The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi there,

I'm attempting to get Launchpad (v1) running on my 'black box' QL which has a QubIDE expansion which includes 512K RAM. Also fitted is a Minerva & Toolkit ROM.

On startup the machine reports 640K total RAM, and then loads the Toolkit 2.23 extensions, QubIDE and the following:
Ptr_gen (206)
Wman (208)
hot_rext (231)

I also LRESPR SerMouse - to support a two button MS Mouse connected to SER2.

I had configured Launchpad_obj using the config program.

I can then EXEC the individual apps - such as STATUS_OBJ which work (see pic).
However when I EXEX Launchpad_obj it appears to fail on startup with a 'no heap space' error (see pic).
Can anyone help with getting this up and running, or perhaps is there some memory requirements that my hardware doesn't meet?

Many thanks
s.

My copy of Launchpad, configured and with extra icons, uses about 750k
Adding to this the PE environment and a bunch of extensions , on a Gold Card with 2Mb RAM I end up with about 929k free.
I don't think it's possible to run Launchpad on a QL with only 640K.

This is unfortunately correct. I don't have a 512K RAM system set up here to try this, the closest I have is 640K (which Andrew has already described), but a few simple calculations show that:

Launchpad_obj (version 0.96, the last of the version 1 line from more years ago than I care to remember) is 221295 bytes (nearly 220KB) just in code size.

It then needs about 50K just for the pointer environment code file sizes, and about 170KB heap space IIRC. That's already about 440KB before you take any other things like pointer environment window saves into account. Even if Launchpad 1 started in 512K RAM (it won't) it would leave no real space to run any programs.

Graphical user interfaces are very memory hungry. Launchpad 2 is even worse than version 1.

For a small memory system, I'm afraid you may be better advised to try one of the other smaller systems such as my DEV Manager or one of the others on this page: https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/frontend/index.html

My preferred GUI front end back in the day was QRAM + QPAC1. Together with the Pointer Interface it runs in as little as 384K (ie QL + 256K), though clearly, the more RAM the merrier. It fits right in with the much misunderstood Qdos philosophy - hardly surprising since it sprang from the same source.

Most of what started off as QRAM is now integrated into SMSQ/E, so that if you know your QRAM, you wont find SMSQ/E hard to use.

I agree with Dilwyn, GUI's take a lot of resources. I'm still amazed that ICE works so seamlessly on an unexpanded QL. Een CHOICE was well integrated and if you didn't require a screen buffer, and relied on the refresh key, it also used little RAM. Would have been interesting how ICE could have grown with the QL.

thanks all, glad I was doing something wrong (other than trying to do something that is impossible that is! )

I'll check out some of the other front ends and continue my quest for a "proper" expansion with decent memory.

cheers
s.

Hi,

why not use QPAC2, as you have most of the Extended Environment already installed.

Harbars wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2024 9:33 pm I'll check out some of the other front ends and continue my quest for a "proper" expansion with decent memory.

cheers
s.

I have you tried QL Commander?
It's a Norton Commander clone for QL. It might not be the best QL front end out there, but it meets all my needs. (well, it should, I wrote it )