Comparing Sinclair QL to Commodore 64

[BSJR]

Thanks again for clarifying this, My DELL monitor is digital. But that does not seem to be the main intention of Derek. As far as I know, there is just SMSQ/E via uQLx under PI. So we may need a native 68000 emulator for it (I am perhaps wrong...(as always...) )

SMSQmulator on my Pi3 with up to date Raspbian works quite well.
So it must be be flying on a Pi4.

BSJR

[RalfR]

Good to hear, but nevertheless it is an emulator on an alien OS. What's about a native one?

[pjw]

Imagine SMSQ/E fully incarnated into the Amiga hardware! Mmm.

Should be possible, It works on the Atari (native WIN, native screen).

HI Per,

What sort of Amiga?

I dont know anything about Amigas other than that they had, or could access, all the bells and whistles the QL was lacking: Speed, memory hard disks, colours, sound, all the while being 68k machines. The Amiga OS is too 1950's and Unixy for my taste. I have the Cloanto(?) edition somewhere (Emulator, legal ROMS, software,..) which I played with a little. Mainly trying to get Qdos4Amiga to work but, IIRC, without success.

At some point I went through all of the various implementations of the QL on Atari, from the first Norwegian model with a hacked version of Qdos to QVME with SMSQ/E. The Mega ST4 with QVME was great! But it wasnt really integrated with the ST, just a poor parasite. IIRC, SMSQ/E was pushed by Jochen to free the QL-on-ST from the illegal Qdos hack. I guess one of the reasons a true ST OS wasnt developed at this time was that there was still hope of a genuine QL V2, but I may be wrong. There was so much going on at the time that the sequence of events is hard to untangle. Hopefully the historians (rather than archaeologists) will figure it all out one day.

Also bear in mind, that a Raspberry PI with Amiga emulator, out performs all Amiga hardware. So how about a SMSQ/E implementation on the Raspberry PI?

But thats not the point - or not my point, at least. We've already got QPC2 and SMSQmulator. Id be happy to see a fast, modern QL running on genuine hardware. But I leave retro for the retro hobbyists. I am NOT enamoured of waiting two hours for a program to compile, when it can be done today in one second. A couple of minutes while I make a coffee would be an acceptable sacrifice to be able to do so on the real thing. Personally I dont much care if it isnt in a nice black box with a dicky keyboard. So if the box is called Amiga or Atari it doesnt much matter to me. It seems to me that the Amiga folks are the ones who have the most going for them in terms of genuine 68k hardware. Us guys seem only interested in going down memory lane..

[RalfR]

At some point I went through all of the various implementations of the QL on Atari, from the first Norwegian model with a hacked version of Qdos to QVME with SMSQ/E. The Mega ST4 with QVME was great! But it wasnt really integrated with the ST, just a poor parasite. IIRC, SMSQ/E was pushed by Jochen to free the QL-on-ST from the illegal Qdos hack. I guess one of the reasons a true ST OS wasnt developed at this time was that there was still hope of a genuine QL V2, but I may be wrong. There was so much going on at the time that the sequence of events is hard to untangle. Hopefully the historians (rather than archaeologists) will figure it all out one day.

The main problem was: Futura Datasenter of Norway (the ones who developed the first Atari QL emulator PCB) had done that for themselves. And they have patched QL device drivers, which were supplied by Strong Computer in GB. So Jochen Merz wanted TT to put his SMS2 drivers (which were long written) into this path, which he has done.

When TT has sent an SMS2 disk to me, he just said, that he hasn't the time to maintain it, all work was done for SMSQ on the QXL and the Atari drivers, which Jochen wanted to get legal drivers for the people. So, beside the real THING Traps on SMS2, compared to Hotkey System2 on QDOS and SMSQ/E, SMS2 has stopped.

That was a bit out of the box

[stephen_usher]

The Amiga OS is too 1950's and Unixy for my taste.

Erm, no interactive terminals in the 1950s, merely paper tape, punched cards and (in one case) telephone dials for input.

Interactive sessions didn't arrive until the mid 60s.

(Member of pedants anonymous... or would be if that weren't an oxymoron. Hehe)

[pjw]

The Amiga OS is too 1950's and Unixy for my taste.

Erm, no interactive terminals in the 1950s, merely paper tape, punched cards and (in one case) telephone dials for input.

Interactive sessions didn't arrive until the mid 60s.

I wrote that merely to make it sound palaeontological compared to Qdos, but I suppose that in computer terms the '70s might have been more accurate and done just as well.

[Peter]

As far as I know, there is just SMSQ/E via uQLx under PI.

SMSQ/E does not work under UQLX, neither Raspi nor PC.

So we may need a native 68000 emulator for it (I am perhaps wrong...(as always...) )

What is a native 68000 emulator?

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

I had SMSQmulator running on a Raspberry PI 3B couple of years ago.

There was also talk of Wine running on the PI, but I did not follow this up.

I think what is meant as a native 68000 emulator, is an emulator written in RISC. But I do not think that there is much interest in the PI world to do this.

There is a 68000 emulator that runs on the PI, so I suppose a QL system could implemented, but the emulator author is an Amiga developer, so joy I guess...

[ql_freak]

I think what is meant as a native 68000 emulator, is an emulator written in RISC. But I do not think that there is much interest in the PI world to do this.

I think it's not a good idea to implement a program today ins assembler. AFAIK even Marcel now rewrites parts of QPC2 in C, because it's much more future proof (if the processor is improved, often assembler programs won't run, a compiler hides this). BUT I think it is very difficult to write a more performant program on an ARM (RISC processor) than to write it with a modern highly optimizing C or C++ (even faster than C, at least if you are not using exceptions and virtual methods) compiler. Especially if the underlying operating system is not written itself in assembler. HINT: in QDOS/SMS(Q) for every operating system "command" it is specified which register is smashed (i.e. must be saved before calling this "command"), for the other (not smashed) registers you must do NOTHING. This is one reason, why assembler programs are so fast and small on a QDOS (compatible) operating system.

Conclusion: If there is a 68xxx processor emulator for the Raspi, use it. There is still a lot to do, to get QDOS running on it.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Peter,

I think, on reflection, trying implement a QL emulator written in RISC, would not be worth the effort involved. But maybe from an educational point of view to learn RISC programming, it maybe...

I think a better idea would be to create an interface between the QL and the Raspberry Pi. However this was discussed elsewhere, and I fear will never come to much. Maybe another personal project.