|
On Balance QL may not stand for Curate's Egg, but whatever the 'media- speak' surrounding Sir Clive's professional offering, naturally the new machine has its pros and cons. Quentin Lowe gives us some first impressions. | ||
|---|---|---|
Professional keyboardLike many of the cheap machines these days, the QL's keyboard is based on a membrane system - in some ways a glorified version of the one we eye dubiously on the Spectrum. Yet when YS tried it, it felt nothing like it! The keys are solid and have full travel, making it easy to type quickly and accurately. The membrane system is also, of course, a great protector against the likes of fag- ash and coffee.The keyboard comes well equipped with a total of 65 keys, providing access to a full ASCII set. This includes characters such as {, }, | and \, which may seem unusual now, but will ultimately prove essential when Sinclair Research implements its version of the C programming language on the QL. MemoryThe biggest advantage of the 68008 chip is memory. The QL starts with 128K, and Sinclair Research has promised expansions of up to half a megabyte - 512K. Lots of memory is a good substitute for fast mass storage. Although the QL Microdrives are relatively slow compared to floppies, it will be possible to switch your QL on and read a big program and all its data into memory, all with access times way ahead of many CP/M business machines with their meagre offering of 64K RAM.Not so BasicThe QL comes with the modestly named SuperBasic - a brand new programming language that has little to do with previous Sinclair Basics. In fact, it's got very little to do with Basic (as we know it) at all - and, if truth be told, the name is probably only there so that newcomers will recognise it as a programming language. Still, it does have such traditional statements as GO TO and GO SUB, so it won't be impossible to convert existing Basic programs for the QL.It's a heavily structured language with named procedures and functions. It handles a unique range of numbers, from -10-615 to 10615 with an effectively unlimited number of significant figures. Strings can be up to 32K long, and Sinclair Research |
even claims that the language will
have facilities for multi- tasking,
allowing you to run several processes
at the same time. In keeping with the
quality keyboard, Sinclair Research
has dropped the keyword system
altogether. Only time will tell if
SuperBasic is as good as it looks. The free softwareThe QL comes with four of the most popular business applications packages for micros. There's a word processor, a database, a spreadsheet and a business graphics package. This is the first time that any home computer has been sold with its own set of serious 'built-in' software. The applications are written by Psion (as in Vu-file and so on) and if first glances are anything to go by, the packages are likely to be very well received indeed. They are not your run- of- the- mill home- based software, but serious business packages in their own right.Psion claims the spreadsheet QL Abacus has most of the features and speed of Microsoft Multiplan - the top- selling spreadsheet from the CP/M and MS-DOS world. Similarly, the database QL Archive offers facilities previously unavailable on home machines. It's programmable, so not only do you drive it step-by-step from the keyboard using a handful of simple commands, but you can also write programs in its own built-in language. In this way, you can evolve a database using special customised commands and facilities, and whole complex operations (such as making a calculation on each entry in the database) can be made at a single command. The word processor QL Quill is very fast and offers a full range of formatting facilities. This lets you see justified text and page breaks on the screen - exactly as it will be when printed. Even underlining actually appears below the words underlined! And a real luxury - there's a continuous word-count on the screen that's kept up-to-date as you type. Psion has not only achieved very capable programs, it's made them very easy to use. The programs carefully lead the user through each operation, showing what's been done so far, what's happening on-screen and just what can be accomplished if you stick at it. And just like any modern business package, there's a Help key that provides a short manual on-screen whenever you need it. By | |
| using a special 'prompt panel' at the top of each screen, Psion has made it so that you almost don't need a manual! The programs would do well on any computer - even as CP/M or MS-DOS programs. Communications The QL's interfacing allows it to be connected to most peripherals. It should be no trouble to get the QL to talk to Prestel and Micronet, or any other telephone service you care to name. In fact, with its proper keyboard, 80 column display and twin Microdrives, the QL is actually good value just as a data terminal for business use. The question is, who will be the first to write the software to do it? |
The 32-bit chipWell, actually it isn't. The QL uses a 68008, which is a special version of Motorola's popular 16-bit 68000 processor. The 68008 is mostly 16-bit inside but has the ability to operate on 32-bit words. As far as the outside world goes, however, it is an 8-bit chip - so what you actually call it depends on your own preference. (The same problem arose when IBM and Sirius used an 8088 in their machines rather than the 'true' 16-bit 8086 that now turns up in many of the newer machines.)But anyway, setting aside the arguments, let's consider the advantages |
of the 68008. It's fast, allows you to
use lots of memory directly and is
software compatible with its big
brother, the 68000. If you're into
machine code, the 68000 has a super
instruction set and is much easier to
learn than chips from Intel's 8086
family. In short, who cares how many 'bits' it's got? No Centronics portEven the Oric's got one of these! A Centronics parallel port would allow you to plug many professional printers straight in to the back of the QL, using a standard lead. Most popular printers (Epsons, Stars, etc) have Centronics interfaces as standard and you may have to pay |
extra to get an RS232 version. The
other problem with using RS232 for
printers is that you need to mess
around setting baud rates and so on,
and may even need a special cable
made up with the appropriate plug
and wiring for the printer. Sinclair Research is, of course, working on an add-on Centronics port. But although Spectrum users are quite used to any number of extra boxes plugged (and often Sellotaped) together, your average QL buyer is going to find the bits and pieces cascading out of the back of the new machine a bit of a pain. No disksIt surprised a lot of people to find Microdrives on the QL, even though |
they upgrade their ZX equivalents.
They are an obvious cost cut, but
relative to the rest of the machine they
slow the whole show down. The QL
will never run an existing 68000 DOS
such as a UNIX, or the newer CP/M-
68K, while stuck with Microdrives.
And, at present, there's also no way
of adding floppies - even if you don't
mind paying another £300 for the
privilege. Sinclair Research is thinking about a hard disk for the QL that would give it the potential to run UNIX, but it still seems a silly thing to do without first investigating the use of floppies. How do you back it up? A 5Mb winchester is 5000K of data and there's 100K on each Microdrive. That's um ... 50 cartridges to back up the whole disk! It's a colour machineThe QL may only have four colours in its normal operating mode, but it's obvious that you're supposed to use it with a colour screen. There isn't even a socket to connect a black-and-white monitor, although you could use it with a black and white TV. The only problem is that a lot of users may find it hard to distinguish between red and green on a black- and- white screen. This is not to say you can't do it, just that you'll probably be better off with colour.Locked in its own architectureThis isn't the sort of phrase you hear very often down the home end of the market - because more or less every home computer is. It simply means that the computer uses its own Basic and DOS, and can't swap programs and add-ons with other machines. In the business world this can count for everything. Manufacturers ensure that there is software for their machine by making it to a specific standard - either CP/M or IBM compatible, or whatever. Non-standard machines often give up in the end and bow down to the industry standards.Sinclair Research doesn't really care. The only way it can continue to offer shockingly innovative products is by behaving in a non- standard fashion. And the products are invariably successful enough to carry this off. There's no doubt that the QL will be a popular target for new add- ons and software, and that a million existing 'Sinclair people' will want to move on to a QL. Going his own way has never stoped Uncle Clive and never will. In fact, it's quite surprising that other micro manufacturers haven't started to copy him and offer Spectrum compatibles. Besides, the C language will do the QL a lot of favours in this respect. It's very portable and many major software houses are now using it for all their work. So, you can expect all kinds of programs - from CP/M machines up to minicomputers - to find their way onto the QL. | |
| |||||
