I am back again to share with you both those things I have found out about Sinclair computers and those questions I still have unanswered. These thoughts are not particularly ordered, but that is why I call them meanderings.
First of all a tip for those who are fairly new to the QL and who have heard other users talking about what ROM version they are using. Did you ever get curious at that time as to “which version do I have?” How to find out? Fire up your computer and type in the following: PRINT VER$, and then hit the enter key. In the upper left hand corner of the screen you should see something like: AH, JM, JS, JSU, MG, MGUK, or MGUS, etc. Now ask your favorite QL guru just what that means. These are all different versions of the operating system and built in Super Basic for your computer.
Now I am going to alternate with a question. I recently got together with Frank Davis and he showed me some used Schoen keyboards that were meant to replace membrane and keys used on the QL. These are a few years old, and need some minor repair to the connectors. What he did not have was instructions or any data sheets on them. Anyone out there who has this information or other data on them…..please contact us or send us a copy so we can get them up and running.
I have a similar request on the ABC MEGA RAM board. Both Paul Holmgren and I have one each already installed in computers that appear to be working, but not accessing the extra RAM. I have been told that the command RAMEX will access the extra memory. I still need to know information as to how this partitioned up and how to add the other two possible megs of memory. You probably guessed we have no docs for these also.
Here’s a tip for those of you that have and use Tony Tebby‘s Super Toolkit II. After initializing TK II, and you have a disk that is full of files, here is a useful trick to limit the amount of files you need to check when you do a DIR (the command used to get a listing of files on a disk). For example you only want to know about DOC files on the disk, so type in WDIR flp1_DOC, and it will list out only those files ending in the DOC suffix.The same goes for ABA, etc. I have found this does not work on my Gold Card version of TK II, so perhaps there has been a change somewhere along the way. I will let you know more on this if I find out. The ROM version on my Gold Card is 2.25, so perhaps this is just another bug in it. One thing I have noticed in it that I consider a bug is it’s disregard of 360K disk drives. It will not format disks on them as 360K (720 sectors). It tries to format them as 720K disks and falsely tells you that you have 1440 sectors. You will have problems if you try to use this disk. This also creates read/write problems when trying to use the standard 360K disks while using PC Conqueror or Solution or the CPM emulators on the QL. I wrote to Miracle about this and hope for a new ROM soon. 720, 1.4 and 3.2 drives seem to have no problem with this ROM version on the Gold Card.
While on the subject of Toolkit II, did all of you know that with TKII you can overwrite existing files, and are politely asked if you wish to do so? When you do not have this utility and are just in Super Basic, you are told you can not overwrite the existing file. This makes TKII very handy for updating existing files.
Miracle Systems has been shipping the 3.2 drives to work with their Gold Card and have sort of promised to have their new VGA Graphics card out for the QL later this year. Besides 256 colors it will also have a parallel port and a true serial port for the QL. The QL is not dead!