Timex Sinclair Survival Column

At long last I have a new Sinclair QL (for Quantum Leap) in front of me. In fact, this column is being written on it using the bundled word processing software. Available for a little more than a year in the United Kingdom, QLs are just now becoming readily available here in the United States. Their original appearance here, at a price of $499.00, was through American Express, but now, for $299.00, they can be ordered directly from Sinclair Research Ltd. or from many of the long time Sinclair dealers.

Unlike its ancestors, the QL is not based on a Z80 CPU. Instead Sinclair, figuring it to be a likely future industry standard, chose to use the Motorola 68008 processor. It is a high speed 32 bit processor with one megabyte of address space. The QL comes with 128K (32K dedicated to the display and 32K for the QDOS operating system and Sinclair SuperBASIC), which is externally expandable to 640K. It can be networked with up to 64 QLs or Spectrums. The QL allows multi-tasking (running more than one job at a time) and makes use of this by running a real-time clock whenever the QL is powered up. .A simple BASIC command inputs the year, date and time, and the QL automatically supplies the day of the week. The computer can print this information, correct to the second, at any time until the QL is turned off. In addition, the QL’s multitasking abilities allows control of the computer even while the microdrives are operating or the printer is printing.

The first thing I noticed when the box was opened was a number of 8½ by 11 inch papers which, it turned out, were an American “translation” of the QL User’s Guide written for the British computer. It mentions the American warranty (90 days), U.S. dealers, and technical information pertaining to the display on the American QL. This is necessary because the U.S N.T.S.C. standard is different from the British P.A.L. standard. The User’s Guide is an impressive looking binder with a number of sections: Introduction, Beginner’s Guide, Keywords, Concepts, QL Quill, QL Abacus, QL Archive, QL Easel, and Information. This is where the first noticeable discrepancy between the British manual and the American computer is noticed. When you examine the folder that contains the bundled software, you will find programs imaginatively called Database, Spreadsheet, Word Processor, and Business Graphics. For some reason, the British names of these programs were changed to descriptions instead. To further confuse matters, the programs themselves refer to the British titles. Confusing? The word processor is in reality QL Quill, the spreadsheet is QL Abacus, the database is QL Archive, and the graphics program is QL Easel. These are integrated programs that can pass information between themselves.

The manual itself looks impressive and probably contains much information about using the computer, but it is very difficult to use at first. Many of the features are covered in more than one section, with no overall index or table of contents. In fact, only the Keywords and Concepts sections have any index. Perhaps there is a benefit to this, since you must thoroughly read the manual before you sit down to do any serious programming. However, it took me almost five minutes to find the paragraph on how to format a microdrive cartridge, and to learn how to load a program from microdrive took just as long. And many of the things I know can be done on the QL don’t seem to be described in the User’s Guide. Many of the techniques I have learned so far have come from other sources. (Stay with us here in Computer Shopper; I will be covering many programming topics in the months to come.) I would like to see some form of cross reference guide added to this manual. Also there is practically no technical information for those interested in that sort of thing. The QL Technical Guide is available separately from Sinclair.

The box contains the QL User’s Guide along with an American addendum, the computer itself, the power supply, a networking cable, and the necessary cable and switchbox to connect your QL to a television. If you want to connect your computer to either a monochrome or RGB monitor (composite color monitors are not recommended you will need an additional cable, which most QL dealers can supply. Sinclair Research itself offers a package that contains the computer, a compatible RB monitor, and a printer. The computer itself is what you would expect from Sinclair. It is a compact black unit, containing the microdrives built-in. The QL measures 19″ x 5½” x 2″. The keys on the keyboard are all at the same level, not stepped. But by using the feet supplied with the computer, your QL sits at an angle that is not difficult to get used to. I must admit that, after using the T/S 2068 for so long, it did take me some time to get used to using this keyboard. But, it is happening. The QL has many keys not found on the earlier. Sinclair computers – CTRL, F1 through F5, TABULATE, and ALT, as well as separate cursor control keys. Unlike the T/S 2068 keyboard, this is not a silent keyboard. Especially the space bar does make noise. There are two sets of characters available directly from the QL keyboard, including foreign and special mathematical characters. (Right now, my major problem is hitting the CTRL key when I mean to hit the SHIFT key, this producing an alternate character.) Notice also that there are no keywords printed on the keys as with previous models. The one stroke keywords that Sinclair is known for do not exist on the QL; they must be typed in, one character at a time. For BREAK, use CTRL-SPACE, and for DELETE, use a combination of CTRL and either the left or right cursor key.

Unfortunately though, Sinclair still seems to be having difficulty designing keyboards. When I first started using my new QL, I had a problem with the bottom row of keys. When one key (such as the “M”) was depressed, I would get two characters (“NM”), or some keys would give a double character (“MM”). In the case of “MM”, this was caused by the keys sticking. This eventually worked itself out, but occasionally I still get a double character. From the days of the membrane keyboard on the ZX-80, Sinclair has been receiving criticism on its keyboards. In fact the ZX Spectrum had to be redesigned with a new keyboard. (The Spectrum + looks very similar to the QL.)

When Timex redesigned the ZX Spectrum to produce the T/S 2068, they added an ON/ OFF switch, a move much applauded by all. Sinclair has not caught on to this yet, but they did include a RESET button, a halfway measure. To turn the QL off, however, you must either unplug the power supply or have a switchable outlet.

The power supply is a change from the earlier models in that the transformer sits on the cable halfway between the outlet and the computer. The plug is a normal three prong grounded type. This is an improvement over the type that has the transformer go directly into the outlet, since it does not cover the neighboring outlet.

The back of the computer has two ports for networking, the power port, an RGB port (which produces fine results on a monochrome monitor as well), the TV port along with a channel 3/4 switch, two serial (RS-232C) ports for printer, modem etc., two joystick (Atari type) ports, and a port for add-on ROM cartridges. The right side panel has a port to which you can add up to six additional microdrives or floppy disk drives. On the front right hand side are the two built-in microdrives. The left side panel contains the expansion port through which additional RAM memory can be added. Although the communications ports are both RS-232C standard, there are add-on Centronics (parallel) interfaces available, which fit either into the one of the serial ports (as my Miracle Systems interface does) or into the ROM port (as the Kempston interface does).

After this brief tour you are ready to attach your computer and start using it. Upon power-up, you see a screen with the Sinclair copyright notice and the choice of pressing F1, if you are using a monitor, or F2, if you are using a TV. This sets the display so that you can have the most compatible display. Choosing F2, for use on television receivers, sets the QL to a 40 column display. In this mode, windows 1 and 2 (the QL has three window screens which you can control) are set to the same size, so that you see a single window on a black background. Pressing F1 gives you the high resolution display. This display shows 85 characters on a line and starts out with a split screen. On the left is window 2 which is the default window to which program listings are sent. On the right is window 1, which is the default window for all program output. The low resolution mode has eight available colors (black, blue, red, magenta, green, cyan, yellow, white), which can be used to make multi-color patterns, while the high resolution mode can use four colors (black, red, green and white. In both modes window 0 is the window in which immediate commands are shown, as well as being the normal program editing screen. The QL provides full screen program editing in this window. In all cases, output can be sent to any window simply by specifying the number in a SuperBASIC command. For instance, to list a program to window 1 simply issue the command LIST #1.

The operating system written for the QL is called QDOS and the language is SuperBASIC. SuperBASIC is a superset of Sinclair BASIC, so you can type in almost all BASIC software with little, if any, modification. Of course, any machine code programming would have to be rewritten into 68000 code, any graphics will have to be recalculated, and some syntax will have to be adjusted. Also, so far I have not been able to find any equivalents to the ON ERR statements of the T/S 2068 as Sinclair did not include them in SuperBASIC. (They were never included in Sinclair BASIC on the Spectrum either.) But simply taking BASIC programs from your earlier mode Sinclair computers and translating them one for line does not take advantage of the many additions and improvements that the QL is capable of. In future columns we will take an in-depth look at using Super BASIC, but here are some of the highlights.

SuperBASIC has taken features of BASIC and other popular programming languages and incorporated them into what Sinclair hopes will be the state of the art in computer languages. Unlike other versions of interpreted BASIC (SuperBASIC itself is an interpreted language), the length of the program does not affect its running speed. Also, SuperBASIC addresses one of the criticisms of the BASIC language–that it is a sloppy language. Borrowing ideas from Pascal, SuperBASIC relies very heavily on the procedure. Instead of subroutines accessed by a GO SUB line number statement, each procedure has its own name with which it is called. Even the variables within each procedure may be isolated from those of the rest of the program by declaring them to be LOCAL. Variable values may be passed to and from the main program and the procedure by declaring them in the proper places. This is a great help to the programmer who now may keep a library of often-used routines on file and merge them when developing new software.

The QL is often able to accept input that is in the wrong form (such as string input which should be floating point) and change it into the proper form. This will eliminate situations where a running program would be stopped by an error. This type of intelligent data handling is typical of the way Sinclair tried to design the QL. My overall opinion of the QL is that it is a terrific machine, especially when you realize that you can buy it for under $300.00. For that money, you not only receive the computer and two microdrives (with four blank cartridges that hold approximately 100K each), but four sophisticated software packages worth many times the cost of the computer (if you were to buy comparable prorams for such as the IBM- PC). Except for a few minor improvements needed by the keyboard, the computer itself is well designed. It is easily expandable both for additional memory as well as hardware additions. Unlike the new machines from Apple and Atari, there already exists a great deal of software read to be bought since it has been around in the U.K. for about a year now. American software development is already under way. Curry Computer is even issuing a monthly QL Report. (Check the classified section and page 158 in this issue of Computer Shopper for information on QL suppliers.)

On the down side is the poor manual included with the QL. If you simply want to use packaged software, this manual will be close to sufficient. Even in that case, though, the sections of the guide that are the documentation for the bundled software still fall short of being complete. If, on the other hand, you are going to do any programming, especially complex programming, you will find that it is necessary to purchase one of the independently written books on the subject. I will be looking at these books and reporting them here. It’s too bad that such a well thought out computer has to be accompanied by an incomplete User’s Guide.

But all things considered, yes, I would indeed recommend it. I hope that Sinclair does a better job in promoting this computer than Timex did with the T/S line. Remember that outside of North America, Sinclair micros are among the most popular home computers. Next month, we will look at the four Psion programs included with the QL, as well as some of the independent software now available. Curry Computer, P.O. Box 5607, Glendale, AZ 85312, (602) 978-2902