Simon's Qdos Qompendium

THOR XVI information

The Thor XVI was a QL-compatible system developed by engineers who left Cambridge computer manufacturers Torch to develop new microcomputer hardware for Cambridge Systems Technology (CST) in the mid 1980s. These articles, first published in computer magazines in the late eighties and early nineties, tell some of the story of those super-QL systems.

A review of the Thor XVI computer written for the UK edition of Computer Shopper magazine in summer 1988, shortly after release of the system.

A review of the ultimate version of the Thor XVI OS, written three years later for Sinclair QL World Magazine.


QLAY2 emulator documentation


QLAY2 is an open source QL emulator by Jimmy Montesinos and Jan A Venema, using the UAE 68K emulation engine by Bernt Schmidt et al. It is written for 32 bit Windows systems but also runs on x86 Linux systems thanks to the free WINE compatibility libraries. My contribution is some English documentation - click on the start of this paragraph to read it. Please send Jimmy emails of encouragement if you wish him to continue work on QLAY2, or his earlier project QL2K.


Qdos DIY Toolkit


Click here for DIY Toolkit SuperBASIC extensions, overview and download page.

Simon's other stuff


Click here for links to other programs and articles by Simon N Goodwin.


UQLX_MIDI_PLAYER21_BAS


Short: A player for General MIDI files, written in Sinclair SuperBASIC, adapted to run on the UQLX Qdos emulator for Unix and Gnu Linux systems.

This site holds a version of Al Boehm's SuperBASIC player for General MIDI files which uses direct access to /dev/midi from the UQLX Qdos emulator, and my DIY Toolkit timer extensions, rather than the DIY MIDI extensions I wrote for NESQLUG in 2000.

The player requires a Unix/Linux system with /dev/midi or equivalent and a MIDI synthesiser connected to the associated output port (/dev/midi00 by default).

Contact: Simon N Goodwin at simon (at) mooli (dot) org (dot) uk

If you use this please email the author to let you know how you get on. Feedback is vital if you want to see more esoteric projects like this.

Thanks to Al Boehm, NESQLUG, Dave Westbury and Richard Zidlicky for development help.


UQLX MIDI Player Files


Press Shift while selecting these if you want to download them rather than read them, and your browser is none the wiser.

(1) Essential file: The main UQLX MIDI Player program

(2) Program notes: History and usage information

(3) Required toolkits - download these unless you have them already. You will also need Qjump SuperToolkit 2 or equivalent, but this is not freely available (though most Qdos users have a copy).

TIMING_CODE from DIY Toolkit Volume T
TURBO_TK_CODE from Turbo Toolkit

Load these with the following SuperBASIC commands:

TK2_EXT
LRESPR TIMING_CODE
LRESPR TURBO_TK_CODE
LRUN UQLX_MIDI_PLAYER21_BAS

If your BOOT program already loads the required Toolkit extensions, all you need to do is download and LRUN the _BAS file.

The original BOOT program is not needed as the relevant variables are set directly in lines 900-980 and UQLX is fast enough on most platforms not to need a compiled player.

(4) Program patches: Lines to MERGE into Al's original player to adapt it for UQLX. You may use this optional file to adapt other releases of the QL player for UQLX.

(5) The emulator: UQLX, the open-source Qdos emulator for Unix-compatible systems