Publisher(s): Curry Computer
Thank you to Tim Swenson for preserving and providing many issues.
| Title | Description | Computers |
|---|---|---|
| Abacus Info | We haven’t mentioned much about QLSS or Abacus. We want to draw your attention to some of the nicer features of this excellent spreadsheet. First, buried deep in the back of the QL User Guide, in the information section, is a description of how to change typestyles. For example, suppose you want to have your […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Adding Fields in Archive | We have a tip that may help some of you who are just starting to create dbf files with ARCHIVE. Suppose, for example, you have typed in 50 some odd records and then discover you have forgotten a field you need. The usual method of correcting this is to write a short procedure from Within […] | Sinclair QL |
| Addressing Devices in Pascal | Pascal is a language that was designed to work with files, rather than channels (as BASIC does). In general terms, this should make no difference in most cases, but it does when we want to send output to different location. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Attention QCode Users | l recently made a discovery while considering the alteration of the terminal code, so | could have a carriage return placed in a macrostring in QCODE. Hayes compatible modems require a CR (carriage return) at the end of each command to modem. If you press the ENTER key while editing your macrostrings in QCODE, you […] | Sinclair QL |
| Basic Archive | ARCHIVE, as everyone knows, is a very powerful database. Unfortunately, it is only as powerful as you are a programmer. Anyone con create a mailing list file, or a customer file or a stock file. It is the ability to write procedures which utilize the information in the records that makes ARCHIVE one of the […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Bits and Pieces | We have some items we want to mention. Brett Lidstone in Canada is having problems connecting a Hayes 300/1200 baud modem to his QL. He cannot get it to work either with the modapter or just with a straight cable. If anyone out there has been successful in hooking up a Hayes, write us and […] | Sinclair QL |
| Commands without Numbers | The QL has several ways of accepting SuperBASIC commands. The most often thought of method is a program with the characteristic line number followed by a command (Example: 100 print “hello!”). The other method is more or less taken for granted. The immediate mode for entering code, loading programs (example: PRINT “hello!” <ENTER>) is usually […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| D.I.Y. Keyboard | Since on interest had been expressed in a lower priced replacement keyboard for the QL, I determined to attempt to build one. The following will relate my experience. | Sinclair QL |
| Desktop Helpful Hints | We are very much indebted to Joe Morris for his simple but overlooked advice on making it easier to import QUILL documents into DESKTOP PUBLISHER. All you have to do is to run your”install_bas” program from QUILL and set up a printer driver that only has a carriage return, not a carriage return and a […] | Sinclair QL |
| Desktop Publisher vs Front Page Extra | One of the biggest growth areas in microcomputer applications today is DESKTOP PUBLISHING. A key requirement of such programs is the effective combination of text and graphics on a multi-page basis. Several commercial programs of this type, such as Ventura Publisher and Pagemaker, are available for the Macintosh, IBM, Atari ST, and Amiga lines of […] | Sinclair QL |
| Directory Into Memory | I have seen a number of programs using a microdrive file containing a directory listing. The problem is copying, deleting, etc. as using the file means that the file must be accessed for each task and slows operations down to a crawl. Utilizing the follawing listing af PROCedure’s can allow you to write utilities in […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Eidersoft Troubles? | When we received a recent order from Digital Precision, Freddy Vacha had scribbled on the bottom of the invoice, “Friendly tip-Eidersoft in trouble.” Eidersoft was one of the first companies to support the QL and has produced some excellent QL software and hardware- I.C.E., Aspell, Karate, ICICLE, their Mouse System, and were listed as the […] | Sinclair QL |
| File Peekin’ | Have you ever wondered what was in a file on the microdrive? I guess I must be the curious type! I just had to find out, but it took me awhile to discover a method for doing so. In the past I had always opened a channel for input and then used the INPUT keyword […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Fractured Fractals | You have no doubt seen some computer generated landscapes or other objects. If you saw any of the Star Trek movies, you did see a computer representation of an object on the screen amde up of repetetive squares, triangles, circles or curving lines. Unless the geometric objects making up the surfaces are filled in or […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Helpful Hints | We received the following letter and although have mentioned this tip in a previous issue of QLR, feel it should be stated again because it is useful. | Sinclair QL |
| Hidden File | Mme day while doing some chores on the QL I saved a file, but I actually made a mistake, In haste I forgot to include the name of my file. When I realized this, I had already pressed the ENTER key. To my amazement, the computer went right on and saved my file. My curiosity […] | Sinclair QL |
| How Does It Measure Up? | Although we are living in the “digital age”, sometimes it’s fun to measure something the old fashioned way. Everything seems to have a digital display attached to it now days. Just take a look at the dash board of a new car. What happened to the needles, gauges, hands and clock faces? They’re all digital […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| lfx_bas | I guess that if you enjoy programming like I do you produce a lot of programs. Unfortunately, many of them you almost never use and others you probably should use more often, but you just don’t get around to it. Then there is that rare program that becomes a part of your regular routine when […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Local Variables | “What are local variables, anyway?” This was one of the questions I asked myself when I first read my QL USER GUIDE. Of course, I didn’t know what a PROCedure was either. Soon I discovered that I had been using global variables all along and didn’t even know it. Local variables are used within a […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Microdrive Imaging | The Trump Card and certain other boards have a very neat little method of loading files from microdrive called “Microdrive Imaging”. It produces a microdrive image in your ramdisk. To do this, a ramdisk is formatted with the name of the microdrive required. | Sinclair QL |
| New Version Announced | Digital Precision has just recently released Desktop Publisher Special Edition version 2.0. This new version requires a minimum of 512K RAM and the use of at least a single disk drive. | Sinclair QL |
| New Version of Sidewinder | A new version of SIDEWINDER has been released which will make it more compatible with more printers. The initial version was only intended for printers which were fully compatible with the Epson RX80. | Sinclair QL |
| News from James Cook | We received the following letter from James Cook about two new programs written by him: “Enclosed is the copy and docs For PRINCOM and BLANKER. It is not copy protected. You can List the lloader program, and VIEW or EDITOR the main programs to get am idea of what is done. It is compiled with […] | Sinclair QL |
| Other News | In the news department, we keep hearing rumours that Amstrad “may” want to do something with the QL but officially they say “no decision has been made.’ | Sinclair QL |
| Pascal Hints | We received the following letter from Carl Kuchte of Lewisville, NC. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| PCB1 | The first of the two printed circuit board designers by Talent has arrived, and it was worth the wait. PCB1 is billed as a single sided circuit board designer with camera ready output and an auto-routing function. The program does not require any extra memory and works with most printers and interfaces. We used both […] | Sinclair QL |
| Price Up on QLs | A Plus Computer Response, the U.S. distributor of the QL, is now out of machines. Mark Steuber of Sharps purchased the remaining units and promptly raised even his price to $149. A Pius was selling the QL for $59.95. A lot of people are grumbling over this increase. We hear through the grapevine that A […] | Sinclair QL |
| Put Your Windows on the Line! | A number of one line program or procedures have been showing up in QL publications lately. I think THE QL REPORT should have one too. The one in the listing that follows sets up the default windous of the QL. First it checks for whether F1 or F2 was pressed, then it sets up windous […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL Graphics | The graphics commands in Superbasic provide a very convenient tool for the screen designer because they automatically look after the X:Y scaling, but this can be a problem if you mix them with pixel based commands like BLOCK, or text positioned with the AT or CURSOR keywords. I had been looking into how one can […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | Vell, here we are in another summer. This is traditionally the time when it slows doun for computer-related businesses. We remember past summers when the doldrums set in and there just wasn’t a lot to talk about. With the QL, however, there is a lot happening, both old and new. We are using SPELLBOUND now […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | We lead off this issue by apologising for jumping the gun about the battery clocks. We knew they were coming and would be here shortly after we went to press and “assumed” that they would work fine, coming from a reliable source. As it turned out, that batch would not work at all. Every time […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Well, we’re back from the Computerfest! It was a long way to go but it was certainly worth it to meet a lot of you face to face. We hope next year to see even more of you. For those of you who were unable to attend, sit back and relax and we’ll tell you […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Happy Tax Day again. We hope you all have your taxes done for Uncle Sam. If not, you’d better buy TAXIUL and get to it: We have finally received THOR and it is now up and running. All we ordered was a barebones one, without QL circuit board or drives. As THOR comes now, the […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | We have a lot of new material to cover in this issue. TRUMP CARD by Miracle Systems is here and is excellent. We had a few “teething” problems with disk drives but everything now is working fine. On Mitsubishi drives, the drive light will stay on when using TRUMP. It is a minor inconvenience and […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | It looks like we will be going to the Computerfest in Indianapolis this year. The dates for the show are May 2nd and 3rd. We will be taking our whole point of sale system and doing invoices on it in the booth so stop on by and say hello. We are tentatively scheduled to give […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | This is the last issue of the QL Report. We started this publication in February 1985, offering it for free to get people interested in the QL. The QL had not even been released in the States yet but we were so impressed with the machine we wanted to “drum up” interest in the machine […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | This is the first issue of the QL Report printed with Front Page by Gap Software. We probably will do the front page of the QLR every month using this format but the rest of the Report will be in our old-style format. | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | The big news this month, as most of you by now should know, is that you can order the QL from American Express. That is the good news. The bad news is, of course, you have to have an American Express card. The cost is $ 499 plus $ 8 shipping plus the applicable sales […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Happy New Year! We hope 1987 is a good year for you. The year starts with QL “clones” being in the news. Both CST’s THOR and Sandy’s new FUTURA are causing a lot of interest in the UK. We think it is a good sign that companies are so very interested in further developing QL […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | On Monday, June 17th, the Wall Street Journal reported that controlling interest in Sinclair Research was purchased by Robert Maxwell, owner of Pergamon Press • Ltd. Mr. Maxwell injected about 12 million pounds sterling into the company. Sir Clive’s stake in the company will drop from 85% to 15% ; Mr. Maxwell will take over […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | So it is August and within the last month the 68000 market has really heated up! Commodore unveiled the highly touted (and highly priced) Amiga on July 23rd in Lincoln Center, but probably will not begin shipping until September. Atari shipped a couple of thousand 520 ST’s to distributers last week and promised to ship […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Happy Holidays to all of you out there. It’s hard te believe this issue marks the end of almost two full years of publishing the QLR. The January issue will mark the beginning of our third rear as the oldest QL periodical in the States. We thank all of you for subscribing and hope you […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | This is our second Report using Digital Precision’s DESKTOP PUBLISHER (DP) only this time we are actually writing the Report from within DP with the help of SPELLBOUND. The two so far seem to work find together. As we have said before, we dislike the fact that DP will not word-wrap but that is the […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Finally the GL is shipping. These last few months have been chaotic to say the least. In the August Report we stated that Robert Maxwell had purchased a controlling interest in Sinclair Research. In early August Maxwell withdrew his offer which was to have been finalized in September. Although still suffering from acute cash flow […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Effective today, the price of the QL drops to $299.95 and is available from Curry Computer. Our first order is pending. All Sinclair brand QL software will only be available through dealers such as Curry Computer. We also will be stocking the Sinclair Flat Screen TV which will retail for $99.95 and can be used […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | We lead off this issue with the news that Pyramide has released two mew titles for the GL. The first is GRAPHIC TOOLKIT which we will review later. The second is MORTVILLE’S MANOR which had to be converted for U.S. machines. MM is the first graphic text adventure game for the GL and is excellent. […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Well, Merry Christmas! We hope you all had a Happy 1985 and that 1986 will be an even better year for all of you. A lot has happened in this year- in February of 1985 when we started this Report, we had our British QL and were patiently waiting for the release of the QL […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Fall is here and with it comes a lot of new software £ and some hardware) for the QL. As we mentioned in the August issue, PC TALKER is now available for immediate shipment. This is probably the most interesting and exciting new piece of hardware to come along for the QL in quite awhile. […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | Greetings from London! This issue we are “on the road” attending the PCW Show at the Olympia in London. We will be giving a full report on the show, on the status of the QL, and on new hardware and software, later in this issue. First, though, some news of interest. We have been experimenting […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | Happy New Year to all of you. We want to start 1986 by thanking all of you for subscribing to our Report. Monthly you will be kept up to date on all the latest software and hardware for the QL. In addition, we will keep you informed on the latest news pertaining to Sinclair Research […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | As we head into autumn, we start this issue with some newsworthy items. Freddy Vacha of Digital Precision has informed us that “Eidersoft is kaput (the Atari ST did it, NOT the QL) and their QL business will either be taken over by Transform or ourselves.” All of Eidersoft’s QL products are still readily available, […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL News | There was a QL meeting of sorts held on June 23rd in England. Most of the third party companies sent representatives. John Tweedy of Talent told us not much seemed to be accomplished except a committment by all to continue to support the machine, come what may. Amstrad has not sold the rights to anyone […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | We lead off this issue with the exciting news that finally you can use your QL for telecommunications. We have successfully connected a modem using a special piece of hardware. This adapter plugs into serial 2 and can be set for either 300 or 1200 baud. The other end has a standard DB-25 male connecter. […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | Well, here comes the summer. The QL has now been out one year in the U.S. We have gone from an unexpanded machine with four business programs and a few “Vic-20” type games to a 640k powerhouse with programs like QSPELL, GRAPHIQL, CONCEPT 3D, and WANDERER. Now available, as we stated last issue, is CONCEPT […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | We lead off this issue with a note of optimism. The following is a news squib we received from Mark Fendrick who got it from a news publication in the U.K. It is dated April 29th so it is reasonably current. Last Monday saw several ex-members of Sinclair Research starting work at Amstrad’s HQ at […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | We are seeing a very large increase in the number of QL sales which began last month. Word of mouth from satisfied owners is probably doing more to generate sales than a glossy ad in a nation-wide magazine, although that wouldn’t hurt. Sinclair Research launched the Spectrum 128k in England last month, as most of […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | Well, Happy Tax Day. We hope you all have your returns going out on this date–at the latest. Let’s hope by this time next year there will be a good tax program available for the QL. The machine has finally been out long enough in this country so that “American” software is being introduced. War […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| QL News | May is here and hopefully the QL will be too sometime soon . We have seen a lot of new product come into our offices this past month. We have the Computamate Q-Disk interface connected to our machine and are running a double-sided single drive capable of storing 700k worth of data! Two such drives […] | Sinclair QL |
| QL World Tidbits | For those of you who would like more information on a comparison between the two desktop programs for the QL, the August issue of QL World also has an article on similarities and differences between the two. | Sinclair QL |
| Review of Front Page | Gap Software has recently released FRONT PAGE, the first desk top publishing program available for use on the Sinclair QL. The program, while not as comprehensive as Pagemaker or Desk Top Publishing on the Macintosh or IBM, does provide the basic tools needed to quickly generate full-page column-oriented text and graphics suitable for advertising flyers, […] | Sinclair QL |
| Review of Pyramide’s Graphic Toolkit | This latest software package from the French company Pyramide, renowned for such favorites as Wanderer and Vroom, provides a wealth of SuperBASIC extensions aimed at extending the graphic and screen-handling capabilities of the QL. While a few of the some 70+ extensions are duplicated in other toolkits, many are new and quite innovative. | Sinclair QL |
| Review of Talent’s Basic-Ally | Basic-Ally is a program no user of Superbasic should be without.It is a debug and trace utility which makes finding and correcting mistakes in Superbasic programs both fast and easy. The output is presented in a manner very similar to Talent’s Assembler Workbench, since both programs were written by the same author, Eddy Yeung. | Sinclair QL |
| RLE and Desktop | RLE stands for Run-time encoded grophics and we first did an article on it in an issue of QLR last year. We printed a listing by Norm Lehfeldt which enabled you to download pictures from Compuserve (they have a whole section for screen pictures of all types) onto your monitor. With one of many of […] | Sinclair QL |
| Sidewinder | Sidewinder is basically a screen dump program with a difference. It is a set of utilities that not only allows you to dump a screen from any graphic program, but also gives you the facilities to alter your graphic, as in a drawing program. | Sinclair QL |
| Spinning Rings | Every now and then it is a good idea to explore or review a command in detail. The listing of spin_ring_bas is included below in order to demonstrate some of the aspects of the Superbasic command CIRCLE. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| The Schon Replacement Keyboard | The SCHON replacement keyboard is supplied in two parts, the keyboard-circuit board, and a new case top that fits directly onto a standard QL base. A one page set of instructions is provided that are very clear and easy to follow, and it should not take more than 19 minutes to complete the exchange of […] | Sinclair QL |
| There’s Bugs in My SuperBasic Part One | Digital Precision has a sheet with the above-mentioned name that lists most known bugs and what the “fix” is for each, if any. We will list some of them in this Report and finish the list either next month or the month after. We hope it proves beneficial. | Sinclair QL |
| There’s Bugs in My SuperBasic Part Two | This is the second and final part in a listing we received from Digital Precision that we started in last month’s issue. We hope you find it useful. | Sinclair QL |
| Thor Notes | Networking a Trump QL to Thor has proved to be a very nice combination. | Sinclair QL |
| Ultrasoft GCK | There are many toolkits in the market for the QL. All of them offer some amount of extensions dedicated to graphics. The Ultrasoft Graphic Construction Kit (GCK) is a newcomer that is entirely dedicated to graphics and offers several unique features compared to the others. | Sinclair QL |
| Working With Pascal Files | A reader wrote this month with a problem that is certainly not unique to programmers who are trying to learn Pascal. His problem was how to do I/O. While I went over his sample code, I found a number of other basic errors, again of a type that are not uncommon to novices to this […] | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Zitasoft Programs | Zitasoft has some new titles out we want to draw your attention to. A lot of you have heard of 4MATTER ond LOCKSMITHE. LOCKSMITHE will allow you to make on identical copy of practically any microdrive original cartridge. You would, in a lot of cases, still need to first make a backup and have an […] | Sinclair QL |
Last updated: February 14, 2026