The Sinclair QL Forum

Anything goes here regarding length, short or long, so I'll set out.

I've had QL experience since the 90s which I'll go into. I'll quote a contacts card I made for a tail-end summary...

I wrote articles that made it into QLT, QUANTA and the old IQLR, reviews of QL software for printing, chess & Towers of Hanoi/Buddha, and "experiential" articles about, for instance, the Internet on a 14.4 modem and a shell account (and, yes, a QL)! "Tower of Hanoi II" meant greatly expanding the programming of the original 1986 version.

My current instances of a QL nature include my original Black Box upgraded mostly with SGC, + external keyboard (and, formerly, dual floppies that John, Don, and Roy--anyone heard those names?-- all tried to revive years ago) ... but down for the count for now ... and from my dad's estate a mini-tower 4-floppy 250 (meg) HDD SGC with black Sinclair monitor, where I just recently organized all the HDD QL files ... QPC on my old W98 tower, and, just recently, Qemulator on a couple Mac Book Pros so my QL Tower of Hanoi enhancements can now travel to my favorite haunts.

The rest of my machines are Macs, many of them old G3s (Pismo[e]s / Pismae? and Lombards).

QL was my main, really only, machine until the W98 machine and still when I started into Macs. Did finances and collectibles and more on it.

I was "in computers" for STI (Scientific and Technical Information), capture, storage, and dissemination (e.g. science.gov) for almost 35 years, DEC 10s to VAXes to Sun & HP equipment, assembly language to , well, "higher" language software.

Latest personal effort is a 3TB "personal cloud" and getting several of the above critters on the home Ethernet network and getting it all to get out to the Internet on one of those At&T wifi gadgets. If ... wait, when ... Dave (Park) gets QEthernet made, I'll get the physical QL on the network. No way I'm getting rid of the non-emulator QLs!

And there are all the web sites, lists, even hardware to learn. There's ... I don't have it in front of me ... the USB SD? to install.

The contact card goes, FYI: Steel Drums, Steel Groups, & Music - Sailing - Computers - Chess - Writing - Photography - Original Tees - Dancing - Community Theater - Books - 50s Fiat Roadsters; Avocational &/or Vocational &/or Competitive.

Thanks and glad to join,
Doug L. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

Morning! And welcome to the forum You sound very busy with all those interests

Hi Doug,

Welcome to the forum - it is always good to see old QL users make an appearance !!

Hi Doug!

For those not in the know, Doug is one of the largest donors to the QL2 project. Without his support, all this work might never have got started.

Thanks, Doug!

Welcome Doug!



From what Dave says, sounds like we need to thank you.

So... thank you

Of course, we would be happy to hear you blow your own trumpet for a little while

Mark

Totally didn't take to the trumpet ... vacuous violin valedictorian not ... passable piano performance purveyor ... positive pan player tho not pro. ("Pan" is the proper term for what BBC itself calls "an incorrect term", namely, the common Stateside label "steel drums").

Thanks people, good to be here.

Apologies & Addendum, one factoid: My "Hello" may make it sound as if the "1986 version of [QUANTA's] Tower of Hanoi", a game or puzzle, was mine. It isn't (wasn't). The 1986 original in the QUANTA Library was by Paul Kennedy. I enlarged its scope last year or the year before.

In general, frequent contributors to say the former QLT and to QUANTA, with articles and with hardware and software contributions and ideations (isn't that a word?) do and have done far more for the community than I have with a few articles. I have in fact just recently, after the demise of QLT unfortunately, come into a fair amount of possibilities for articles--gaming and emulator experience.

Doug

Dave of course blew my real cover, a poor lurker.

I always love to hear about QL games

Sorry Doug

vanpeebles wrote:I always love to hear about QL games

In the arena of QL games, I have done Towers of Hanoi and chess. At the moment I don't remember others.

The first QL Towers of Hanoi was, to my knowledge, Paul Kennedy's version of 1986. It was entered into the then QUANTA Library. It was the classic puzzle but a version that limited itself to five discs, no more, no less.

My version took Mr. Kennedy's code for ToH and built on it. Number of discs was allowed to be variable, from four to eight. The option to look at live hint "games", viz., hints at how to approach the puzzle, was added. As I remember a couple other small features were added for playability. It was resubmitted to QUANTA Library as required, and a multi-page article of mine on same appeared in QUANTA Mag.

Wikipedia describes Tower of Hanoi. They claim "anything less than ten discs is a toy". I want to get "my" version up to ten, mostly to be able to give them, well ... pardon the expression QLers, a Raspberry (pbbbbbttt).

Wikipedia has in its article the legend of Buddhist monks executing Tower of Hanoi or of Buddha, moving 64 gold discs from one of three poles to one of the other poles. When they finish, the Universe will end. Given one second to make a move of one disc from one pole to some other, according to the restrictions in the game, finishing will take 500 ... mm ... minutes? midnights? months? millenia ?? ... ah ... about 500 billion (American billion) ... years!

"But I digress"--Tom Lehrer (in the album "An Evening (wasted) with Tom Lehrer". Anyone remember him?)

Interestingly in these two instantiations of ToH, the trickiest programming is not in the recording of positions, making moves, checking against illegalities, & c (at least for me). It's the drawing / graphics parts. Fudge factors have to be figured up; as I remember, to vary thicknesses and widths of discs as the number increases with the player's initial selection of how many. It seems this could or should be a simple calculation.

So, there you have ToH (in the latest instance, "Tower of Hanoi II").

I'll have something to say further on QL games, re chess. Hopefully intelligent , not the easiest thing. That will be re Psion Chess, which has had some amazing play even on lower level settings, and is also sometimes labeled, somehow, "QL Chess" (e.g. the instance I possess). I've dealt with Francois Lanciault's Blackknight. Material on some of all this has appeared in former QL mags.

I think that's all I've been into re QL games. Something seems to be rattling around in the back of my mind concerning other games. Of course, we know what rattling indicates--room to move around, that is, Empty Space .

Doug L. 37830 USA