| A Short History of the Sinclair QL | A brief history of the Sinclair QL from its January 1984 launch: the choice of the 68008 over the Z80 and 68000, GST's abandoned CP/M-68K, Tony Tebby's QDOS and Jan Jones's SuperBASIC, and the succession of ROM versions (FB, PM, EL, TB, AH, JM, JS, the American JSU and the continental MG variants). It also traces the Psion programs from their C origins on a VAX with an MS-DOS emulator through versions 2, 2.1, 2.3 (QL network), 2.35 and Archive 2.38. | Sinclair QL |
| CIMENT_BAS | Jean-Claude Touzin's CIMENT_BAS, a SuperBASIC concrete calculator for home renovation projects. Given rectangular or cylindrical sections in feet and a cement:gravel ratio, it reports the volume in cubic feet and yards, the number of bags of cement, the gravel needed and approximate truckloads, the total weight, and the slab's thermal capacity in Btu per degree F. A worked example (a 12 by 20 foot driveway, 4 inches thick) and the full listing are given. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL Resources: Reader Survey | At a reader's request, QL_DOC launches a survey of its readers to find the typical QL configuration and the most-used applications, and to match readers who could help others (for example with Abacus) with those who need help. The questionnaire asks how long readers have owned a QL, their satisfaction, peripherals, main activity, which other computer they would buy, their opinion of QL_DOC's content, price, format and quality, and in which hardware or software areas they could give or need help. | Sinclair QL |
| QL_DOC Software: Public Domain List No. 2 | The second list (May 1988) of public domain QL software that QL_DOC distributes to readers for $2 postage per group on readers' own microdrives or disks. Groups 1-3 repeat the first list (Archive library manager, utilities, font tools, SEDIT_BAS and SuperBASIC extensions); a new Group 4 adds SHRINK_BOOT, MEMORY_EXE, SPRITE_COM, TRACE_COM, the 68008 disassembler DESASM_BAS, SCRUTIL_COM and SCREENS_COM. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: Why the QL? | The editor answers the "why not a PC?" soul-searching in American Sinclair newsletters: it is simply fun, and he compares the PC, Atari ST, Amiga and Macintosh before calling the QL the only logical choice despite its scarcity. He announces that SNUG, the Sinclair North America Users Group, is being formed, with a contact address, and gives his own new address from 1 July 1988. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: a review of the Z88 in the April 1988 issue of PICO magazine, with Sharp's Inc.'s US price list for the Z88 and its memory, XMODEM software and magazine; Quantum Levels, an American QL magazine from the publishers of SyncWare News; the QZX Timex-Sinclair group for ham radio operators; version 2 of GAP Software's Front Page Extra (faster printing, hi-res characters, finer window placement); the bankruptcy of New Jersey dealer Quantum Computing; Mandelbrot fractals, the Amygdala newsletter, Ultrasoft's Mandelbrot Magic and a QL_DOC demo disk; and the Orlando Winterfest 1988, where A+ Computer sold complete QLs for $75 US. | Cambridge Z88, Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair QL Peripherals | A buyer's guide to standard peripherals for the Sinclair QL, with typical 1988 prices: TV, composite and RGB monitors (and combined TV-monitors), floppy disk controllers such as Cumana's or Sandy's Super-Q-Board with 5.25" or 3.5" drives and a power supply, serial and parallel printers (a Miracle Systems serial-to-parallel converter, Epson compatibility, NLQ), 300 baud modems with Miracle Systems' Modaptor and Hayes-compatible 1200 baud modems on SER2, joysticks, and a Commodore 64 mouse. | Sinclair QL |
| The Little Secrets of Archive | A complete list of the undocumented control codes (CHR 0 to 31) in Psion's Archive database for the Sinclair QL, which came to light in Quanta and in Informa, the bulletin of the club QL Contact France, and originate in the manual of the run-time version of Archive. The codes set ink and paper, repeat characters, move and hide the cursor, define windows, scroll, control line wrap, clear parts of the screen and position the print point. It also lists the box-drawing characters available in SEDIT from Archive version 2.35 by pressing F5 and a key from a to k. | Sinclair QL |
