case of Fortran it is f77_config with 4 times a directory, in my case FLP1_
(I put all the Fortran programs and code in the root of FLP1_).
I come a little bit further with executing: exec_w flp1_f77;'flp1_prime/NUM'
Pass 1 now succeeds, then I get the message:
Load PRPFOR2 into mdv1_ and press Enter key.
When I press the Enter key, I get the message: PRL sumcheck error (error message in ROM).
It looks like the old earlier mentioned problem that Prospero Fortran overwrites the PRL code in some steps, also with the emulator Qemulator.
I am about to give up, I tried so many variants the last days, nothing gives good results with Fortran.
Perhaps I will install Prospero Pascal instead, that must work according to your experience, thank you.

P2P wrote:Dear Tobias, thank yoy for your advice.
You give details about running Prospero Pascal, I want to use Prostero Fortran on Qemulator version 3.3 (from 2020).

Sorry, I missed that.

I have, some time ago, tried to get Prospero Fortran going on a number of QDOSSMSQ platforms. No good results, except on real hardware, with PRL in a real EPROM.

Other than Pascal, the Fortran compiler seems to try to write to the EPROM containing PRL as a check against piracy. This write succeeds on most emulators and also on real hardware with SMSQ/E, when you EPROM_LOAD PRL. When the emulator doesn't implement a write protection for the ROM area (which no one seems to do), the write will succeed, garbling the PRL code which leads to subsequent fails of the compiler.

Burning PRL_ROM to a real EPROM for a ROM port cartridge works perfectly, however. Needs the ROM area free in the memory map which conflicts with my QLSD, however.

Tobias

Thank you Tobias.
I tried to run Prospero Pascal on the emulator 'Qemulator version 3.3' and that works great, so I think that it is NOT possible to run Prospero Fortan on ANY emulator because of the behaviour that Prospero Fortran overwrites the ROM code in memory of PRL.
If anyone has other suggestions about overcoming this problem, please feel free.
Greetings from Paul Pel (The Netherlands).

Would be needful in SMSQ/E (or QPC2), that "EPROM_LOAD" makes the area write protected.

RalfR wrote:Would be needful in SMSQ/E (or QPC2), that "EPROM_LOAD" makes the area write protected.

Probably not. Fortran is an ugly language anyhow

Probably yes, as the ROM area is always write protected on QL.

I was able to get Pro Fortran to run in Qemulator. I did the load EPROM bit instead of loading the prl toolkit file (initially I tried to load both and that failed, you only need one).

Tim

Thank you all for giving solutions.
The last reaction (from Swansont) was that loading the PRL rom (by eprom_load flp1_prl_rom) did help to work for Prospero Fortran
on the Qemulator. But I could not reproduce this.
When I use QPC2, not the Qemulator (which supports the command EPROM_LOAD on version QPC2 4.05) and NOT using the boot file (which uploads the PRL in memory)
I stll get the PRL error in step 2 of the Fortran compiler.
As far as I know Qemulator does NOT support the command EPROM_LOAD (nor tk2 nor qjump), so I really don't know how to fix the overwriting of the PRL code in case of the Prospero Fortan compiler. Thank you all for helping so far, but things do not work in my case.