QL

computer (Quantum Leap) Sir Clive Sinclair's first

Motorola 68008-based personal computer, developed from

around 1981 and released about 1983. The QL ran Sinclair's

QDOS operating system which was the first multitasking

OS on a home computer, though few programmers used this

feature. It had a structured, extended BASIC and a suite of

integrated application programs written by Psion. It

featured innovative "microdrives" which were random access

tape drives. It was not a success.

The microdrives were innovative but probably a mistake.

Though reliable and quite quick, they sounded like they were

going to jam and explode, releasing a shower of plastic

shavings and tape into your face.

The QL and QDOS only supported two graphics modes - ominously

named high res and low res. High res had four (fixed) colours

at a resolution of 512 by 256 pixels. Low res had 8 colours

(black, blue, red, magenta, green, cyan, yellow, white) plus a

flash mode with 256 by 256 pixels. The sound was next to

useless - single channel single oscillator with various

parameters for fuzz, pitch change. There was one internal

font, scalable to 2 heights and 3 widths.

Peripherals and enhancements included a GUI on a plug-in

ROM, accelerator cards (Motorola 68020, 4 MB RAM), floppydisks and hard disks.

In 1996 there is still some interest in the QL, spread by the

Internet of course. Emulation software, source code, "The

QL Hackers Journal" and similar are still available, and many

QLs are on the net.

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(1996-08-01)