The Sinclair QL Forum

I'm in the process of updating the SBASIC manual. I've added the documentation for ALPHA_BLEND and the Recent Thing.

I notice that some of the sections for machine-specific parts of SMSQ/E may not be up to date - specifically the Atari, QXL amd Q40 documentation, which seem to partly lack documentation for the high colour modes, e.g. the DISP_xxx commands. I have none of those systems to test the commands, and I am having some difficulty finding the information in the SMSQE sources (I'm not familiar with the sources so it proved harder than I expected with the limited amount of time I have on my hands at the moment)

For example:

1. does the high colour SMSQE for QXL have a DISP_COLOUR mode to switch between graphics modes, or can it only be configured?

2. DISP_xxx extensions supported for each SMSQ/E?

3. which systems allow multiple qxl.win with e.g. WIN_DRIVE, WIN_DRIVE$, etc

4. Anything else which needs to be added?

Manual revision 1.04 attached (Word .docx file). This is not yet on my website until any comments, additions needed etc are done.

If you make changes in Word, the manual has a table of contents at the front and an index at the back. The table of contents if made from the various Hx headings and the index at the back from XE fields. To update the page numbers in either, just select (it becomes greyed out) then press F9 in Word.

Hope someone can help, so I can keep this updated in line with the hard work of people like Wolfgang Lenerz who regularly update SMSQ/E

(edit) Oops, seems Word files are banned from here, so I'll attach a zipped version instead

Although QL on Atari was in the first place (from TT), I will never understand, why he hasn't used the QXL.WIN principle later. Native harddisk on Atari was never really safe, I had quite a few map crashes in these times and all was lost, Megafile or other producer. And the two utility programs from TT did really nothing in most cases.

Ralf R. wrote:Although QL on Atari was in the first place (from TT), I will never understand, why he hasn't used the QXL.WIN principle later. Native harddisk on Atari was never really safe, I had quite a few map crashes in these times and all was lost, Megafile or other producer. And the two utility programs from TT did really nothing in most cases.

It was also a time of active development, so perhaps you were just experiencing the privilege of bumping into the bleeding edge Having said that, the Atari Mega ST4 with QMVE, was my favourite "QL". (At least until QPC2-capable computers got to about 1-1.5 GHz, and colours arrived.) I had a dodgy Atari hard drive, but once I swapped that for ICD's The Link and another hard drive, I never had any problems with it. The SyQuest 105 Mb removable drives were pretty unsafe, but that wasnt Atari/TT's fault. In fact I fired the machine up quite recently, after perhaps 15 years of hibernation, and all seemed to work well - including the SyQuest.

I used to have a Mega ST 4 with the Norwegian emulator and the Syquest drive.

And I didn't have any problems whatsoever with the drive over around 10 years until I finally (and, regrettably) sold it.

So our mileage might vary.

Tobias