A3 Emulators

A3.1 Introduction

Not only are there replacement operating systems for the QL (namely QDOS and Minerva), as well as replacement computers (AURORA, Q40 and THOR {no longer available}), but there have been several emulators produced which allow programs written for the QL to run on various other computers.

When Emulators access the hard disk on the host computer, you do not have to worry about the fact that the hard disk is not in QDOS format - the Emulators cope with this in one of two ways:

  • The hard disk has to be partitioned, and one (or more) partitions are set aside for the QL files (FORMAT will only affect the specified partitions), or

  • The Emulator creates a large single file on the hard- disk (for example called QXL.WIN) which is equal in size to the size specified with the FORMAT command and then QL files are stored within this huge file. The host computer will only see the one QXL.WIN file. This method is used by QXL and QPC.

It doesn’t really matter which of these methods is used, as both protect the PC files from being over-written by QL files.

Currently, there are emulators available for the following computers (see the relevant section of this Appendix):

  • Apple Macintosh (Power PCs and 68000 Macs)

  • PCs(any with a spare ISA slot, otherwise 486 and Pentiums only)

  • ATARI(All models except the Falcon)

  • Any computer with an UNIX operating system

The main problem with using emulators is that some emulators (QLAY and Q-Emulator) require a copy of the QL operating system. You can use a copy of Minerva with these emulators (obtainable from TF Services - specify that you need it on disk for use with an emulator) or a copy of the original QDOS ROM. Apart from North America, the copyright on the original QDOS ROM is vested in Amstrad plc. who have stated that it can be supplied with emulators so long as their copyright notice appears and also an acknowledgement is included in the manual. In North America, the copyright is not owned by Amstrad plc. QLAY (at least) includes a copy of the JS QDOS ROM, otherwise, can make your own copy of the QL’s operating system (from a standard QL) by using the command:

SBYTES flp1_OSROM,0,49152

Note that you cannot do this with a Gold Card or Super Gold Card plugged in as these alter the operating system.

A3.2 Apple Macintosh

A3.2.1 Q-Emulator

A commercial software emulator available from Daniele Terdina which comes in two versions (v3.0 - for 68000 Macs and v2.1 - for Power PCs). A version which runs on IBM compatible PC’s is also available.

Minimum requirements are MacOS v7.0, 4Mb of memory, a colour monitor, a 1.44Mb floppy drive and a copy of the QL’s operating system.

The speed of the Emulator is really dependent upon the machine on which it is used - the Power PC version is said to nearly equal the speed of a QXL when used on a MacIntosh with a 100 Mhz RISC chip.

Unfortunately, SMSQ/E will not currently work with the Emulator.

You may also want to obtain a copy of Toolkit II on disk to use on the Emulator.

This emulator provides you with a QL with up to 4Mb of memory, which can multitask alongside MAC programs. However there is currently no support for Level-2 Device Drivers, Network ports or the FLASH / TRA commands. You can read and write to QL floppy disks (DD and HD) and also use the Mac’s own hard-disk as a QL hard-disk. Minerva’s dual screen mode is also supported, but at present only the standard 512x256 pixel resolution display can be used.

The Emulator has an in-built static and dynamic RAM disk and allows you to use the MAC’s serial ports (all standard QL BAUD rates are supported, although it is recommended that you use hardware handshaking).

Some difficulties exist due to the different MAC keyboard - for example an OPTION button is used instead of <ALT> and most MAC’s will not recognise more than two keys pressed down at a time.

A3.3 IBM Compatible PCs

A3.3.1 QPC and QPC2

Commercial software emulators available from Q Branch and Jochen Merz Software.

QPC and QPC2 both need a 486 processor or better (a 486 SX- 25 minimum is recommended, although a Pentium is better!), 4MB RAM, EGA graphics and DOS 6.xx. Although both programs will work with Windows95, only QPC2 will work in a window under Windows95 (or Windows98 / NT). However, the PC needs to be configured not to use any extended memory handling devices and therefore the user will need to amend the PC’s AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.

It allows between 1Mb and 16Mb of memory to be used by the QL operating system and supports resolutions of at least the same standard as QXL (v1.40 allows up to 1600x1200 and MODE 8). QPC2 will even stretch the QL screen resolution to fit the PC screen, which can make the QL characters appear much larger than usual.

These emulators are quick (current versions are as fast as the QXL) and have faster disk, serial and parallel port access than the QXL. They do however lack some of the QXL’s extra hardware facilities, namely QL compatible Network ports (although users can use SERNET to connect to the QL).

One of the main problems is that the more memory allocated to the Emulator, the slower its disk access - this is because of the slave blocks used to store the contents of files so that if you load a file a second time, it loads much more quickly (see DEL_DEFB). As the QL uses all unused memory as slave blocks, this can slow down initial disk access (where the file has not been read before).

Compared with QXL, QPC and QPC2 do have their advantages also, including the ability to access the PC’s colour palette (and thereby dictate which colours may be used in the QL modes), although this will hopefully not come into the equation when the new colour drivers are released for SMSQ/E. Also, both versions include commands to access the PC’s CD ROM drive, although at present only audio CDs are supported (see CD_PLAY and related commands).

QPC and QPC2 also allow you to have more than one QL ‘hard disk’ on the same PC hard disk, by using a different filename for the QL hard disk (other than QXL.WIN as mentioned above).

Both programs also come complete with the SERNET driver to allow you to use the PC’s serial (COM) ports as Network devices - this is however somewhat limited as most PC’s only have two such ports (and one is used for the Mouse)! If you need more serial ports for a PC, please contact us, as we have boards which can link up to 198 serial ports to a PC!!

The main problem with earlier versions of the emulator is with loading screen images direct - see LBYTES.

WARNING

Do not allocate the whole of the PC’s memory to QPC as this can cause a disaster!!

A3.3.2 QXL II

This is a plug-in emulator (hardware) now available from Q Branch. QXL II is based on a cut-down version of the 68040 chip which is extremely quick and because it only uses the PC for access to display, keyboard and disk drives, it can co- exist with other PC programs and its speed is not dependent on the main processor speed of the PC.

There was an earlier, slower version of QXL sold by Miracle Systems Ltd. which can have between 1M and 8M of memory.

The QXL boards simply plug into a standard 8 or 16 bit ISA slot on the PC and are one of the fastest versions of the QL currently available (including the original!!). They have 8M RAM in-built and run completely independently from the PC, just using the PC’s keyboard, display and disk facilities. QXL even has QL compatible Network ports.

Unfortunately, there are few portable IBM compatible computers with ISA slots and therefore if you wish to use an Emulator on a portable, you will probably need to use one of the two software Emulators.

The main problem with the QXL is that it is fairly slow when accessing the PC’s floppy disk drives and serial / parallel ports. Also, users have reported that the mouse response and screen re-draw are fairly sluggish if you run the QXL in a DOS Window under Windows95. It is therefore recommended that you only use QXL under a standard DOS window.

Although the QXL has its own QL compatible Network ports (SMSQ/E users can also use SERNET), some QXL II boards display a few problems and you may need to configure the QXL operating system to change the speed of the network (some machines need it turned down to 24Mhz, others need it turned up to 26Mhz). The Network unfortunately did not work on v2.25 of the QXL software!!

When QXL was first released the software was still undergoing development, and only supported a limited range of commands, lacking a full implementation of SuperBASIC and programs compiled with either Turbo or Supercharge would not run. The majority of programs compiled with Qliberator also had problems. If you have one of these very early versions, you should upgrade - the full version of SMSQ was released for QXLs in March 1995.

QXL comes with its own operating system (SMSQ), but the much improved operating system (SMSQ/E) is now also available for QXLs. SMSQ/E will be needed if you wish to use more than the standard QL’s 8 colours on the QXL.

SMSQ as supplied with QXLs comes complete with a copy of Toolkit II (you still need to use TK2_EXT to install the toolkit) and Level-2 Device Drivers. SMSQ can handle three different display resolutions in addition to the standard QL 512x256 screen, if your PC has EGA or VGA graphics. These are 630x350 in EGA mode, 640x480 in VGA mode and 800x600 on most SVGA monitors. These display modes must be configured before the emulator is used - compare SMSQ/E which allows you to change the display at any time using the DISP_SIZE command.

SMSQ adopted a different approach to SMSQ/E in that its main aim was to be as compatible as possible with the original QL, whilst at the same time being quicker than QDOS and incorporating an improved SuperBASIC interpreter (it is very similar to SMSQ/E so far as the interpreter goes). In fact, in the main keywords section of this book, we have referred to SMS meaning both SMSQ and SMSQ/E.

For compatibility reasons, it is not possible for SMSQ to adopt the more advanced drivers or an integrated Pointer Environment such as appear in SMSQ/E. It can however work with the standard PTR_GEN, WMAN and HOT_REXT files which are supplied with most Pointer Environment software and therefore can use the Pointer Environment. In order to have SBASIC set up as an Executable Thing, you will need to enter the command SB_THING on SMSQ after the HOT_REXT file has been loaded.

SMSQ also includes facilities to access IBM compatible disks and the hard-disk on a PC. There were however problems with earlier versions which could not create more than one QL partition on each PC hard-disk and limited each partition to 63 Megabytes (see FORMAT). Even in current versions, if your PC does not support partitioning of hard-disks, you can only have one QL ‘hard-disk’ on each DOS device - normally C:.

You can overcome this limitation by simply using DOS to rename the QL ‘hard-disk’ file (QXL.WIN) to something else and then create another QXL.WIN file if you wish to have access to several QL ‘hard-disks’. If you do this however, you will need to use DEL_DEFB from the QXL to ensure that it recognises that a new QXL.WIN file is being used.

There were also problems on early versions of SMSQ in recognising when a PC format disk had been swapped for another one and you may get the same DIR listing for both disks. This was however fixed by using either DEL_DEFB or reading the directory of a QL format disk before inserting the second PC format disk.

Lightning and Speedscreen must not be used with QXL, but the screen driver supplied with SMSQ and SMSQ/E is nearly the same speed anyway.

QXL’s incorporate an easy means of switching between the QL and the PC - simply press <CTRL><SCROLL-LOCK> to switch out of QL mode and into DOS. This is somewhat limited however, as the PC’s display sometimes gets distorted.

One of the problems which remains with QXL is that some users have reported difficulties in FORMATting and writing to QL format HD disks - the problems seem to vary from user to user, and it seems that this may in fact be a problem related to the PC’s own hardware.

A3.3.3 QLAY

This is a freeware software emulator in its very early stages of development which works on most PCs and will run under either DOS or Linux or even Windows95 (v0.84+). It needs a minimum of a 486 processor running at 66Mhz with 8 Mb of memory in order to work. This is not really a competitor to the two products listed above and may be difficult to use if you’ve never seen a QL - it is however free and available from the Web on:

http://www.inter.nl.net/hcc/A.Jaw.Venema (This link no lonegr works. NDunbar)

A copy of the JS QDOS ROM is supplied as part of this emulator.

From v0.84+, this emulator will actually allow you to use the QL inside a window under Windows 95 (although this version will not support QL ALTkeys) - all other PC emulators, except for Q-Emulator and QPC2, currently insist on you using a DOS window.

At present it has a few problems in that it has poor error detection and reporting. QLAY cannot currently work with a Mouse and early versions only allowed the standard QL resolution display. From v0.85b (the Windows version), various resolutions up to 1024x768 are supported, with the window being scaled accordingly to fill the PC’s screen. Early versions (at least v0.7) did not support QL floppy disks, the PC’s serial ports or Networks - it is unknown whether these have yet been added.

QLAY does however allow you to use Microdrives - what it actually does is use a file on either a PC format disk or the PC’s hard disk which is identified as a QL microdrive by the extension .MDV - you create a new ‘Microdrive’ by copying from DOS the file EMPTYDSK.MDV onto the required medium and give it a new name, such as QUILL.MDV. When you start up QLAY (from DOS), you can pass it the names of the two microdrive files it is to use as MDV1_ and MDV2_ and then any files which are SAVEd to MDV1_ (or MDV2_) will be stored as part of the DOS file. For example:

QLAY -1QUILL.MDV -2DATA.MDV

will allow you to enter the command (inside QLAY) SAVE MDV2_TEST_bas which will then create the QDOS file test_bas inside the DOS file DATA.MDV.

You can also specify whether QLAY is to use up to 8Mb of memory for the QL (although you will need to use Minerva to cope with more than 768K) and even whether microdrives are to be write-protected.

Unfortunately, early versions of QLAY provided no means of getting QL files across to the PC to store in these microdrive files. There is now a separate program (QLAYT) supplied to allow you to do this. A ramdisk is also supplied.

A3.3.4 Q-Emulator for Windows95

This is intended to be a shareware Emulator, which again, is in its early stages of development. It is based upon the Emulator of the same name for the Apple MacIntosh and works only under Windows95. It requires a 486 computer at least and supports both QDOS and Minerva (although as with QLAY, you need to obtain a copy of the QL ROM). The Emulator provides the user with up to 4M of memory and the current Alpha version supports the PAR device, QDOS disks and host files.

This Emulator is currently limited to supporting the standard QL display (512x256 pixels); and supports the PC’s mouse, and QL BEEP commands (provided that you have PC DirectX drivers). It can use any PC BAUD rate up to 256,000 as well as those supported by the QL.

The TRA command is not supported.

A copy of this Emulator and further details can be obtained from:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1296/winql.html (This link no lonegr works. NDunbar)

A3.4 Atari Computers

There are several hardware based Emulators which are referred to in this book collectively as ‘ST/QL Emulator’ (excluding SMS2). There is also one software Emulator (SMSQ/E).

A3.4.1 The ST/QL Emulator

This in fact relates to three different QL Emulators which can be fitted to the Atari range of computers. The type of Emulator needed depends upon the Atari computer being used and also when the Emulator was purchased.

All later versions of the Emulators come complete with Atari_rext and AtariDOS toolkits.

(a) Atari-QL Emulator

A commercial hardware emulator made by Futura Datasenter in Norway for MEGA ST and 520/1040 machines - this has not been available for some time. Some versions of the emulator supported MODE 8, some did not - it is impossible to check if it does. This only supported the original QL screen resolutions.

(b) Extended4-Emulator

A commercial hardware emulator for all ST machines (268,520,1040 but not STE), including STF, STFM and MEGA ST models. It will however not work on the Falcon 030. This may still be available from Jochen Merz Software.

Although this has its own operating system built in, you can upgrade it to SMSQ/E if you wish.

(c) QVME

A plug in commercial hardware emulator for Mega STEs and TTs that plugs into the VME slot. It unfortunately will not work with the Falcon 030. This is available from Jochen Merz Software and current versions come complete with SMSQ/E.

This supports a wide range of screen resolutions up to 1024x780 pixels (or theoretically, if you can obtain a monitor, 1024x1024 pixels) are supported. You are also able to choose at runtime (unlike the QL-emulator Extended4) the resolution in which you wish to work, using the DISP_SIZE command - this is only limited by the capabilities of your monitor.

In General

Both of the first two hardware emulators must be fitted inside an Atari ST computer and needed a bit of careful soldering to make them work. The QVME simply plugs into the Atari ST.

Once fitted, all of these hardware emulators are based on a JS ROM (unless you have installed SMSQ/E on the QVME emulator); indeed a slightly patched copy of a JS ROM is loaded as the basis for the emulator’s operating system; these patches are not documented. The operating system may be loaded from either disk, harddisk or EPROM.

Once loaded, you are presented with the normal QL start-up screen, although later versions of the emulator allow you to start-up by pressing the following:

  • F1… MODE 4 + Monitor

  • F2… MODE 4 + TV

  • F3… Extended MODE 4 + Monitor

  • F4… Extended MODE 4 + TV

(On the QVME, only the first two options are displayed).

Together with the image of a JS ROM, the emulator loads in its own set of drivers - please see the section on Drivers. In the latest versions of the emulator software (E-level), the window drivers are almost as fast as with Lightning.

Unfortunately, in the Extended MODE4, the parameters of CON and SCR devices are not recognised by early versions of Qpac2, which will display them merely as SCR_ or CON_.

Also present as standard on Level-E drivers (and later) of the Emulators is the Pointer Environment, Toolkit II, the OUTLN command, a RAM disk driver and the Hotkey System II.

Microdrives

The emulator cannot support microdrives and if you try to access the microdrive, error -7 (not found) will be reported. If a program has been written for microdrives, either use

EXCHG flp1_file,'mdv','flp'

or

FLP_USE 'mdv'.

BEEP

The emulator cannot support QL sound and therefore this command usually has no effect.

MODE 8

This is not supported (except on some versions of the original QL-Emulator). Any attempt to access MODE 8 will have no effect, and displays in MODE 8 have the same effect as trying to load a MODE 8 screen in MODE 4.

All software will however run happily on the emulator (although see below if you are trying to use the Extended resolutions), although it will look a little odd.

MODE 4

Current versions of the emulator support a much enhanced screen resolution. This is known as Extended Resolution and on the Extended Mode 4 Emulator is chosen from the start-up screen (see above). On QVME, you can configure the size of the screen resolution or even alter it whilst the Emulator is being used.

This extended resolution mode has the same four colours as normal MODE 4, except that instead of displaying 512x256 pixels, the resolution of the screen is 768x280 pixels on the QL-Emulator EXTENDED4 and anything between 512x256 pixels and 1024x1024 pixels on the QVME (this can be any value in the range in steps of 8 or 16 pixels, provided that you have a powerful enough monitor).

Well written software must therefore not assume the resolution of the screen, and if writers wish to access these higher resolutions, the functions QFLIM, XLIM and YLIM have to be used. The logical consequence is that higher resolutions can only be supported with the help of the Pointer Environment, thus underlining that this extension is absolutely obligatory.

Unfortunately some software writes directly to the screen and assumes that the screen will be 512x256 pixels and start at address $20000. This will cause untold havoc in Extended MODE 4, although such software will run happily in normal MODE 4 on the emulator. Interestingly, this odd kind of software runs happily on QVME, because this has its own screen memory on-board and leaves the 32k RAM from $20000 upwards untouched; so it does no harm if software writes directly into memory… you will simply not see the effect of this.

ROM Memory

The QL ROM on the emulator is actually stored in RAM, which means that if software tries to write to addresses in the range 0…65535, the Emulator is likely to crash. On a standard QL, writing to ROM has no effect. This should be avoided in all cases!

You can plug QL-ROM cartridges into the Atari ST with the help of special hardware.

Network

The Emulator cannot access the QL Network which was always very particular to Sinclair. This is really a pity. There does however now exist a means of communicating via the MIDI port to other STs (the MIDINET driver) and even the serial ports (the SERNET driver). See the separate Appendix concerning Networking.

Devices

The following devices are supported on the ST/QL emulators: flp, win, ram, dev, ser, par, prt, nulf, nulz, null, nulp, pipe_<length> pipe, pipe_name/pipe_name_<length>, sdump; where flp, win and ram are at ‘Level-2’.

Lightning/Speedscreen

Neither Lightning nor Speedscreen can be used with current versions of the Emulator. Lightning could be used with drivers before Level-E, but you needed a special Atari version.

Qliberator

You will need to use v3.22a of the Runtimes at least on these Emulators.

A3.4.2 SMSQ/E

This is a commercial software emulator which can run on all ST models (but not the Falcon). It is fast and very flexible - in fact it is the operating system now sold with QVME, Extended4, and QPC emulators. This is available from Q-Branch, or from Jochen Merz Software. Note that there are several ST versions, call the supplier before ordering.

SMSQ/E is to be the new standard operating system for future QL developments and is also available for QXL II, AURORA, Q40 and QLs with either a Gold Card or Super Gold Card attached.

Lightning/Speedscreen

Neither Lightning nor Speedscreen can be used with SMSQ/E.

Qliberator

You will need to use v3.22a of the Runtimes at least on SMSQ/E.

Please refer to the SMSQ/E Appendix for more details.

NOTE:

The emulator is RAM based and you can therefore expect some problems with software which tries to write to the original QL ROM (in the range 0…65535).

A3.4.3 SMS2

This is a board which plugs into the side of the Atari ST computers, which was marketed by Furst Ltd. It is no longer available. SMS2 was not marketed as being an emulator for the QL, but as an add-on enhancement for the Atari’s native operating system.

It includes a version of the Pointer Environment including QPac 2, and can run a fair amount of QL software. The main problem with SMS2 is that it does not provide a version of SuperBASIC, although it is possible to create programs under SMS2 using the in-built version of the QD editor (© Jochen Merz Software) and the in-built Qliberator compiler (© Liberation Software).

Unfortunately, the use of this board is restricted, since it only worked on Atari ST computers. It would also work on Atari STE computers however, provided that the QVME board was plugged in also!

The way in which SMS2 loads programs is very different to other implementations of SuperBASIC due to the lack of an interpreter. We feel that this is beyond the scope of this book.

SMS2 provides the following facilities as well as being able to run various QL software:

  • Access to Atari serial and parallel ports (details of ports unknown)

  • Access to Atari floppy disks and SCSI hard drives (presumably it can handle QL disks)

  • Network facilities are available for SMS2 via the MIDINET extension (now provided with SMSQ/E).

  • Built in ram disks

  • Supports Atari mouse and Atari monochrome display (640x400 pixels)

A3.5 Commodore Amigas

A3.5.1 Amiga QDOS

This is a public domain software emulator available for Amiga computers. It was distributed together with a load of public domain QL software on a CD cover disk on the Amiga Format magazine (published by Future Publishing of Bath) in September 1996. It is also available from Qubbesoft P/D.

Details about the emulator are on the Web at:

http://www.emulnews.com/aer/articles/af (This link no longer works. NDunbar)

The program loads the operating system from disk and basically simulates a JS ROM QL with a few additions in later versions. Although a public domain toolkit is included with the package that contains many of the commands added by Toolkit II, you really could do with a copy of Toolkit II on disk to load into the Emulator (with LBYTES flp1_Toolkit2_cde,49152).

There is no need for the EPROM_LOAD command on this Emulator since, once any toolkits have been loaded into the Amiga’s memory (as with Toolkit II above), you can do a warm reset of the system by pressing <CTRL><SHIFT><ALT><TAB> which will not wipe out any code previously loaded into the QL’s EPROM area.

The emulator has been (and is still being) improved independently by several people; making it impossible to be certain of which versions have which bugs in them.

It is recommended that you get at least v3.23 which had the following enhancements over earlier versions:

  • Supports the full range of Motorola processors (68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, 68040 and 68060).

  • MODE 8 support (excluding FLASH)

  • Authentic BEEP sounds which are the same as on the original QL.

  • QL compatible disk handling, including the ability to use QL HD disks and sub-directories.

  • The system variable SYS_PTYP (at offset $A1) is supported, allowing you to test the type of processor on which Amiga QDOS is running.

  • Support for dual screen display MODE.

This emulator is also available in the form of QDOS Classic, which has been released for use on the Q40.

NOTES:

Memory The emulator is RAM based and you can therefore expect some problems with software which tries to write to the original QL ROM (in the range 0…65535).

ROM Cartridges

These cannot be connected to the Amiga.

Network & Microdrives

As with the ST/QL Emulator, none of these are supported.

MODE 8

Before v3.23 this was not supported and any attempt to use this will result in MODE 4.

BEEP

Before v3.23 this was not supported.

MODE 4

Because of the way in which the Amiga’s display works, some displays can cause flickering of the screen, or even a scrolling screen. This has to be controlled by altering the speed at which the Amiga’s Blitter chip updates the screen (on early versions of the emulator, this was achieved by using POKE 164082,x). In v3.20+ SCR_PRIORITY was added to perform this task.

You can actually alter the four colours available in MODE 4 if you wish, by POKEing the hardware. To do this, you will need to POKE_W a new word value (up to 4095) into one of the following addresses, each one representing one of the QL’s standard 4 colours (note the need for quote marks around the address due to the limitations of QL maths):

POKE_W '14676352', black
POKE_W '14676354', red
POKE_W '14676356', green
POKE_W '14676358', white

Beware that you should not try to read the values at these addresses (for example with PEEK_W) as this is likely to alter the contents!

DEVICES

The standard QL devices (except MDV) are all supported without any alterations. However, the Qjump static RAM disk supplied as RAMPRT does not work. Unfortunately, disk access is somewhat slower than on the QL in all current versions of the emulator.

In v3.10 the serial port could successfully receive data from the QL at up to 9600 BAUD. v3.20 managed to send data to the QL at up to 1200 BAUD and to the Apple Macintosh at up to 19200 BAUD. We do not know at present whether later versions have improved these figures.

Disk formatting was also exceptionally slow prior to v3.23 and before v3.10, if Amiga-QDOS wrote to a disk, it could not be read on a standard QL.

TAS INSTRUCTIONS

The main area of incompatibility with the Amiga QL Emulator is the fact that the machine code TAS instruction, which is used to test and set a byte in one command, does not work properly on the Amiga. However, there is a small program supplied with the emulator which patches these instructions in any given program. All programs compiled with Turbo and SuperCHARGE need to be altered in this way. If a program has been compiled with Qliberator, you will need to patch the runtimes in this way.

Note that this incompatibility has been completely cured on certain versions.

A3.6 Unix Systems

A3.6.1 UQLX

This is a shareware software emulator by Richard Zidlicky, still in an early development stage.

In order to work it requires Unix or a Unix-like operating system plus both gcc and Xwindows. It will however work on at least 5 types of processor: HP-PA, INTEL (486 or better), MIPS, PPC and SPARC. If you use Linux on the Q40, this emulator can be used as another method to allow the Q40 to boot up as either a Linux machine or a QL!!

Current versions support JS ROMs (or Minerva), Toolkit II and MODE 4 displays. You can access the floppy disks and up to 4MB of RAM. You can also create and access UNIX directories using Level-2 Device Drivers.

If you use Minerva, you can use higher resolution display modes (up to 8192x4096 pixels) and access 16MB of RAM.

The main incompatibility problem with this emulator is due to the case sensitive names used by Unix (ie. filenames).