MS-DOS on a Sinclair QL: Games and Productivity SW -

In this journal entry I'm going to run MS-DOS on my unaccelerated Sinclair QL. I will have to add extra memory (512K memory expansion by Miracle Systems) and a (Kempston) disk interface, but will be testing PC Conqueror (by Digital Precision) on a 7.5 Mhz machine with surprising results. I'll try some productivity software like WordPerfect and DOSShell, and then see what sort of games I can play reasonably well given the slow speeds.
Atari ST PC emulators: www.atarimagaz...
Amiga PC emulators: www.wikiwand.c...

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Very interesting! I didn't know the QL could do that!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

To be honest, I was surprised that it ran as well as it did and it's only 76K in size which is pretty impressive that it runs as fast as it does on the somewhat slow architecture of the QL and its 7.5 Mhz processor. Steve Sutton was the author of the software (for the company Digital Precision) and it seems he also wrote an OS patch for the QL (Lightning) that speeds up graphics, math and text processing. Trying to get that loaded and then run the PC emulator again to see if it runs a bit quicker on games, etc...

[@PrivateSi]

Nice to see again... Lightning on rom or disk speeds up Conqueror a little bit, as well as all QDos and basic commands. Runs Elite in CGA at less than 1 frame a second!... Still, it was usable for lotus 123 and wordperfect.. Amazed me as kid. My first taste of emulators... now it's PCs emulating everything else!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I tried Lightning SE and it didn't speed up either BASIC or my ZXSimulator. I didn't try it on Conqueror though.

[@chirchir8126]

@@8BitRetroJournal I guess this emulator *needs* Digital Precision's LIGHTNING accelerator installed. Please try that.

[@DrDavesDiversions]

Neat - thanks for showing us this rarity! While I see the QL was a MC68k-based platform contemporaneous with the Amiga, I didn't know of it then and, to this day, I had only seen glimpses of it on the RMC channel... (I think when they visit a museum?) In case anyone's interested, in other #DOScember projects running DOS on non-native systems, here are two others: (1) I'm doing a project with the Amiga 8088-based XT Bridgeboard: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZoDcpnSVa916q9E (part 0) kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHjOZGSah8hja6c (part 1) (2) Ron's Computer Videos just posted a nice one about a hardware upgrade to Apple's later "DOS Compatibility Card" for the Mac: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a2ekgZ2MaKZ4i5I Of corse, these differ from yours in that they are real x86 processors running simultaneously with the host system rather than PC emulators. They are emulators only in that the host machine emulates PC peripheral components such as the keyboard, mouse, hard drive, floppy, etc.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Thank you! The QL had a very short life span, unfortunately. It had as much to do with Clive Sinclair not wanting to be a computer manufacturer (he wanted to change the world in other ways, including trasnportation with the ill designed C-5) as it had to do with shortcuts with its hardware. But, the cool thing with the QL is its OS kernel as it was designed to be a light-weight "workable" Unix for a micro computer (early Unix required a lot of resources to run).

[@DrDavesDiversions]

​@@8BitRetroJournal Agreed. Since my college got a Unix box c. 1988 (AT&T SVR3.2 on a 3B2/700) and I had an Amiga, personally, (which you get get a lot of Unix-like tools, Korn shell, UUCP, etc.), I didn't pursue Unix-like OSes until the early '90s on x86. Do you remember the OS named Coherent? I used that on x86 before Linux. (Also, I've since learned Commodore was in negotiations with Mark Williams Company to develop their Coherent OS for some Commodore machines as its Unix-like OS, for a time, but it never happened.) It got trounced by Linux on x86 in '92 or so. Do you happen know of this multitasking OS for the Commodore 64: "Lunix"? lunix.c64.org/ It came out at a time when I wasn't into retrocomputing, but I remembered it recently and may give it a try... in my copious free time. :)

[@8BitRetroJournal]

@@DrDavesDiversions I think I recall hearing about Coherent. I didn't know about LUnix (Little Unix) but it sounds like the 6502 equivalent to Z80's SymbOS. I checked out the Wiki page and watched a 4 minute video of it and it really only looks like a shell for its own environment (i.e. doesn't seem to let you integrate the C64 stuff like its BASIC or run C64 programs from within) and if that's the case it's really not that useful of an OS for the C64 like GEOS. It seems Microsoft was in discussion with Sinclair Research for developing an OS for the QL (86-DOS, originall called Quick and Dirty OS, or QDOS -- which is what the QL's OS ended up being called) before the panned the idea and developed their own.

[@DrDavesDiversions]

@@8BitRetroJournal good - we know of different things. ;) That is all new to me.

[@bisc67]

I didn't have anything to do with PC Conqueror, but I wrote the CP/M emulator that Digital Precision did. It was OK. Can't find it anywhere.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Oh wow, that's great. Steve Sutton seems to have been the author of Conqueror and also Lightning and I personally use Digital C SE (we do know its author but I forget at the moment), which I've had since 1990 and find a really good compiler. I really liked all of the Digital Precision software. I myself have been writing a ZX81 emulator for the QL (called ZXSimulator and trying to get it to run real-time on an unexpanded QL as my pandemic project and am emulating the ROM not the hardware). If you join the QLforum.co.uk I bet there is someone out there that owns the CP/M emulator (I think DP had a 10 pack disk at the end that had it on there) that could probably get you a copy. Sounds like you don't have access to the source anymore. Unfortunately it's abondonware and no one has put most of this stuff in the public domain. Not sure if DP needs to do that or if you can just ok it as the author (i.e. if that's all folks that host websites need to put it up). But I'm sure people on the forum would love to hear from you.

[@nneeerrrd]

Why no comments? Great stuff mate!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Thank you.

[@Kw1161]

I remember one MSDOS game called Borland's" Ancient Art if War" that was very computer timed dependent, it became unplayable on my old Nextgen 586 which was a 90 MHZ CPU. It might play on your QL. Another great video! Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

[@spartanx5806]

i always liked the ql.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

It's definitely a cool machine that can be surprising in what it can do.

[@AlsGeekLab]

Had no idea that was possible. QL had a Motorola 68008 cpu afaik. Totally different architecture to pc, so getting this to work with that limited architecture is no mean feat. The cga graphics is next level! I wonder how good this is with an accelerator card.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I was surprised and impressed. I'm doing a comparison between it and the Amiga 500 running PCTask (slightly better than their Transformer emulator) and will have that out before the end of December. The Conqueror emulator isn't even that large in size (76K) so a nice piece of coding its author. I'm hoping to re-run these tests sometime next year once I decide to get a GoldCard accelerator for the QL.

[@herrbonk3635]

When writing an emulator, you are not limited by similarities in instruction encodings or anything like that. A large register set in the emulating machine (as in this case) is a good thing though, especially with a narrow data bus (as in this case). It makes it much more efficient. Similar properties in how most of the flags are calculated makes it easier as well. (From my personal experiences of emulating Z80, 6502 and 68K on an 286 and 486 around 1990.)

[@Ljasaj]

Where else can I get the QL program PC Conqueror?

[@8BitRetroJournal]

It's not freeware as far as I know. You could check with RWAP who still sells QL software (with permission from authors). Unfortunately, unlike the Mac community, there is presently no support for publishing abandon ware, which likely is what Digital Previsions software library is.

[@Ljasaj]

@@8BitRetroJournal Thank you

[@Zankuho]

This is most weird #DOScember entry so far. I had no idea QL can do PC emulation.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Neither did I :-) Well, I knew about Conqueror back in the day but I think I though you needed an accelerator card or there was no way. Of course it ran pretty slow without it but I was still surprised what that 7.5 MHz, stunted Motorola 68008 based computer could do. Pretty nifty coding for that PC emulator I must say.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

What about BORLAND Turbo Basic might be much faster than QBASIC.

[@UncleMikeRetro]

Hello! Nice retro video! What software are you using for your edits? Just curious! Nice you have some of the old stuff around to share with all of us. Keep it up.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Thank you. I use Movie Maker on Windows 7. It's not the best setup as I have little control over audio (can't lay any audio tracks over the video) and the beast is slow and acts up all the time. It's quick to do things though when it works but not as professional as some of the other awesome KZbinrs.

[@fififinance7469]

Stop procrastinating while watching a video about procrastination 😂

[@alerey4363]

Too slow , not usable even back in the 80s when this came out; maybe the word processor (as long as it doesnt keep asking for disk switching every 10 secs) was barely productive but the games definitively unplayable, 1 frame per minute slow as snail on molasses

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Agree with you (note that I was running it like i was back in the 80's :-/). Was cool to see it run though. I could probably get used to playing the Psion Chess program if I had no other, better chess game. They did have an upgraded version a year later and it required the QL Gold Card which would run about 4 to 5 times faster and make some of those programs run less painfully.

[@dennislindqvist5461]

Ranting... Perhaps you should use a written script to read from?

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I do stammer a lot :-/ I don't prepare too much ahead of time since these really are journal entries of me trying stuff for my hobby. Hopefully it'll improve. I do have my better days doing this stuff but I definitely see it when I edit them.

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

But can it run Sopwith?! (nobody every said until today..)

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Unfortunately I'm not an old-school MS-DOS gamer. I should have tried something like Alley Cat, which, through #DOScember, I see many using. I found a couple of handy websites that categorized games by requirements and found the ones I used under CGA games. A bi-plane flying game sounded interesting but it's very stick-figure'ish. The ones I had, like Leisure Suit Larry and Wolfenstein, required EGA I think.

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

@@8BitRetroJournal Oh I think Ally Cat would run much worse! You know how they always ask 'But can it run Crysis?' on 'modern' PC's as that was such a demanding game.. I never thought a game like Sopwith could run at such a slow pace. Hence my comment, like the 1982 equivalent of 'But can it run Crysis'.. Very nice to see it is even possible though on such an old Sinclair.

[@SavvasHiridis]

Hello! Excellent video. Do you know where I can find PC Conqueror (by Digital Precision)

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I've been waiting to see it (along with other titles) pop up on one of the sites. The QL community still has an active software seller market with permission to sell items form the 90's from the original authors (who get a percentage of that revenue). The community hasn't gone to publishing abondon-ware yet the way the Macintosh does (I've found a few of my products in Macintosh Garden -- though I'm fine with that personally). Not sure why the model of just publishing it and then taking it down if someone complains, which to me would be the better approach. There are a whole bunch of things I'm looking for that one can't even buy (like an astroid game). It does hinder the community in my opinion, since the amount of software to begin with is small.

[@SavvasHiridis]

@@8BitRetroJournal I totally agree. And QL needs the highest support it can get! I believe it still has to prove the vision of Sinclair. thank you again.

[@lostxj]

It is very impressive that the QL could do as much as it did. However, 80s dos games often used the CPU clock cycles as an interval timer. MOST of the time this causes huge issues with trying to run them on computers that are too fast. I am wondering if some of the trouble you were having running some of the games was because the computer was operating too slow ?.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

There were certainly a few CGA games that just didn't work on the MS-DOS emulator at all that I skipped. I'm wrapping up another journal entry today where I try the same games and software on the Amiga emulators Transformer and PCTask and some worked better and others crashed so different hardware and different emulator implementations definitely seem to matter.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

The MC68008 is a 8bit data bus version of the MC68000.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Yup, Motorola thought it would be a cheap way to interface with 8-bit support chips.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Then maybe you won't need to use the tape loop drives as often

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I had done this video a while ago so I'm not getting your reference here? I don't generally use the microdrives much anymore since there are some nice SD card interfaces for the QL.

[@basicforge]

Neat. Too bad it's so sloooooooow. ;)

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I will likely get a Gold Card in 2021 which is about the same size as my disk interface in the video but adds a 68000 and I think 2MB of memory (and a disk interface). That would make the PC emulator run quicker, though that's not why I'm getting it since it's a bit pointless these days to need that emulator as you can just run DOSBox on a fast laptop. Still, pretty cool that the original unaccelerated QL could run it and productivity apps like Word Perfect were manageable (just not games).

[@pascalharris1]

Wow. I thought that SoftPC was slow on my SE, back in the day, but it was way quicker than that! I guess the additional memory and full 68k probably help significantly!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

I ran SoftPC back in the day. I don't recall it being all that fast. I may have run it on a Mac II with color though. Was SoftPC on the SE running MDA or CGA? The 68000 is definitely a better chip than the 68008.

[@geezerdiamond]

Very interesting stuff. I love seeing these really old DOS emulators on various systems. Judging by the clock on the Chess game, it's running at about 25% speed (ish) which isn't actually that bad considering what it's doing!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Oh wow, nice that you noticed that. I was surprised it ran as fast as it did. I could actually see myself playing it..of course I own Psion Chess o the QL so no need :-)

[@geezerdiamond]

@@8BitRetroJournal I need to service my Microdrives on the QL and re-felt my cartridges. I don’t trust either not to kill the other at the moment! 😂

[@gasparinizuzzurro6306]

kinda slow

[@8BitRetroJournal]

It's a 7.5 MHz processor emulating a PC so yes, very slow. The Amiga 500/1000 software emulating a PC didn't fare any better. There was an accelerator card for the QL back in the early 90's for under $200 that would speed it up about 4x so that would have made PC Conqueror a bit more usable.

[@gasparinizuzzurro6306]

@@8BitRetroJournal i know, in my career i've programmed 6502, z80, 68000, 8086 uP. 68K had a better & cleaner architecture than x86 IMHO, but too different to emulate at decent speed a x86 CPU. By the way i remember back that amiga 2000 could run MS-DOS via an accelerated card hosting a x86 CPU here. Plus take into consideration that the QL CPU also had to emulate the PC Graphic text mode into a bitmap one and that the CPU used in QL is a 8 bit databus variant of the 68K

[@chirchir8126]

I guess SPEEDSCREEN (or LIGHTNING) accelerators must be loaded, before loading this emulator.

[@pcsocket462ecsviak7vza]

it's a 16bit chip with an 8 bit bus no?

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Close...it has 32 bit internal registers, 20 bit address bus, and 8 bit data bus..the 68000 was 32/24/16 in comparison.

[@pcsocket462ecsviak7vza]

@@8BitRetroJournal so 1mb of ram but not video ram dual ported fast!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Video RAM on the QL is part of its main memory map.

[@pcsocket462ecsviak7vza]

@@8BitRetroJournal even if u add a 68030!

[@8BitRetroJournal]

@@pcsocket462ecsviak7vza I was speaking to the stock 68008 model. don't know offhand how the accelerator cards handle video RAM.

[@soviet9922]

that thing sure is slowwwwwww....

[@8BitRetroJournal]

Yup, but I'm still, impressed it can emulate a PC and run a 3D chess game at almost playable speed, not bad for an 1984 computer. Unfortunately it never had the hardware that the Amiga had and if you watch that video, it's not that much faster emulating a PC.