The Sinclair QL Forum

pjw wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 11:30 am

tofro wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 10:28 am <> Self-contained programs are just easier to install and run for beginners, and most modern platforms have plenty of memory to waste.
<>

f someone doesnt know what that means, the natural next step would be to check the included documentation which presumably would enlighten one.

Since when do people read documentation?

tofro wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 12:42 pm

pjw wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 11:30 am

tofro wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 10:28 am <> Self-contained programs are just easier to install and run for beginners, and most modern platforms have plenty of memory to waste.
<>

f someone doesnt know what that means, the natural next step would be to check the included documentation which presumably would enlighten one.

Since when do people read documentation?

If someone were to contact you because he couldnt get your program to run with RUN mdv1_super_obj wouldnt you scream? No one can protect themselves against that sort of thing! So one has to assume a minimum level of competence.

I dont know if this was just an urban myth at call centres, but the story was that there were frequent calls to the help desk with queries about the "any" key, as in "Press any key to continue". Where is the any key? people asked! I particularly liked the one about complaints about people's coffee cup holder being broken. This was when computers started being delivered with DVD drives!

Most of those people were just ordinary office workers who suddenly found themselves with a PC. One would expect QL users to be better informed. After all they chose to do this!

pjw wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 1:16 pm I dont know if this was just an urban myth at call centres, but the story was that there were frequent calls to the help desk with queries about the "any" key, as in "Press any key to continue". Where is the any key? people asked! I particularly liked the one about complaints about people's coffee cup holder being broken. This was when computers started being delivered with DVD drives!

Calls that I actually had in early 90's:
1. My foot pedal is not working! (the "foot pedal" was the mouse. The lady also had an electric sewing machine that had a foot pedal resembling a mouse...)
2. The virus ate my floppy disk! (Long story short: the user had an east-german XT clone with 2 5.25" floppy drives. Between the floppies there was a gap of about 3 mm - and the user was inserting the disks in that gap!)
3. I want to buy the software (program) that upgrades a 286 to a 386DX (The company I was working for was running a buy-back program for 286 machines, if you were buying a new 386 computer)
4. I have no available serial port for the mouse, because the digitiser is using one port and the VGA is using the second port (Yes, it was! The user was a strong man and inserted the VGA into the 9 pin serial port)
5. The modem I bought is useless and it cannot connect to the internet (well, he had no computer!)
6. My keyboard is not working anymore after I washed it in the bathtub (no comment!)
7. Excel is not working - I cannot edit any cells - all cells are frozen (The keyboard was not connected)
There are many more, some of them difficult to translate in english (like the guy who wanted to buy a Megaratze Computer. Megaratze sounds exactly like Mega Ducks in romanian ... He wanted a computer to play Mega Race - a car racing game)
And yes, also new QL users can have some trivial or very dumb questions. I know, I was one not so long ago.

"My computer isn't working!"
"What's on the monitor?"
" flower pot?"

Much as I would love to contribute to the help desk calls saga, can we take it off to an off-topic thread please. Thanks.

(I worked in Tech Support almost all my working life, in one form or another, and some of the calls I got take a lot of believing.)

Cheers,
Norm. [With his moderator's hat on ]

RalfR wrote
You actually have to test that too: Which runtimes are in the program, if any are linked? Very often it is v3.22, how do they react on the Q40? Or even earlier versions? Which QLib version did the error occur, or was it there from the beginning? There's a lot to test.

I've now tried the whole thing again with QTrans to verify that Minerva's "QLibodge_bas" actually prevents linked runtimes. So applied the program to QTrans and then ran Mark's program again.
Of course, his program still finds the location, the runtimes are of course still in the code, but after his patch, QTrans starts without any problems. So the Minerva program obviously works and QTrans used the resident runtimes.

Hi
Qlib runtimes here are 3.36mod, Minerva's QLibodge_bas works OK. Alas after bodging qtrans and qdock and patching the resident qlib runtimes and rebooting the Q60 with copyback enabled neither worked giving up the ghost with QLIb error messages. Qtrans with line 4760 index out of range and qdock with line 4874 string is not numeric.

There is more to the incompatibility of the Qliberated programs with copyback that the cash flush patch.

Cheers

I was worried that this might not be the only problem.

Maybe there is something in the source code of QLib's own extensions commented by Marcel.

I would be interested to know if Turbo programs actually run error-free with caches?

Turbo compiled programs like the Editor SE, Compare, DEA and Turbo itself , along with C68 and digital C programs that I have all seem to be unaffected by the copyback cache settings.

From the Qlib error reports, if the reports are reasonably accurate, one of the issues Qlib has with copyback is with string and array manipulation. Turbo has fixed sizes for arrays and strings unlike Qlib. C programs also have declaired sizes for these.

Cheers

C programs also have declaired sizes for these.

No they don't, but in C you rarely try and execute a string!

maybe convert to Turbo from Qlib.

But that I fear is impossible.