Individual Publisher(s): Real Gagnon
This newsletter, published in French by Real Gagnon, covered the Sinclair QL computer.
| Title | Description | Computers |
|---|---|---|
| A New FORMAT | FORMAT_BIN, a public-domain 68000 SuperBASIC extension by Réal Gagnon (November 1989) that redefines the dangerous FORMAT command: the medium name must now be given in quotes, a warning appears, and formatting starts only when F1 is pressed. It works on QLs with JS or JSU ROMs. The program can be ordered from QL_DOC for $4 plus a medium, created with the given SuperBASIC loader and DATA lines, or assembled from the listed source with an assembler such as Metacomco's. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| 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 |
| Abaclav_exe | ABACLAV_EXE, a small 68000 machine-code job for the QL that speeds up data entry in the Abacus spreadsheet: ALT plus a cursor key sends ENTER followed by that cursor key in one step. The article explains how the job sets its priority, prints a welcome message with UT_MTEXT, finds the system variables with MT_INF and scans SV_ARBUF, then gives the full commented assembler source (version .05, January 1989) and a public-domain SuperBASIC loader with DATA statements that writes the executable file. Readers could also order it on microdrive for $6. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Abacus Application: Sorting Files | An alternative to DLO_BAS for listing a disk or microdrive directory in sorted columns, using Psion's Abacus spreadsheet. A short SuperBASIC program by Réal Gagnon writes the directory to a DIRECT_EXP file in Abacus's import format (quoted strings separated by commas); the article then gives the Abacus key sequences to import it, sort it with ORDER, arrange it in columns with COPY, widen cells with GRID WIDTH and clear the leftovers with RUBOUT. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Abacus Applications: Adding Times and Printer Codes | Two Abacus spreadsheet tips. The first adds up hours and minutes in separate columns with SUM and INT formulas, noting that Abacus lacks a MOD function. The second sends printer control codes from a cell by starting it with CHR(0): compressed mode (up to 132 or 160 characters per line, with the printer paper width set under DESIGN) and underlining on and off. | Sinclair QL |
| ACT Special Edition (Review) | S. Vandezande reviews Digital Precision's ACT (Adventure Creation Tool) Special Edition, an improved version of Shadow Games' APT. It describes the graphics designer (GDES_task), the sound editor, the vocabulary, location and message editors and the CAPTAIN linker, and the two example games on the disk, including Imagine. Verdict: very good for anyone planning to write and sell several adventures, but slow to learn. Price 49.95 pounds. | Sinclair QL |
| Archive English/French Dictionary | A two-page table pairing the English command and function names of Psion Archive with their equivalents in the French version of Archive (available from QL_DOC), credited in the editorial to the French QLCF club. It ends by explaining how to move programs between the two versions by saving them as objects (SAVE OBJECT / SAUVE OBJET) and loading or running them in the other version. | Sinclair QL |
| BEEP BEEP Yeah!: The SuperBASIC BEEP Command | A parameter-by-parameter explanation of the Sinclair QL's SuperBASIC BEEP command: duration, pitch_a, pitch_b, grad_x, grad_y, wrap, fuzz and random, with their ranges, a worked example of how the pitch steps between two values, and a diagram of the wrap effect. A table gives BEEP settings for sound effects such as a death ray, general alarm, racing car, French police siren, alarm clock and laser. | Sinclair QL |
| Big Letters: The ENLARGE Procedure | A SuperBASIC procedure, ENLARGE, that draws enlarged text on the screen with BLOCK by reading the character patterns of the QL's built-in fonts, taking the string, character spacing, width, height, X and Y position and colour. A short demo (lines 120-230) writes QL_DOC and "Le bulletin QUEBECOIS pour QL seulement" in big shadowed letters and cycles the colours with RECOL. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Bigprint_bas | BIGPRINT, a SuperBASIC procedure that draws large letters on the QL screen by reading the character patterns from the system fonts in ROM, a follow-up to the big-letter procedure in the previous issue. It takes seven parameters (message, style, position, letter width and height, colour) and offers four styles: normal, letters built from the character itself, italic and raised relief. A short demo program and the full listing are given. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Biorhythms_bas | BIORYTHMES_BAS, a SuperBASIC program by JC Touzin of La Sarre, Québec, that asks for a person's birth date and a month and year, then plots the physical, emotional, intellectual and intuition biorhythm curves for that month in four screen windows. It needs a graphics screen-dump routine to print the result, such as GPRINT_PRT from the Easel microdrive, loaded at line 100. A sample screen and the full listing are given. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Blank the Screen | A 68000 assembler program, BLANK_EXE, that blanks the QL's screen after about three minutes without a keypress, to keep a static image from burning into the monitor's phosphor; pressing the space bar brings the screen back. The full commented source is listed, and the author offers the ready-to-use program to readers without an assembler. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Calendar Generator (Version 2) | Jean-Claude Touzin presents a second version of his SuperBASIC calendar generator for the QL (JS ROM), first shown in SIN. Each date now has its own window, so short messages can be shown on any day, and a routine marks recurring work/leave periods of equal length with a chosen letter. The month can be printed with GPRINT_PRT, which must be on the same cartridge; a sample April 1988 printout and the full listing are included. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| 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 |
| Clavier_exe: A Québécois Keyboard | CLAVIER_EXE, a multitasking 68000 job by Réal Gagnon that makes French accents easy to type in Quill, typewriter-style: an apostrophe, double quote or caret before a vowel produces the grave accent, diaeresis or circumflex, and the £ and ~ keys give é and ç. The article explains the QDOS job header, MT_PRIOR and MT_SUSJB, the keyboard system variables and IO.QIN, and why the fixed addresses will not work on a Thor. The commented assembler source and a SuperBASIC DATA loader that saves the job with SEXEC are listed, followed by short notes on QDOS multitasking (EXEC, EXEC_W, SEXEC, RESPR). | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| CPT_bas | CPT_BAS, a SuperBASIC program by Jean-Claude Touzin that calculates the coefficient of heat loss (CPT) of a house from walls, ceiling, doors, windows, foundation and air infiltration, and estimates yearly heating costs by electricity, natural gas, oil, coal and wood. The author explains the importance of accurate input, suggests testing it against an existing house's bills, and notes that sample data can be loaded from DATA lines (option 5 then 3), that it uses a function version of the offset routine, and that it was written on a JS ROM. The roughly 300-line listing follows. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| DLO_BAS | DLO_BAS ("disk label organizer"), a SuperBASIC program that reads a floppy disk's directory, sorts the file names alphabetically and prints a compact disk label on an Epson-compatible printer in elite, compressed and superscript mode. The article explains the printer control codes, how to adapt the program for microdrives, and how to run it; the sort and qsort procedures came from Sinclair QL World. A sample label and the full listing are included. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| DLO_BAS Version 0.6 | Version 0.6 of DLO_BAS (Disk Label Organizer), Réal Gagnon's public-domain SuperBASIC program that reads a floppy or microdrive directory, sorts it alphabetically (with a quicksort procedure credited to Sinclair QL World) and shows or prints it in six columns, with an optional title. Printing can be in very small (superscript compressed) letters for disk labels, compressed for disk sleeves, or normal 80-column. Bugs from the first version are fixed and the user interface is new. A sample screen and the full listing are given. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| ETAT_BIN: A SuperBASIC Extension | ETAT_BIN by W. Lenerz, from the QLCF, adds a SuperBASIC function ETAT that tests whether a file exists before a program tries to copy or open it, returning 0 or the QDOS error code instead of stopping the program with an error. The article explains how to load and call it, gives two usage examples (one a safe file-copy routine), and lists the commented 68000 assembler source, a table of the returned codes, and a universal BASIC loader (CHARGEUR_BAS) with the DATA lines that create ETAT_BIN. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Exploring FLP_ | A guide to the lesser-documented commands of the Tony Tebby floppy-disk toolkit found on most QL disk interfaces (a limited version on the Cumana, full Toolkit II on the Sandy Super-Q-Board): FLP_OPT for safety level, start-up delay and track count, single-sided formatting with an asterisk in the medium name, and direct sector access by opening "flpx_*dyz" with GET, BGET, PUT and BPUT. Three SuperBASIC listings follow: msdisk2_bas, which dumps an MS-DOS disk sector by sector in hex and ASCII, and DISKCOPY_BAS, a fast whole-disk copier, with a slower "elegant" DISKCOPY2 variant. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| French Character Codes of the Sinclair QL and Other Computers | A reference table giving the character codes of the French accented letters (é, è, ê, à, â, î, ô, ù, û, ç) on the Sinclair QL, the IBM PC, the Macintosh, the TRS-80 Model 100 and in the ASCII/ACNOR (Canadian national) set. | Sinclair QL |
| French-Speaking QL: French Characters with Quill | How to print French accented characters from Quill. The article lists the ten TRANSLATEs for an Epson-compatible printer (switching to the French character set with ESC "R" SOH, or building accents with backspace), explains the simpler codes for IBM-graphics printers, and then the TRA command of the JS and JSU ROMs, which can translate any of 255 characters to up to three codes. A SuperBASIC program, TRA2, builds a TRA table file (tra_list) to load from Quill's BOOT; a © character can be mapped to ESC for embedding printer control codes. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Front Page Extra | A review of GAP Software's Front Page Extra, desktop publishing for an expanded QL (384K or more). It keeps two A4 pages in memory, imports Quill _doc files and BASIC listings into columns, offers five fonts (French accents only in the "QL" font), prints on Epson-compatible printers in double or quadruple density, and has a rudimentary line-drawing mode and UDG sets. Verdict: a good product that keeps improving, at £37.95. | Sinclair QL |
| Horloge_bas (Clock Setter) | HORLOGE_BAS, a public-domain SuperBASIC utility by Réal Gagnon for setting the QL's internal clock. The date and time are adjusted with the cursor keys and confirmed with SPACE or ENTER; the result is saved to a HORL_DAT file on FLP1 and read back next time, so usually only the day and hour need changing. A four-line program creates the initial HORL_DAT, and a version compiled with Turbo or QLiberator can be run from a BOOT program. The full listing follows. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Keyrcod & Keycod | Two small SuperBASIC procedures for program development, by Bruno Gadrat of the French QLCF club: KEYRCOD shows the values returned by KEYROW(0) to KEYROW(7) as keys are pressed, and KEYCOD shows the character and code of each key pressed. They are meant to be merged into a program and called by name; CTRL + space leaves them. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Letters (INPUT<->OUTPUT) | Jean-Claude Touzin of La Sarre, Québec asks about Quanta deliveries, RGB TTL monitor signal levels, choosing 3.5" disk drives (NEC FD1035, Citizen) for a Cumana interface in a SPEM case, switching power supplies, and whether magazine type-ins can go into the public-domain library. The editor replies on Quanta's change of editor and secretary, drive heights and specifications, the QL power supply's voltages and wiring and its 7805 regulator, switching versus linear supplies, and accepts magazine listings with their source credited. | Sinclair QL |
| Letters (INPUT<->OUTPUT) | Jean-Claude Touzin of La Sarre asks for a list of QL publications, and the editor surveys them: Sinclair QL World, Quanta, Curry Computer's QL Report, Time Designs, Quantum Levels, QLusa, Computer Shopper's Sinclair columns, Belgium's QL Clef and QL Contact France's Informa. Jerzy W. Jarmasz of Ottawa asks about printing French characters on his SP-1200AS with Quill, the Nucleon manual, and why his serial printer only works on SER2; the editor explains the QL's DCE/DTE serial wiring and gives cable pin-outs for SER1. A short tip from J.C.T. shows SAVE SER1 for listing a program to the printer. | Sinclair QL |
| Letters (INPUT<->OUTPUT) | Jean-Claude Touzin writes about the North American QL's JSU ROM, which suits North American TVs but is incompatible with many programs (Sign Designer, CADPAK, GraphiQL, Front Page Extra). He describes replacing both ROMs with a single JS ROM from Sharp's, which also lowers power consumption, and gives a scaling factor for the x coordinates of graphics commands to move programs between JSU and JS ROMs. The editor replies that the replacement he saw at Gagnon Electronique came from Curry Computer and combined the JS ROM with Super Toolkit II on a CMOS 27C512 EPROM. | Sinclair QL |
| Letters (INPUT<->OUTPUT) | Jean-Claude Touzin passes on Peter Chambers' advice for running Front Page with Taskmaster (start it from SuperBASIC instead), notes that Turbo Quill with Speedscreen is hardly faster than Quill with Speedscreen, and reports that his Sinclair QL Printer on SER1 is really a Seikosha 800. The editor adds that the Sinclair-badged printer has a different ROM for characters above 127, and that Seikosha belongs to Seiko, which also owns Epson. | Sinclair QL |
| Letters (INPUT<->OUTPUT) | Yves Gagnon proposes standard file-name extensions for QL programs (_BAS, _EXE, _BIN, _PIC/_SCR, _ASM, _DOC), and the editor adds the idea of a _BOOT file to start a multi-part program. Jean-Claude Touzin asks for a faster alternative to GPRINT_PRT and for a way to clear values but keep formulas in Abacus; the editor suggests the public domain MC_BIN vertical screen dump, and for Abacus the KEYDEFINE program, Super Toolkit II's ALTKEY, or keeping a blank copy of the spreadsheet. | Sinclair QL |
| Letters (Le courrier): The DEF_TMP “Virus” | A reader from Ottawa reports a suspected virus, a file called DEF_TMP that appears on microdrive cartridges bought from Sharp's, grows and spreads, and complains about Sharp's after-sales service. The editor replies that DEF_TMP is simply Quill's temporary overflow file on low-memory QLs, that the QL's ROM-based operating system makes it hard for viruses to take hold, and explains how to recover lost text from a DEF_TMP file after a crash by copying it to a _doc file and merging it in Quill. | Sinclair QL |
| Lottery | LOTERIE_BAS, a short SuperBASIC program by Réal Gagnon that generates nine random number combinations for Loto-Québec's Lotto 6/49 and Select 42 draws. The article explains its LOTTO, TROUVE_UNE_COMBINE and BUBBLE_SORT procedures, gives Loto-Québec's table of winning odds, and adds a sidebar on the history and finances of lotteries in Québec. The full listing follows. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| MAJI_EXE: A Multitasking Utility | MAJI_EXE by W. Lenerz, from the QLCF, is a small job that multitasks with Quill and shows "Maj.:" in Quill's status area with two up arrows when caps lock is on, plus a permanent clock; MAJIc_EXE is a shorter version without the clock. The article explains how to start it from Quill's BOOT program and how to change its start-up delay with POKE_W, credits the Quanta library program Capsclock as the inspiration, and gives the commented 68000 assembler source, a universal SuperBASIC loader and the DATA lines for both MAJI_EXE and MAJIC_EXE. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Menu_bas | MENU_BAS, a SuperBASIC function that gives a program a one-line menu bar: it takes an array of option names, an array of short descriptions and the number of options, and returns the code of the first letter of the chosen option, or 0 for ESC. Options are selected with the cursor keys or TABULATE/SHIFT TABULATE and ENTER, or by typing an option's first letter. The listing, marked RG-o QL_DOC 88 and based on QL World April 1988, includes a demonstration with seven word-processor style options. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| New Programs | A roundup of new commercial QL software with UK prices and supplier addresses: PDQL's BASIC C-Port (SuperBASIC to C), Text Tidy (Quill _doc to ASCII) and DiscOVER (reads and writes PC disks); Sector Software's Overdrive, which prints graphics from Quill, Archive and Abacus; Ant Computing's IBM PC emulator; and Digital Precision's Professional Publisher and Digital C Special Edition, with a DP PC emulator said to be coming. | Sinclair QL |
| Offset_bas | OFFSET_BAS, a SuperBASIC formatted-number procedure in the spirit of PRINT USING, by J.C. Touzin. Called with a channel, the number, the integer and decimal widths and a leading sign character, it lines up decimal points and removes the E of scientific notation for numbers of a million or more and for some numbers between -1 and +1, using helper procedures not_scient and million. A demonstration loop prints the QL's own output in window 0 beside the procedure's in window 1, and the author invites readers to improve it. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Page Designer II | A short review of Sector Software's Page Designer II, the desktop publishing program now used to produce QL_DOC. It needs a 256K memory expansion and a disk controller (one 80-track drive is enough), comes with editors for text fonts, high-resolution fonts and graphic patterns, supplies 34 text fonts and 10 high-resolution fonts judged far better than Front Page's, handles up to 9 pages at once and works with QRAM and Taskmaster. Two screen dumps show the main menu and the font reference screen. | Sinclair QL |
| Pretty_bas | PRETTY_BAS, a SuperBASIC utility that rewrites a program file with its listing indented to show the structure of procedures, loops and IF blocks. A before-and-after example shows the effect, and the full listing (marked "enhanced version -mtl") follows; it asks for a source file and an optional destination name. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Programming Languages | A short survey of programming languages by W. Harmer, first published in the Ottawa-Hull user group's TS Bulletin and translated and adapted by QL_DOC. It explains why computers are not programmed in plain English and sketches FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, C (after A and B/BCPL), Modula-2, LISP and Prolog, Ada, Forth, PL/1 and APL, ending with application languages such as dBase and Lotus 1-2-3 and their QL equivalents Archive and Abacus. | Sinclair QL |
| Psion Xchange | A short look at Psion Xchange for the QL, which joins rewritten, faster versions of Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel under one module with quick switching and the TSL task-sequencing language. It lists the new features (Quill's EXTRACT and keyboard-macro glossary, protected cells, passwords and TAB entry in Abacus, USR() machine-code calls in Archive, 3D graphs in Easel), notes that it needs memory expansion and disk drives and seems to require Toolkit II and QFlash in memory, and regrets the lack of documentation. | Sinclair QL |
| QL + CP/M = Success | A long review and how-to for Digital Precision's Success, a CP/M 2.2 emulator that translates Z80 code for the QL's 68008. It covers the CPMFILES container file and drive letters A: to G:, the basic CP/M commands and Success's extra utilities (ANALYSE, DEFINE, RDQDOS, WRQDOS), where to find CP/M software, and a home-made driver for reading Kaypro II disks, with its listing. It also explains .LBR libraries (NULU), squeezed files (UNSQ, NSWEEP), terminal patches for the VT52 emulation with DDTZ, and limits such as monochrome only and 64K. | Sinclair QL |
| QL Books | Short reviews of five books about the QL: Laurent Besle's Au coeur du QL (Eyrolles), an excellent French guide to QDOS from assembler; L. de Bursac's Le désassemblage de la ROM du QL (Logisoft), a heavily commented listing of the JM ROM; R.A. and J.W. Penfold's An Introduction to QL Machine Code (Bernard Babani), mostly a 68008 primer; Vincent Lyon's Archive Master, on Psion Archive with business applications, sold by RMG Enterprise; and the QL Technical Guide by Tony Tebby and David Karlin, the reference for QDOS. | Sinclair QL |
| 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 Tips and Tricks | Two short tips: how to read the four-digit manufacturing date code stamped on a microdrive cartridge (day of the year plus the last digit of the year), and how a Seikosha SP1000 printer can be turned into a Sinclair QL Printer by fitting a copy of the QL Printer's ROM on a 27128 EPROM and setting all its DIP switches off. A closing note points to BYTE's history of MS-DOS, whose first version was also called QDOS. | Sinclair QL |
| QL User Profiles | Answers to the QL_DOC reader questionnaire from two active QL users. Pierre Gaudet of Québec, a teacher, describes his 640K QL with a Matthew Zenkar MZ512K expansion, Cumana disk interface and Tandon drives, ICE ROM, Sears RGB monitor and Star NX-1000, and his wish to learn assembler. Jean-Claude Touzin of La Sarre lists his two QLs with Miracle Expanderam, Spem keyboard, QFlash and Toolkit II, prefers SuperBASIC, and asks for short listings and commented machine-code lessons. | Sinclair QL |
| QL_DOC Software: Public Domain Library | QL_DOC's public-domain software library, as of July 1988. Programs are sent in five groups for $3 postage each on the reader's own microdrives or 5.25" or 3.5" disks, and contributions are invited. The groups include an ARCHIVE software-library manager, CAPS LOCK and screen-blanking utilities, a print spooler, NLQ for the Epson FX80, font tools, a text editor, SuperBASIC extensions, a 68000 disassembler, Sinclair's original QL demo and two games. | Sinclair QL |
| QL_DOC Software: Public Domain List No. 1 | The first list (March 1988) of public domain QL software offered to readers by QL_DOC for postage only, at $2 per group on readers' own microdrives or disks. Group 1 is the Archive-based software library manager; Group 2 holds utilities such as CAPSTATE_EXE, CLOCK, SPOOLER_EXE, NLQ_OBJ for the Epson FX80, BLANK_EXE, LABELS_BAS and DLO_BAS; Group 3 holds font tools, Tony Tebby's SEDIT_BAS text editor, PLAY_COM, NOBREAK_BIN, ZOOM_EXE, LINK_BAS and CLE_BIN. | 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 |
| Quiz: Are You a QL Expert? | An eight-question multiple-choice quiz on QL trivia: what "QL" stands for, the basic machine's total memory, who Jan Jones is, the latest official version of Psion Archive, the link between Samsung and Sinclair, the QL's second processor, the QL's first Canadian distributor and its original Canadian list price. The answers are printed upside down. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: A Full Issue | The editor introduces an issue covering the disk interface's lesser-known commands, French characters with Quill, and books about the QL. He mentions recent problems with his QL and his search for a spare machine, his use of Quill with Speedscreen and Taskmaster, and asks readers how to run Quill and Front Page together under Taskmaster. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: A Late Issue | The editor apologises for the late issue: the disk holding all its texts failed and, having no backup, he had to retype everything. He outlines the contents (QL networking, J.C. Touzin's SuperBASIC program for the coefficient of heat loss of a house, and a look at Psion Xchange) and offers readers the French versions of the Psion programs for the cost of media and $3 postage. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: Looking Ahead to 1989 | Réal Gagnon's outlook for 1989: PC compatibles strengthening their hold (the Amstrad PC-200), trouble ahead for Atari, the Amiga keeping Commodore going, the Z88 needing a price cut, and growing support for the QL as the 2068 declines. He hopes for an affordable hard-disk controller and a North American Sinclair club that could distribute public-domain QL software. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: Programs by Mail | The editor offers this issue's three BASIC programs on the reader's own medium for $1, to save typing them in, and asks readers to report bugs, noting a report that DLO_BAS may not work on Seikosha/QL printers. He also points out that Sharp is selling QLs for $99 US for anyone wanting a backup machine. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: Summer Issue | The editorial outlines the issue: a test of Digital Precision's MS-DOS emulator The Solution (working but slow), an English-French command dictionary for the French version of Archive from the QLCF, and an introduction to the TSL language of Psion Xchange; the French Psion programs and Xchange remain available from QL_DOC. The next issue is due in early September, and an erratum corrects answer 2 of the issue 9 quiz to "B". | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: Switching to Page Designer II | The editorial for the first QL_DOC of 1989 announces that the newsletter has dropped Front Page in favour of Sector Software's Page Designer II, which the editor finds more capable and less buggy. It names the QL topics expected for 1989 (MS-DOS emulation, C, hard disks, TEXT 89) and outlines the issue: a big-letter BASIC procedure, an Abacus data-entry utility, new QL software and a look at Speedscreen. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: The First Issue | Réal Gagnon introduces the first issue of QL_DOC, a French-language newsletter devoted entirely to the Sinclair QL. It is produced with GAP Software's Front Page, will carry programs, software reviews and QL news, and invites readers to send in articles on paper, microdrive or 5.25" or 3.5" disk. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: The Second Issue | Réal Gagnon presents the second issue of QL_DOC, which he describes as the only French-language newsletter in North America devoted solely to the Sinclair QL, and admits that writing in French limits its reach outside Québec. This issue covers the SuperBASIC BEEP command, the organisation of the QL's screen memory, and a program for printing disk labels. | Sinclair QL |
| REMark: The Z88 in the Press, and a Public Domain Library | The editor notes that Clive Sinclair's Z88 is being reviewed in Science & Vie Micro, Computer Shopper (by Stan Veit) and PC Magazine (by Stephen Manes), summarising their verdicts, including the lack of French accents on screen and PC Magazine's complaint about its $500 US price compared with a Toshiba T1000 laptop. He also announces a QL_DOC library of public domain software, available for postage, with a five-for-five program exchange for contributors. | Cambridge Z88, Sinclair QL |
| REMark: Three Years of Newsletters | Réal Gagnon marks the third anniversary of his first newsletter, SIN, begun in August 1985 on a TS2068 with Tasword II and a Smith-Corona Fastext 80 printer, and compares the QL scene then and now, including CST's Thor and the QL's price drop to $99 US. He introduces the issue's long article on Digital Precision's CP/M emulator Success, offers CP/M software to readers, asks for replies to the reader survey, and asks for a copy of a Time Designs article that mentioned QL_DOC. | 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 |
| Renaming a Floppy Disk | DISKreNAME, a short SuperBASIC program by Réal Gagnon that changes the name of an already formatted QL floppy disk without reformatting it, by reading and rewriting the disk's first sector through the direct-sector device (flpN_*D2D). It works only with floppy disks, not microdrives, and names are limited to 10 characters. The listing follows. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Sinclair News | News items: version 2 of Ant Computing's IBM PC emulator for the QL (multitasking, MDA and CGA, optional Q-Jump mouse support); Digital Precision's MS-DOS emulator The Solution in "Vanilla" and "Chocolate" (with MS-DOS 4.0) versions; Text 87 version 2 from Software87; a review of the Z88 in the American magazine Compute! (March 1989); and a QL hard-disk controller mentioned in Quanta at £185. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: the International QL Day held in Hasselt, Belgium, with over 350 visitors; the Thor XVI QL compatible, now marketed by Dansoft of Denmark with its new ARGOS operating system; Knighted Computers leaving the Sinclair market and Curry Computer dropping Spectrum/2068 imports, while Sharp's bought A+ Computer Response's remaining QL stock; delays at Time Designs and Quantum Levels (which absorbs SyncWare News); a new Z88 magazine, Pipe-Line; and the C.A.T.S. Capitalfest in Maryland, May 1989. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: a 3-inch disk drive for the Z88 and a rumoured cheap, light PC compatible from Cambridge; Miles Gordon Technology's SAM, a Spectrum-compatible computer (from ZX Appeal); the apparent end of SyncWare News/Quantum Levels, Time Designs still running late and T/S Update now the leading American magazine; and new products: the Transformer PC emulator from Schön, PDQL's PDQC C compiler, a French Text 87 v2, Flashback Special Edition from Sector Software and Miracle Systems' 32 MB hard disk at £399. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: the May/June 1988 Time Designs, devoted to Sinclair user groups and dealers in the USA and Canada, mentions and recommends QL_DOC; Meta Media Productions' Q_Link 1.555 communications program adds UNARC, UNCRUNCH and a text editor ($29.95); three Ontario Sinclair clubs (Toronto, Waterloo/Wellington, Ottawa/Hull) with their contacts; and a "Sinclair" PC compatible sold in the USA, really a relabelled Amstrad PC-512, at $789 US. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: Sinclair's Z88 laptop shown at COMDEX (Z80, OZ operating system, PipeDream, BBC BASIC, 8-line LCD, about $400 US); Q_LINK, a multitasking communications program with XMODEM from Meta Media of Vancouver; and Simon Goodwin's SPEEDSCREEN from Creative Codeworks, which speeds up the QL's screen output up to 12 times. | Cambridge Z88, Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: QL Report's mention of Archive version 2.38, which allows a 64K index file for the ORDER command; a MIDI interface for the QL expected from Miracle Systems; a quip about PC compatibility; Apple's John Sculley seen holding a Z88; and TEXT87, a graphics-capable word processor from Software87 advertised in Quanta as faster than Quill, at £40, which the editor has not yet seen reviewed. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: Tony Tebby's plan for a ROM version of QDOS for the Atari ST, replacing TOS and turning the ST into a "super QL"; Minerva, a faster, debugged replacement for QDOS from the British company QView; and ABC Elektronic's hard-disk controller for the QL, with a PC-compatible expansion slot, a subdirectory toolkit and support for ST506 drives, at 129 pounds. A European report from J-L Dianoux of the QLCF covers the Brussels Microfair (Tony Tebby's SMS 2, QRAM 2), the troubled Thor XVI, hard disks from Miracle Systems, Rebel Electronics and ABC, The Painter, and a public-domain QL emulator for the Amiga; and the Ottawa-Hull club opens a free Sinclair BBS. An errata box corrects the Abacus directory article in issue 12. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: QLusa, a new US national QL newsletter (bimonthly, $15 US a year); two US regional Sinclair shows in August 1988, the Great Northwest TS Mini-Fair in Portland, Oregon and the Midwest Timex-Sinclair-Amstrad Gathering in Cleveland, Ohio; a report that A+ Computer Response may sell its remaining new QLs to an overseas buyer for machine control; and the Z88 now made in the USA by SCI Corporation and sold by SSI Computer Systems at $549 US, with 32K RAM and transfer kits sold separately. | Cambridge Z88, Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: Sector Software's new replacement ROM "MGUK" by Richard Alexander, which fixes bugs in the JM/JS/MG ROMs and adds commands such as TRACE (24 pounds), and its OVERDRIVE printer utility for Quill (16 pounds); British maker Ablex ending production of microdrive cartridges by the end of 1989 because demand is falling and BASF is stopping the tape; and the election of the executive committee of the Sinclair North America User Group (SNUG), which covers all Sinclair machines from the ZX81 to the QL. | Sinclair QL |
| Sinclair News | News items: the US magazine Update now covers the QL regularly (about 50 pages, half QL and half 2068, $15 US for four issues); Harvey Taylor's Q_Link 1.555 communications program from Meta Media Productions becomes shareware, with registration at $18.75 CAN; and a quotation attributed to Amstrad's Alan Sugar in the magazine L'Actualité. | 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 News | News items: the Voyager II probe's Neptune encounter in August 1989, built with 1970s technology and a 30K on-board computer memory; Clive Sinclair's quip in PC Magazine about choosing an 8-bit Z80 for the Z88; the TIBM Wizard BBS in Toronto with a section for Sinclair computers (ZX81/2068/QL); and the shrinking Sinclair press, leaving Update Magazine in the United States and the Toronto club's Sinc-Link newsletter in Canada. | 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 |
| Software Review: QATS | A review of QATS from COPE (Gordon Henson), a keyboard-driven program launcher and file utility, translated and adapted by Pierre Gaudet from J. R. Downie's article in Quanta (January 1987). Compared with ICE, QATS offers a user-defined tree of pull-down menus, EXEC or EXEC_W launching, alphabetical file lists, powerful wildcards, group copy and delete, Psion printer-driver switching and RAM-disk formatting, but needs a memory expansion and cannot rename files. A postscript announces a QL club forming in Québec City. | Sinclair QL |
| Software: 4MATTER, QFLASH and QEP III | Short reviews of three QL products. Zitasoft's 4MATTER makes backups of copy-protected key microdrives (the reviewer moved Psion's QDraw to disk with it), though the new version drops its EPROM_BAS utility; QFLASH is a fast dynamic RAM disk system with AUTOSPOOL, MDVLOAD and FBACKUP utilities, available on microdrive, disk, ROM or as a Cumana disk-interface ROM upgrade (both from Curry Computer). Care Electronics' QEP III, a ROM-based EPROM programmer for 2716 to 27512 EPROMs with configurable pin-outs, code splitting and three hex file protocols, sold by Gagnon Electronique, is called a professional product. | Sinclair QL |
| Special Effects | A short SuperBASIC demonstration of the QL's RECOL command: in MODE 8 it opens a window with a message, then repeatedly cycles the window's border and recolours all the window's colours to one colour, stepping up and back down through the palette; a sound-effect BEEP line is left commented out. No explanatory text accompanies the listing. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Speed_bas | SPEED_BAS, a short SuperBASIC test showing why a QL with memory expansion runs programs faster: it POKEs a small machine-code delay loop first into memory reserved with RESPR and then into the bottom 128K, and times both. The article explains that the ZX8301 ULA, which continually scans the 32K of video memory for the display, has priority over the 68008 on the internal 128K. The listing credits Personal Computer as its source, modified by RG for QL_DOC. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| SpeedScreen | A hands-on look at Creative Codeworks' SPEEDSCREEN, which speeds up the QL's screen output. It describes the configurator for choosing among seven versions, the Fast Spaces, Fat Founts (8x9 fonts, with the QLUDGE font generator), Turbotext and Colour Synthesis options, and the mini-toolkit commands _FOUNT, _SCROLL, _XSTEP, _YSTEP and _SPEED, and closes by mentioning Digital Precision's rival Lightning. Adapted by QL_DOC from an article in the QLCF's Informa. | Sinclair QL |
| SuperBASIC Tips & Tricks | A collection of SuperBASIC tips for the Sinclair QL: detecting monitor or TV mode with PEEK 163890 after a reset, disabling CTRL+SPACE break with POKE_L 163900, and side-by-side comparisons with ordinary BASIC for waiting for a key with INKEY$(-1), case-insensitive string comparison with ==, single-line loops and PAUSE. It also shows how to put comments into a disk directory by saving empty files with descriptive names, and notes that single quotes are faster than double quotes in PRINT and INPUT. | Sinclair QL |
| Task Sequencing Language for Psion Xchange | A French translation and adaptation of Psion's documentation for TSL (Task Sequencing Language), the keystroke-macro language of Psion Xchange, the integrated successor to Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel. It lists the brace codes for special keys, the & commands for messages, labels, jumps, key tests and pauses, explains how to write a TSL program in Quill and export it as a _tsl file, walks through a six-line example that creates an Easel task and draws a 3D graph, and notes Xchange's memory and disk requirements. | Sinclair QL |
| Telephone Dialer | Yves Gagnon describes a simple circuit, plugged into the QL's NET 1 socket, that lets the computer pulse-dial telephone numbers through a relay in series with the phone line; it uses a 3.3k resistor, a 10 µF capacitor, a 2N3904 transistor, a 1N4001 diode, a 9-volt relay and a 9-volt battery. A schematic, the parts list and a short SuperBASIC test program that sends pulses through the network port are given, and a phone-book program is promised for the next issue. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| 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 |
| The QL Network Exists! I’ve Seen It… | An introduction to networking QLs through their built-in NET ports with Tony Tebby's Toolkit II. After a short editor's note on keeping a spare QL, the article (adapted from J. L. Dianoux of the French QLCF club) explains station numbers, the FSERVE file-server job, NFS_USE to redirect microdrive names to another machine's floppies, sharing printers and screens, using Quill and other Psion programs over the network, and giving FSERVE low priority; the network is slow next to Ethernet but adequate. | Sinclair QL |
| The QL’s RGB Output | Pierre Goudet recounts his struggle to connect his QL to a colour monitor: a Radio Shack CM-4 failed, and a 14-inch Sears RGB TV/monitor lost sync because the QL's signal was too strong, until on the editor's advice he put signal diodes (1N4148 or 1N914) in series with the sync lines. He praises the set as a TV, video monitor and TS-2068 display, and adds a carrying handle and an earphone jack. The editor replies with his own tales of PC incompatibility (a Tandy 1200 and an 8087 co-processor, CGA/EGA/VGA cards), his Commodore 2002 monitor, and a tip on the horizontal width coil. | Sinclair QL |
| The Sinclair QL Screen | An explanation of how the Sinclair QL's 32K screen memory is organised: where it starts and ends, how to save a screen with SBYTES, and how each 16-bit word encodes 8 pixels in 512x256 four-colour mode or 4 pixels in 256x256 eight-colour mode, including the flash bit. Worked examples show how to build a word and test it with POKE_W, and two SuperBASIC functions, color_l and color_h, return the colour of a screen point like the TS2068/Spectrum POINT function. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| The Solution: The Final Solution? | A review of Digital Precision's The Solution, which turns an expanded QL with a disk drive into an MS-DOS PC compatible. Programs such as Lotus 1-2-3, dBase III+ and WordPerfect run, but very slowly (a few percent of an XT's speed), so graphics games are impractical while text editors are bearable. It covers the manual (no MS-DOS introduction), setup with CONFIGURE, drive and port assignment, CGA support, keyboard mapping, multitasking, the need to supply MS-DOS (or buy the Chocolate version), and the bundled XOVER QDOS/MS-DOS disk-transfer utility, noting the free public-domain QLIBM available from QL_DOC. | Sinclair QL |
| Tip: 32 Lines per Screen | François Lanciault explains how to get 32 text lines on a QL with the JSU (American) ROM in monitor mode: poking 255 into the system variable SV.TVMOD at 163890 makes the QL use its 8-pixel TV-mode characters, CSIZE is set, and the variable is reset to 0. A short SuperBASIC example is given; the trick only works in SuperBASIC, and NEW or MODE resets it. | Sinclair QL, Type-in program |
| Tips and Tricks | Two SuperBASIC tips taken from QL Clef: reading DATA in a REPeat loop until EOF, so no counter is needed, and putting procedure arguments in parentheses so the procedure cannot change the caller's variables. Each tip has a short example listing. | Sinclair QL |
| Tips and Tricks: Easel, Abacus and the QL Screen | Three tips: two undocumented key combinations in the Easel graphics program (SHIFT F3 clears the command lines to free the whole screen for the graph, SHIFT F4 sets a backdrop colour); a workaround in Abacus, which treats an empty cell as zero, using COUNT in an IF formula; and how to save and load the QL's 32K screen memory at address 131072 with SBYTES and LBYTES, using the easier-to-remember 2^17 and 2^15. | Sinclair QL |
| Tips and Tricks: Quill Default Settings Template | A Quill tip: since Quill cannot change its default footer and margin settings permanently, and saves those settings with each document, one can save an empty document with the preferred settings (for example FOOTER NONE, UPPER MARGIN=0) as "vide_doc" and load it as a template when starting a new letter. | Sinclair QL |
| Tips and Tricks: Saving Part of a Quill Document | A Quill tip: although Quill has no command to save only part of a document, a passage can be isolated with page breaks and "printed" to a file on the data drive (with the program cartridge removed so PRINTER_DAT is not used), then imported back into Quill or another document. It notes that the new Quill in Psion Xchange does this directly with EXTRACT. | Sinclair QL |
| What’s New? | Short product news: Digital Precision's Lightning Special Edition, up to 30% faster than the original and supplied on ROM or as a program (£50, regular Lightning £25); a French version of the Text 87 2.00 word processor from Software 87 (£45); and a C++ compiler coming from the Danish company Dansoft, maker of the QL-compatible Thor XVI. | Sinclair QL |
| What’s New?! | New QL products: Digital Precision's Lightning, which speeds up QDOS text, graphics and maths routines (compared with Speedscreen); Sector Software's Page Designer 2 desktop publishing; QL Spy, a fast text and binary file editor from Ark Distribution; PDQL's DiscOVER for reading and writing MS-DOS, BBC and CP/M disks; and ABC Electronic's Mega RAM expansion of up to 3 Mb plus a PC keyboard interface. Prices are given in pounds and at the US dealer Sharp's, and vendor addresses are listed. | Sinclair QL |
Last updated: January 14, 2026