The Jochen Merz Story

Growing Up With Sinclair Computers

I’m not very good writing in English. Well enough for you to understand my technical manuals, but definitely not for curriculum vitae. Anyway, you should understand what I’m talking about, and if not, condemn the German education system for being unable to teach proper English.

The most interesting year was 1980 – I was a 14-year-old boy who was very interested in computers you could see in large stores, such as the P.E.T. and similar Commodore machines or the Tandy models – all far too expensive! Then, in the same year, a German magazine reported about a revolution in computer technology – the ZX80. Of course, I ordered one, but it was a big problem as Sinclair Germany badly represented Sinclair (always did, and even became worse).

Problems with different tape recorders forced me to return the machine three times, but it was still worth the effort. The next add-on was the 16K RAM pack (again, problems) and the ROM upgrade to make it ZX81 compatible, which was available quite soon after I got my ZX80 working. This was followed by problems with the ZX Printer, which took over six months to arrive – but as a Sinclair customer you get used to problems.

At the time the only real competitors were the VC20 (terrible, think of the screen resolution) or the ATARI machines, which were good but unaffordable. I stuck to the ZX80, upgraded soon to the ZX81 and bought all kinds of stuff for it. In those days no one was writing programs for the machine, so I started doing it. Some friends joined in, and some small games and utilities were sold.

Other companies charged huge amounts of money for their programs, but I never did. Without being able to get books it was very difficult to learn machine code programming. 1 took the opportunity and wrote a book (in German) explaining the ZX80 processor and how to use it on the ZX81. This book was printed by Profisoft, a company every ZX and Spectrum user will probably remember. The first real machine code program was a game Alien Curse, written together with a friend (also sold by Profisoft). I’ve always enjoyed programming games but this is unfortunately a very thankless job in financial terms. (I always liked playing Arcades and still like them very much).

I bought a ZX Spectrum as soon as it became available. Add-ons followed as soon as possible, like the Interface 1 and 2, Beta-Disk interfaces and similar things (when I think about it, I spent an enormous amount of money for useless things like Lightpens etc. – but probably every computer enthusiast did and still does). I wrote games for the Spectrum, also sold by Profisoft, a thicker machine-code-book followed and a book describing the facilities of the Interface 2.

In those days not very many Germans programmed for the “English machines”, and the revenue from all the things I did was next to nothing. Large companies earned money by selling the stuff developed by kids who did not know business but knew how to program. From time to time I had the chance to try other machines, e.g. C64 or the Memotech series.

1 always preferred the Sinclair machines, because of the much better BASIC (it was always better, compared to competitors). I also did other jobs for Profisoft, translations, service etc. When things became too bad I told them to stop selling my stuff and that I’d chosen another German software company. Together with friends developments like ROM modifications were done and I started writing tools like a disassembler, disk doctors and similar things, all for the Speccy. In the beginning everything was fine but after a short while I noticed that this company was starting to cheat me. At the same time I visited two or three Microfairs, I’ve always loved large British computer shows.

Then the QL appeared and I bought one for a lot of money, together with a CST disk interface and two disk drives – it cost a fortune back then. I was impressed by the power of the system, forgot about the Spectrum and started learning 68000 machine code – again without any help, books etc.

And then, for me, the most interesting computing time started: the first program on the QL was PENGI (or PINGO), sold to ABC Electronic in exchange for better QL equipment (i.e. 3.5″ Disk drives etc.). For being the first go on an unknown machine, especially in machine-code, the game was quite good and people still like it.

Encouraged by this, ABC asked me to program a graphics program which could be used with his mouse interface – a revolution those days (Andreas Budde always loved the Mac, so he introduced a mouse to the QL). This lead me to GigaChrome – QL users which know the scene for more than 7 years will probably remember it.

Other things followed, Toolkits, QWriter etc., and again | was swindled by English dealers (I can’t remember the names, it’s too long ago). But I can remember another person which had a very bad influence on the German QL scene, to the German QL club, and to many members including myself: Mr. David B. Smith – since disappeared and never seen again. He and Martin Bernd created Ultrasoft and after Mr. Smith disappeared, Mr. Bernd continued with Ultrasoft and with selling my products, but problems continued. I finished school, did civilian work (you have to, if you’re not going into the army) and started being a student. This left me with enough spare time to allow me to decide to do everything myself: production, copying, sale (and some jobs and service for ABC). This lead to much better customer relations, better service and I immediately noticed that all those people earned a lot of money out of my work. When I think about the connections I have today with the number of QL users which existed 5 years ago they must have made A LOT OF MONEY! Again, I learned and paid my dues, and now I think I’m clever enough to avoid these problems. Unfortunately, times have changed, and it does not make a lot of sense to warn young QL programmers now: almost no-one produces software!

OK, back to the good stories: I visited nearly every Microfair and this is where I first discovered QRAM. The version which was sold had only two options: Files and Jobs, but it was very impressive! I can remember it as if it happened yesterday. I was so impatient that I could not wait to get home and load it into my machine. The only thing I knew was: this was the best I’d ever seen and I wanted to use this environment. I asked QJUMP for documentation, and from that point onwards, all programs written by me used the Pointer Environment.

From here on everything is probably within the memory of most QL-users: many, many products have been developed and they all use the Pointer Environment – the way to the future was clear to me as soon as it was released. From time to time I visited Tony Tebby in England and some new definitions were done which lead to improvements on the software. For example, on one visit I brought the first Menu Extension over, implemented as a set of vectors. Within two days Tony extended the Thing interface and I changed Menu to use it – and the real Menu Extension Thing was born!

Bad news – the sale of Sinclair, Amstrads drawback of the QL etc. did not make me surrender – in fact it encouraged me. But, a replacement for the QL had to be developed, that was for sure. The Futura had been dead for years, Thors -(hmmmm, who really wants a Thor???), all in all it was never a good idea to produce my own machine. Others can do it better and cheaper, and when a customer wants to spend a lot of money he does not want to spend it for a machine which will never be supported by any company but the small one who produces 50 or a hundred!

I thought the Norwegian company which produced the QL-Emulator for the ATARI ST did the right thing. ATARI’s were cheap, good machines, very similar to the QL, and the most flexible machine you could buy. Even in the beginning you could turn it into a Mac or DOS machine, the TOS programs were not that bad (and now some are quite good), and being able to emulate QDOS made it perfect. Tony Tebby improved the drivers and this was the final clue that for me, this was it!

The Norwegian emulators had some disadvantages: they were unique and therefore expensive. A very good friend thought about another solution, which would be cheaper and more flexible, and this lead to the production of the Extended4-emulator. This gave Tony Tebby the opportunity to see how programs behave in different screen resolutions. The Extended4-emulator was the first thing which had higher resolution than 512×256 pixels. The result was not very surprising. With the exception of Tony’s and my software, next to nothing worked properly. This was a good demonstration on why programmers should stick to good programming rules. The appearance of this card forced programmers to program in a better way, and this prepared the way for future screen resolutions!

I could take the opportunity now and write about the products you can get from me, but this would fill up many many pages. I won’t do it, because I think this article is the wrong place. I don’t like selling products by saying: here is the product, you definitely need it. I prefer the other way: a customer needs something and maybe I can offer them the right program.

There are so many things I could write about, but you’re probably already tired. At the moment I’m still studying computer science, but I find it very boring and, to be honest, the QL keeps me busy seven days a week, although less than 10% of my time is left for programming and this worries me a bit.

Despite the fact that you cannot get rich programming for the QL (not even earn a living), it is still a lot of fun because the machine is good and the users are nice. I always enjoy meetings throughout Europe and I love to meet the customers personally. I think there isa kind of “family” touch with many customers.

I want to thank all the customers which helped me to support the QDOS world by being honest. It seems that people have understood that no QL programmer expects to sell tens of thousands or even thousands of their programs, but if they do not sell a fair number then there is no real reason to continue. I’m not speaking on my own behalf now, as I am selling other peoples’ products as well, (under fair conditions, of course). These people do not make a living out of it, (in fact they could not), but it is very disappointing if the work is completely ignored.

I do not want to miss the QDOS scene, and I think most of you do not want this either. I am sure that I will continue to provide support for as long as possible, and at present it looks like as if it will be possible for a long time. This really depends on YOU: support the QL by writing programs (if they are not commercially viable, then put them into PD or club libraries etc.), by writing articles and of course by not forgetting us, the few QL dealers which are left.

You may think now that I’m doing nothing but sitting in front of my computers: in fact, I’m spending an average of 9 to 10 hours a day for computers, but not necessarily with computers. I meet a number of people every day and that’s very important, I think. It gives also a lot of fun playing Popoulus II against a friend or the girl friend on two machines! Try it!

Even I have to take some spare days from time to time – I like skiing very much and I love staying two weeks a year at Miami Beach for summer holidays without a computer.

So, that’s it for now. The future will bring us many new items, be sure, but at present I am working on the software for our new QVME QL-Emulator card for the Mega STE and TT. Right now, it is running perfectly, but the same software refuses to run on my 68030 machine. It will be solved, but it is more fun to see what the card is able to do: can you imagine text87 at 900 by 900 pixels? Or a Files menu with 60 rows and 7 columns? Fantastic! The only things QDOS lacks now is a font size larger than 6×10 pixels.

OK, enough. Thank you very much for reading my story.