The Sinclair QL Forum

I've been testing compatibility of all my old commercial games (about 100 I think) with Trump 768, MiniTrump3 & SGC fitted

Most run from QIMSI, but a few will only run from FLP and 3 have to run from MDV

Have got all of them working on Trump 768
Have got all of them working on MT3 setup for 512KB (rather than 768KB), other than 6 that need the memory to be greater than 128KB but below 640KB. Still working on some of these to try and get them to work though

But with the SGC (putting aside the speed issues which I'll have to come back to later) I have a number of games that refuse to run from QIMSI, FLP or MDV on the SGC (7 in total)

I was wondering if anyone had any of the games listed below running on SGC, as I'm struggling with these, please?

Deathstrike
Fight in the Dark
The Lost Pharaoh
Puzzle Mania
QL Hyperdrive
QLACMan
Vroom (aka wroom)

Many thanks
Tony

If any of the games run code in supervisor mode and assume the exception stack frame format then they will fail on the 68020 processor as it's an extended frame rather than the original version.

Not a lot you can do about that other than patching the games in some way.

Thanks Stephen

I’m not planning to put much more effort into trying to run these games on the SGC, but wanted to check if I’d missed anything. Am happy to assume for now that these just won’t run on SGC

As they all run with the Trump 768 fitted I can just swap expansions (saves worrying about speed issues too). My only concern is wear and tear on the QL edge connector because although my edge expander works fine with everything else the combination of SGC+QIMSI causes constant crashes. Electronics are a black art to me!

Many thanks
Tony

t0nyt wrote: Sun Aug 10, 2025 3:05 pm I've been testing compatibility of all my old commercial games (about 100 I think) with Trump 768, MiniTrump3 & SGC fitted

Most run from QIMSI, but a few will only run from FLP and 3 have to run from MDV

Hi Tony - what ROM do you use? Minerva or JS?
Most of the games I have will not run on Minerva

Andrew wrote: Mon Aug 11, 2025 10:24 am

t0nyt wrote: Sun Aug 10, 2025 3:05 pm I've been testing compatibility of all my old commercial games (about 100 I think) with Trump 768, MiniTrump3 & SGC fitted

Most run from QIMSI, but a few will only run from FLP and 3 have to run from MDV

Hi Tony - what ROM do you use? Minerva or JS?
Most of the games I have will not run on Minerva

Hi Andrew,

JS, a bunch run on Minerva but many don’t

I’ll be going thru them all with Minerva once I’ve built my Minerva mk2+js Rom switcher (if it works, else I’ll stick with js)

My only concern is wear and tear on the QL edge connector

Obvious solution to that is n+1 QLs like the rest of us

XorA wrote: Mon Aug 11, 2025 12:12 pm

My only concern is wear and tear on the QL edge connector

Obvious solution to that is n+1 QLs like the rest of us

I have 3, but only got room to use 1. n+1 is too many!

t0nyt wrote: Mon Aug 11, 2025 7:31 am My only concern is wear and tear on the QL edge connector because although my edge expander works fine with everything else the combination of SGC+QIMSI causes constant crashes

I cleaned the contacts and now SGC+QIMSI combination seems to be stable, so QL edge connector is protected again

stephen_usher wrote: Sun Aug 10, 2025 5:02 pm If any of the games run code in supervisor mode and assume the exception stack frame format then they will fail on the 68020 processor as it's an extended frame rather than the original version.

This is VERY NICE to know! Always wondered why, e.g. DeathStrike does not run on QPC2... It emulates a 68020 processor...

stephen_usher wrote: Sun Aug 10, 2025 5:02 pm If any of the games run code in supervisor mode and assume the exception stack frame format then they will fail on the 68020 processor as it's an extended frame rather than the original version.

That's a bit misleading: In an exception, the CPU is always in supervisor mode.