Returning to the QL

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daniel_baum
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Returning to the QL

Post by daniel_baum »

Hello,

I am new to the forum, so I thought I'd introduce myself. Since this is more or less a cross post with the mailing list, it may seem a bit familiar to some people

I originally bought a Sinclair QL some time in the mid 1980s. It was my main computer for a while, but I eventually replaced it with an Atari ST and it went into the attic.

A few years later I got back into the QL. I used QPC1 and then QPC2 on whatever PC I had at the time. I gradually got interested in other things, and then I seem to remember getting my first PC that had no diskette drive and so I couldn't run QPC anymore.

During this period (1998-2000 apparently) I wrote a program called Qbase that I am astonished to find is available from Dilwyn's site and is part of the Black Phoenix distribution. Dilwyn also sent me two other programs that I wrote 20 years ago and had completely forgotten about.

A while ago I thought I'd see what was happening in the QL world (or rather, if there still was one) and I found that it still existed and so here I am, configuring my boot file and trying to get my head around EasyPtr, again...

Outside the QL World I am actually a professional programmer and also a linguist and researcher into automatic language analysis and speech analytics.

It's nice to be reunited with the QL, and also to find so many familiar names still involved with it. It's amazing what an interesting system the QL is. I'm actually wondering whether the continued hardware and software development of a 1980s platform by active enthusiasts, especially one that basically failed when it was new, is actually a unique phenomenon. I can't think of any others.


Regards to all,

Daniel Baum


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vanpeebles
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Re: Returning to the QL

Post by vanpeebles »

A warm welcome to the forum :D


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Dave
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Re: Returning to the QL

Post by Dave »

Daniel,

Alongside all the hardware developments bearing fruit right now, including the Q68, gold card clones and the new QL motherboard and revised SQB by myself, there's always need for more QL-friendly programmers.

Do you, uh, happen to know any, uh, professional programmers who cut their teeth on a QL? ;)


daniel_baum
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Re: Returning to the QL

Post by daniel_baum »

I can think of someone.... ;)

If you could look past its pretty obvious defects, the QL was amazing for its time.

Superbasic is still pretty nice to program with actually; definitely better than most 80s basic interpreters, and, in its latest incarnations, almost ridiculously fast. It really was the first language that I felt I knew really well, and so you could say I cut my teeth on the QL. Because of my QL background, I felt most comfortable with Basic (e.g. Visual Basic) until I learned C# and Python about 10 years ago.

Actually a QL version of C# and Python would be very welcome. Do you think they'd run in 128K? :)

D.


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Dave
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Re: Returning to the QL

Post by Dave »

Pretty soon 1MB on every QL will be mainstream. 4MB will be common. 32MB will be easily achievable.

Bit of a leap from being a programmer to porting a language tho!


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