Hello Jan, Thanks for your comments, I can understand your point of view and maybe you're right, The QL was doomed from the beginning as it was too expensive for the 'kids' and in my opinion should of been "designed" as a high end games machine/ business machine instead of just the latter. I really think if the QL came out with 64 colour capability and maybe dedicated graphics hardware then the QL scene now would be truly alive and well, just like the Speccy scene.
The fact that My QL can emulate a Spectrum without breaking into a sweat ( admittedly with a SGC ) can only get my imagination working overtime. I cannot see why it cannot emulate a Sega Megadrive for example, And what about other Open Source code that lives in the wild. Am i the only one who gets excited at the possibilty? Yes, the QL could become a reasonable platform for hobbyists and whilst it would never cross swords with the Spectrum and the homebrew machine of choice, the Sony PSP, it could carve it's own niche. Re cost, Yes, I'm with you there, cost is prohibitive but sadly, thats the rut the QL scene appears to be in but there is plenty of free software out there and plenty of excellent software too which I'm discovering. Also, my experience is that the QL'ers out there are a great bunch and have a wealth of knowledge. Perhaps all this talk of new SDGC hardware should cease and a true QL project should be thought up, there is enough expertise out there. Sadly, my C / 68000 Assembler is weak but I'm willing to learn..... reaches for " Programming the M68000.. 2nd ed by Tim King & Brian Knight' I could go on but I suspect Im waffling already. neil >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 14 February 2007 21:11 >>> > From: "Neil Riley" > A comment Davide made to me has suddenly hit home. Basically he was > pleased that someone > was still having fun with his product after some 10 years or more.... > but wait a minute, the spectrum > scene is still strong so why on earth isn't ZM/ht etc still > commercially available and being advertised on > Auction sites like Ebay. With full respect to Davide - he did truly good job with his emulator, I do love it - I wouldn't probably buy it today. This time has gone. I like his approach to provide it for free, which promotes himself better than low selling product. I am from spectrum scene and I cannot believe what some people are writing here. Have you ever think why on earth is the spectrum still so strong? There are knowledged people willing to share for NO PROFIT. This makes the spectrum scene stable, strong and up to date with HW and SW. IDE HDD interface called divIDE (similar to Qubide) is great example of such activity : http://baze.au.com/divide/ Anyone can build it from schematics, buy a DIY kit for 20EURO(!) or buy a complete interface for 30EURO. For 30 EUROs (+/- price of the components) your ZX Spectrum has much higher value and more features. Reward for these authors is only success and feedback from users. Similar trends to have open projects can be seen in Atari scene, Commodore (look at Commodore One), MSX, CPC (look at try out SymbOS) etc. In contrary what I see here on QL scene is still push to commerciality. This doesn't attract newcomers, because unexpanded QL which you buy on ebay with four Psion microdrives is nothing more than poor computer with "cool design and potential". Expanding QL is hard and expensive or not possible due to lack of expension cards. At the top of it there are no open source projects to change this status. Software on QL is special category... So, where is the QL heading? I don't want to be missinterpretted - it is nothing against you Neil, but certainly I see here big difference in ZX Scene and QL Scene. > btw, as a side question. I have plenty of _Z80 images that ZM/hT > expects but i have even more .SNA's. > Is anyone aware of a .SNA to _Z80 convertors. Just for fun i renamed > .sna to Z80_rom and whilst ZM/ht > saw the Z80 and even showed initial splash screens, it crashes. > Z80 is compressed, SNA is not. Decompressing not compressed data must certainly crash. Jan _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm *********************************************************************************** The contents of this email are confidential to the intended recipient. It may not be disclosed to or used by anyone other than the addressee, nor may it be copied in any way. If received in error, please contact the company on 01793-715380, then delete it from your system. Please note neither the company nor the sender accepts any responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan attachments (if any) for viruses. No contract may be concluded on behalf of the company by means of email communications. BC Services (UK) Limited (trading as Boxclever), Technology House, Ampthill Road, Bedford, MK42 9QQ. Registered No. 5290544 England www.boxclever.co.uk *********************************************************************************** _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
