The Sinclair QL Forum

Ever wanted to have command line history in Minerva by just pressing the up/down arrow keys, just as in SMSQ/E? Well, Minerva now has it!

I have backported the HISTORY device from SMSQ/E and implemented it in Minerva's command line editor. The HISTORY device is also included in the Min4Q68 add-on ROM image, so it's immediately available on startup.

If you are a Minerva fan but don't have a Q68 or QIMSI Gold, don't despair - I have also built a new standalone version of the Minerva ROM which includes the command line history feature. You only have to load the hist_bin extension in your BOOT file to use it. Of course this also includes the HISTORY device from SMSQ/E.

The new release is available at https://github.com/SinclairQL/Minerva4Q ... /tag/v1.70

Happy QL'ing,
Jan

Hi Jan,

this is fantastic news! Much better than the old history extensions, where I even had to use different versions, depending on what other software I was using. Also thanks to Marcel Kilgus, who (I think) wrote the SMSQ/E commandline history. Makes life so much easier.

Great job! All the best
Peter

janbredenbeek wrote: Fri Aug 01, 2025 10:33 pm Ever wanted to have command line history in Minerva by just pressing the up/down arrow keys, just as in SMSQ/E? Well, Minerva now has it!

I have backported the HISTORY device from SMSQ/E and implemented it in Minerva's command line editor. The HISTORY device is also included in the Min4Q68 add-on ROM image, so it's immediately available on startup.

If you are a Minerva fan but don't have a Q68 or QIMSI Gold, don't despair - I have also built a new standalone version of the Minerva ROM which includes the command line history feature. You only have to load the hist_bin extension in your BOOT file to use it. Of course this also includes the HISTORY device from SMSQ/E.

The new release is available at https://github.com/SinclairQL/Minerva4Q ... /tag/v1.70

Happy QL'ing,
Jan

Jan,
great! Command line history is something you simply take for granted after a while and it annoys me pretty much when I have a shell that doesn't have it.....

Did you change the annoying feature of the original history device that placed the cursor at the beginning of a re-called line instead of at the end?

sQLux 1,1 / Q-Emulator
Minerva_1.98a1.bin
TK236.rom
hist_bin l,2668
lrespr hist_bin
History device for Minerva v1 JB 2025
but
no keyword with extras
and no history function
qpac2 channels shows


whats going on ?

Markus

desin wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 11:26 am sQLux 1,1 / Q-Emulator
Minerva_1.98a1.bin
TK236.rom
hist_bin l,2668
lrespr hist_bin
History device for Minerva v1 JB 2025
but
no keyword with extras
and no history function
qpac2 channels shows


whats going on ?

Markus

You must use the 1.98j1 Minerva version included in the distribution to use it from Minerva. With other versions you will get the HISTORY device, but no command line history (it required changes to the Minerva code too).

tofro wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 10:41 am
Jan,
great! Command line history is something you simply take for granted after a while and it annoys me pretty much when I have a shell that doesn't have it.....

Well, that was exactly what annoyed me too... With TK2 alt-enter you've got some form of history, but not quite what it should be.

Did you change the annoying feature of the original history device that placed the cursor at the beginning of a re-called line instead of at the end?

I've backported most of the code from SMSQ/E and as far as I can see it works exactly the same way (meaning the cursor is at the end).
I did not go the way of messing about with the CON driver, there is already too much software doing that...

tofro wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 10:41 amDid you change the annoying feature of the original history device that placed the cursor at the beginning of a re-called line instead of at the end?

??? If recall the last line in QPC2, the cursor is at the end. Or do you mean something different?

Hi Jan!

janbredenbeek wrote: Fri Aug 01, 2025 10:33 pm Ever wanted to have command line history in Minerva by just pressing the up/down arrow keys, just as in SMSQ/E? Well, Minerva now has it!

Brill!

On a day to day basis, command-line history is the only thing I really miss when switching from SMSQe to Minnie (I know, sacrilegious to admit that!)

Now, I need to try Minnie4Q68 again - it's been a while.

Thank you, thank you

RalfR wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 12:34 pm

tofro wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 10:41 amDid you change the annoying feature of the original history device that placed the cursor at the beginning of a re-called line instead of at the end?

??? If recall the last line in QPC2, the cursor is at the end. Or do you mean something different?

I was talking about the history device driver for QDOS (an ancient piece of software). QPC2/SMSQ/E does it properly.

Hi Peter,

Peter wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 9:45 am Hi Jan,

this is fantastic news! Much better than the old history extensions, where I even had to use different versions, depending on what other software I was using. Also thanks to Marcel Kilgus, who (I think) wrote the SMSQ/E commandline history. Makes life so much easier.

Thanks to Mark Swift, I fixed another long-standing bug that affects 68020+ processors. On these processors, the SSP would get a wrong value of $28482 instead of $28480 because the RTE instruction works differently. I'm not able to test this because I have no 68020+ equipment to test, but I'm curious about the result.

I've also succeeded in extracting the Q68 SD card driver from the SMSQ/E source, but so far I haven't been able to get it working on Minerva. Another problem is that this driver is much larger (>32K) than the current driver, which would cause the size of the ROM image to bump to well over 80K, eliminating the possibility to include another extension ROM.

So, this remains a project on my to-do list...