QUANTA News

Norman Dunbar has been busy updating his website
http://qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk and has added a forum for discussion of all things QL, QDOS, SMSQ and so on.

There's even an off topic area. At present, it is using over half of his allocated quota of disc, so it may not remain - it all depends. Norman says he can probably update his hosting account to get more space if need be.

You can get to the forum from the web page above which has a link, or you can go direct via this link http://www.qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/forum

Guests can only read existing postings so if you want to join in, please register and get discussing!

The Forum area has an initial set of topics starting with Assembler, Emulators, SuperBASIC and “Off Topic” (the latter for anything except religion, politics and possibly sport which Norman may veto!). There is also a Suggestion Box facility for new topics, so if you wish to set up a forum on “microdrives” for example, just register and post the suggestion.

Malcolm Lear has sent me a further revision to his PCB Cad program, some important changes to bring back old QL compatibility. He’s not had a QL for more than 10 years so he’s now started using the QL2K emulator to ensure correct QL operation. It turns out that the GWASS assembler has been sneaking in 68040 instructions, so he’s gone back to using the GST program.

Malcolm says: “It was my fault really. I forgot that something like 300(a1,d1.w) was not possible on a 68000. Everything now looks OK but it does require the full 768K memory expansion (Trump card) to run. There are some file access problems when running on QL2K, but they are all caused by a compatibility problem with the Turbo toolkit function DEVICE_STATUS. It should be OK on a real QL.”

Norman Dunbar has started an ambitious project where he intends to try to write code to allow Linux to access QDOS disks natively. Norman prefers to run QPC2 under Linux with the WINE system.

Further details of progress with this system are on Norman’s website, and here I quote from the text on his website:

“I quite like Linux, I certainly prefer it to Windows that's for sure. To this end and especially after Windows ate my Linux root partition just after Christmas 2007, I decided that my Laptop would be totally Linux - and so it is. Unfortunately, the one program I do use under Windows, QPC, cannot run under Linux/Wine properly yet. In addition, when it does run enough for me to use it, it cannot access QDOS floppy discs natively. Under Windows it uses direct sector access (I'm told this by Marcel) which is not going to happen under Linux. So, in a fit of madness one day, I decided to read a lot and see if I could figure out exactly how to make a QDOS Floppy disc system run natively on Linux. It will be read only to start with but you never know. “

The latest version of Gwasl assembler by George Gwilt is now available from Dilwyn Jones’s website.

Gwasl is the Lite version of George’s Gwass assembler, the main difference being that Gwasl is suited for use on 68008 processor systems (i.e. a standard QL and some emulators) whereas the full Gwass assembler is designed to use the additional instructions present on later 680x0 systems.

Gwasl is especially valuable for those following Norman Dunbar’s Programming In Assembler series in QL Today magazine.

Changes listed for recent versions include TABs can be used as well as SPACEs and the maximum number of lines and labels is now configurable.

The program and its source code files can be downloaded from: www.dilwyn.uk6.net/asm/index.html