New mdv discovery - QL Expert (an expert system shell)

[Chr$]

After the usual faffing with an original mdv cartridge I have managed to obtain a working dump of 'QL - Expert' by Compware. This title was not on the wiki, so I added it to the Compware list page for now. From the name alone I thought it was some kind of interactive program teaching you how to be a QL expert, but fortunately I also have the printed manual and it's nothing of the kind. It is in fact an environment for programming, debugging and operation of rule based expert systems.

The printed manual is actually scanned and already online, here: https://sinclairql.speccy.org/archivo/d ... Expert.pdf

The author is Francesco Balena, I assume the same chap who went on to have some success with 'Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0' in 1999. I contacted him just now asking if he'd mind me sharing it.

3 examples on the cartridge advise the user on whether they should buy a new car (and what kind of car), whether they (or someone they know) is an alien and what QL configuration would be best for them.

[swensont]

That looks like it could be interesting to tinker with. Hope it can be released.

Tim

[Sparrowhawk]

Great find! Did you have that from new and forgot about it or was that a recent acquisition?

[Chr$]

Great find! Did you have that from new and forgot about it or was that a recent acquisition?

A recent acquisition, but I can't remember where or exactly when! I dumped it a few months ago pending attempts at trying it out, but that dump had a faulty EXPERT_BIN file that gets loaded very early on and it wouldn't load at all (crashed on black screen). Re-dumped yesterday and despite 1 bad sector in the same small (1536 bytes) file it now seems to work. mdump_task sorcery.

[Chr$]

I just heard from Francesco:

"Yes, I will be happy to have my software included in your collection and made it available to other QL enthusiasts. Of course, the permission includes the documentation and any example that was included with the original program."

So here it is, attached! (the zip file was created in Windows and contains the Qemulator/Mdump_task .mdv dump file).

He also gave permission for his other QL/Compware product, the Mega Toolbox to be shared freely - but I don't have that one.

Here is some fantastic background info:

"Here are some behind-the-scenes details. I wrote QL Expert while graduating in Computer Science, sometime in mid-80s. As you might have noticed, its user interface is patterned after the four PSION applications that came with the QL, which were start-of-the-art in those days. When the program was ready I submitted the application to PSION and they showed interest in publishing it. Unluckily – for me and the whole QL community – while we were on speaking terms Sinclair terminated the QL and PSION decided to abandon the QL market as well. Some time later, Compware agreed to market QL Expert and you know the rest of the story. We sold very few licenses, though, because few people were interested in that marvellous computer.

After some time I gave the QL away and rewrote QL Expert for PCs, using the QuickBasic language, under the EXPERTO name. It was distributed together with my very first book, by an Italian publisher. To my (and the publisher's) surprise, the book sold around 4-5,000 copies, which was A LOT for a book about artificial intelligence and for the Italian market. I am pretty sure that – should the original QL Expert be published by PSION – it would have been quite successful."

[Sparrowhawk]

That's wonderful - congrats on finding Francesco and getting his permission to release this

Fascinating story too. What might have been, eh?*

* new unofficial QL strap line!


Edit: fixed a typo

[Andrew]

I just heard from Francesco:
...
He also gave permission for his other QL/Compware product, the Mega Toolbox to be shared freely - but I don't have that one.

I have it and I can share.
A video demo of Mega Toolbox: https://youtu.be/jDfJjVx8Wow?si=kCj0k-384y7zotk9

[pjw]

So how does one read these images on, say, QPC2? I cant seem to find any utility that does. Martin Head's MDI driver wont mount them and his utility to convert Qlay type mdv images and Q-emulator type mdv images doesnt recognise the qlexper2_mdv image at least.

[Chr$]

Thanks Andrew.

I'm not sure Per, I pretty much exclusively use Qemulator because it's closest to original hardware. Hang on, I'll pack the files into a QL zip.

Edit: here we are, a QL zipped file of the mdv contents. I don't think it has any devious copy protection.

[pjw]

<>I'm not sure Per, I pretty much exclusively use Qemulator because it's closest to original hardware. Hang on, I'll pack the files into a QL zip.

Thanks. I managed in the end after fannying about for an hour. It seems we have at least three different mdv image formats. I hope theres a bloody good reason.. otherwise

Edit: here we are, a QL zipped file of the mdv contents. I don't think it has any devious copy protection.

Oops! Thanks anyway. Im sure others will appreciate.