The Sinclair QL Forum

What is the point in using this compiler? Why not C68 or QDOS-GCC?

I've been using another ancient compiler called PDQC, but the only reason for that was truely relocatable code generation.

Second that. An unexpanded QL is not much more than a plain 48k Spectrum (measured by the amount of stuff you can do) I actually had a plain 48k Spectrum. Loading programs from tape was a pain. The rubber keyboard was a pain. Text processing with 256 pixels, resulting in 3 pixel width characters wa...

The SD cards you buy now are invariably microSD cards with an adapter anyway, so it makes absolutely no difference. I experienced the practical difference when interchanging cards between Q68 and Q Zero. Often taking the microSD card in and out of the adaptor is quite annyoing compared to just movi...

Let‘s say I can produce it for 15€ total (the central chip alone costs 5-8€), that leaves me with 15€. Minus the income tax I‘m at maybe 8€ „profit“ (note that none of my work is paid at this point). Only very rich persons with over half a million € per year pay such a percentage of income tax in G...

Seen from a programmer's view, the main difference between QL-based HW and "other" is the video hardware which needs to be treated differently. Q40/Q60/Q68 all have the original video modes, so they don't need to be treated differently. Just if you use additional features. The fact that s...

Oh, I thought USB was more difficult to support that's why I was asking about PS2. If the implementation is supposed to be on the native side, USB host support is indeed much more difficult. Even to the degree of being impossible for a non-accelerated machine. While PS/2 is doable, and was already ...

bwinkel67 wrote:It sounds odd to me to say BBQL w/Gold Card as you might as well say QL w/Gold Card (i.e. no longer just the good old BBQL).

Fully agreed. The GoldCard even takes the very core of a computer away from the QL motherboard, which is CPU and main RAM.

Chr$ wrote:Here's my Q68 case, knocked up from an old mdv cart box, red rubber band a sharp knife and a few minutes.

Ingenious idea! I wonder if it could be improved by solid panels at the sides, so top & bottom become fully planar.

ql_freak wrote:What is a BBQL?

This acronym is especially problematic when hungry. The first three letters always make me think of spareribs and steaks.

The bootloader ROM coming up at power-up is write protected, but not the OS that was loaded. Like you, I assumed for a long time that some programs might need a write protection, and the Q40/Q60 therefore had a hardware feature to write-protect RAM at $0. This assumption turned out a fairytale, nobo...