Reading through some of the messages relating to this prompted me t look at a few things here and is particularly relevant to some of the things I have been putting together for the next QL Today.Well I am one of the suppliers myself to begin with :-)
I have tested all versions of SMSQ/E released for Q40/Q60 and I have upgraded several users of the Q60 to v3.07. So far no-one has reported any problems with instability to me. On my Q40 here they have all run without any problems. Having said that my Q40 is pretty redundant because it is a little slow in comparison with QPC2 so it does not get a lot of use. This may explain why I have not seen any problems. I have used it extensively to format disks and had no crashes. Wolfgang uses a Q60 and he would have picked up any problems so what ones are people having ? There is no point in complaining to this list that it is unstable if you don't tell the suppliers about the problems.
Regardless of that I may be at fault for not reporting things that I have seen, but remember one has to prioritise. Most of my QL work this past year involved a special project (Q-Word) and ensuring compatibility between platforms for that specific program.
To add to that I have had to reformat a couple of times which left little time to actually do testing combined with my other responsibilities. Aside from that however my Q40 and Aurora are my main machines and to that extent they get a lot of use.
I have been installing QDT on my Q40 running v3.07 and had no problems with this at all.
Depends on what you load to it actually:
If you do not use PE applications at all (speaking of my experience) the system is just fine. Problems start once you use some PE applications which don't fare too well with either extensions or the memory scheme (I would assume as I haven't been able to point my finger on it yet)
Maybe it is the amount of hard drives/their size that I have (I have currently 3 exceeding a combined 160 Gigs capacity) that causes the OS to go nuts (or at least some applications).
One of the problems however I am having is with Sysmon. On QPC2 and Aurora, the memory display appears contiguous but on the Q40 it shows fragmented beyond belief! Maybe it's just that... I don't know yet.
One thing that gravitates me towards that is the fact that my Q40 Linux installation sometimes fails if started under SMSQ/e v.3.07 while it never fails if started under QDOS Classic or previous versions of SMSQ/e...
I have noticed something which I had not previously seen though. The first in the series of beginners articles for QL Today is about Screen Resolution and I have noticed that the DISP_SIZE command does nothing on the Q40. As I say, I have not used the Q40 in ages and I have always run at 1024 x 512 because I like to have screen space but I thought that DISP_SIZE used to work on the Q40. Can someone enlighten me on this ? How can you change from the Large 16 Bit Display to the Small 16Bit display at run time? Are you really only stuck with two sizes, 512 x 256 and 1024 x 512?
Actually you are :-) It is in the (old) SMSQ/e manual for the Q40.
DISP_COLOUR 3 works only one way and DISP_SIZE (starting from a Mode 4 session) will alter both spatial and colour resolution as a Mode 4 1024 x 512 is not implemented.
You only have 4 modes to work in effect:
Mode 8 (256x256) Mode 4 (512x256) Mode 33 Small (512x256) Mode 33 Large (1024x512)
Switching from 1024x512 to 512 x 256 (any colour depth) will only work if you have something like WTV 0,0 or WMON 0,0 else SMSQ/e fails with a painful death (Vertical colour lines and utter devastation).
THerefor assuming that you start at Mode 4 512x256:
You can do:
Disp_size 1024 (only one parameter needed) and that will switch you to Mode 33, 1024 x 512 (same as doing DISP_COLOUR 3,1024)
DISP_SIZE 1024 WILL NOT (see above) switch you to Mode 4, 1024 x 512 (I am not even sure if this is implemented in hardware I will have to look)
Once in high-colour/high-resolution, moving SB (or job 0 if you fancy replacing it with something else like I do) so that its window is either larger than 512 or that it is out of bounds for a potential future switch back to 512, will result in death of the OS when such a change is effected (at least on my machine).
So assuming we are already up in 1024 x 512 and we issue a WMON 50,50 (as per M.K. usual standard which I have adopted as it leaves sufficient space for the button frame - thanks Marcel) and then issue either a DISP_SIZE 512,256 (which should switch to 512x256 Hi-colour) or DISP_COLOUR 0,512 (Which should switch to Mode 4 512 x 256) the OS dies - And when I mean dies... dies completely -Only a hardware reset will bring it back.
However if you keep your job 0 within the confines of the 512x256 (upper half corner of the screen) then switching is no problem. You will kill a couple of PE jobs here and there but that's to be expected.
All this assumes SMSQ/e v.3.07 btw
Doing the same in v. 3.00 will NOT kill the machine until you try to CTRL-C your way to SB whereas it then dies
I would like to make sure I have it correct in the article.
See above
My other piece of redundant hardware is my MinisQL since that is really pretty slow in comparison to the other stuff but I thought I would drag it out and install QDT on it as a test. It installed perfectly and adapted itself to the smaller screen with no problems (thought you would like to know that Jim).
Well I wouldn't call my Aurora setup redundant (or slow) for that matter myself but that's strictly a personal opinion. (However if it is redundant I'll be glad to relieve you of it ;-) -for free of course- :-P )
The Aurora SMSQ/e (current version 3.03 with colour drivers) actually has no problems and the colour drivers are to say the least excellent! And to me at least they are quite fast :-) And for you infidels out there proof of that is only 1 purchase away ;-) (buy QWord for the Aurora and you will see that it is quite fast). BTW: Auroras with Minerva MKII installed as per Simon's (Goodwin) confirmation CAN play Digital Audio at 10KHz mono (which is quite good actually)... so all Aurora users out there better start buying stuff from TF Services (Tony may I remind you that you will need to add a couple of zeroes to that cheque ;-) hehehe)
Ffibys (I love that :-)) _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
