Quantum Leap Paradox 16th July 2017 (crosspost)

[ZX_Steve]

I just posted on the wos forum about page 27 of the June 1990 edition of QL World.
Someone in the past is trying to use a Quantum Leap to undelete a file created today, 16th July 2017.

https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... -july-2017

I would not normally cross-post, but this is time critical, we only have until about quarter to nine tonight create the files and avoid a paradox! Otherwise It could destroy the entire universe. Panicking... I can't find any blank cartridges and I don't have a disk drive!

[stephen_usher]

*laugh*

Almost seems like a British version of "Back to the Future."

[vanpeebles]

That is brillant!

[Outsoft]

Eheh

Interesting: now I've found that Media Manager is a good utility for Undeleted files

[swensont]

Creating the files should be fairly simple. It's creating the time machine to go back to 1990 and deliver the media (microcart or floppy) is going to be the tricky part. Or are we just assuming a worm hole will suddenly appear so that the media can be sucked back into 1990?

Tim

[ZX_Steve]

I don't think we need to worry about about sending a disk back in time today. I presume the timestamp shown is the creation time, not the deletion time. So as long as the files are created, we can delete them any time we like and send them back after time travel is invented. Perhaps another 27 years.

When I first saw the TV series Quantum Leap listed in a TV guide, almost certainly the first UK airing of the pilot, I got super excited. I distinctly remember staying up 'late' to watch it because I thought it would be a documentary about the computer. I was just a dumb kid. Futuristic and cool.. somehow the QL has always been associated with time travel; even before then --in my mind at least.

[ZX_Steve]

Joking aside, I think that screen shot actually displays several of the QL strengths. It is interesting to see the QL actually demonstrating no millennium bug, literally a decade before it hurt other systems. You could never have had that screen display on the contemporary PCW. The PCW depended on CP/M+ which had tons of millennium bugs in the OS and almost all third party PCW software, even their builtin DATE command could not have shown this data. The PCW was also limited to 8+3 character filenames while this screenshot shows full names.

[Dave]

I bet you look stunning in that cheerleader's outfit, ZX_Steve!

[ZX_Steve]

I have actually read a few old PCW mags out of curiosity recently (while looking for Spectrum/QL ones). It bothers me that Amstrad had an option on the QL, and the QL solved most of the problems the better selling PCW clearly suffered from. They were both targetted at similar markets and both missed in different directions. Had they been tied together at some point: they might have hit the target. They might have survived in the retail market.

[ZX_Steve]

You certainly already know, but since forum posters are international, I probably should have mentioned the PCW was Amstrad's proprietary Z80 based machine that stole much of the market sector the QL wanted here. With the IBM compatibles taking the top of the market and the PCW taking the bottom. Launched in 1985, I recall the QL and PCW on display next to each other in computer shops.

The PCW was regarded as a 'glass typewriter' by the UK media and they were sold exclusively as word processors from launch until their demise. Owners used them as full computers due to the inclusion of American operating system CP/M 3 (presumably Amstrad got it cheap because it was already obsolete, having been broadly replaced by MS DOS elsewhere).

According to http://www.amstrad.com/products/archive/index.html Amstrad sold 8 Million of them. They were already dead in the water when Amstrad launched the PCW-16 (incompatible with all previous machines) around 1995.

Had the QL originally shoe-horned in the familiar Z80 to act as IO processor instead of a 8049.. things would have been better across the board. Brits loved the Z80. Amstrad had lots of trouble creating the later PCW-16 and it's OS. At the very least we could have had... QL redeployed as the PCW-16 in 1994 with PCW compatibility via CP/M running on the IO controller.. I am guessing that's what deleted file 'UPDATES_doc' says. Drool...