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25th anniversary 2009 |
18th anniversary 2002 (QL/E launch) |
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About Urs König
Most recent major repository additions or updates:
QL/E - THE QL ENVIRONMENT! (
release 2023-12-29, version 3.23)
Direct download of lastest QL/E package v3.23!
Direct download of lastest QL/E QLE.WIN file only v3.23!
QL IS 30 2014 - THE DISTRIBUTION, RELOADED edition! (Released 2021-02-21, version 3.06, comes with QL/E v3.20)
Unique original firmware & ROM software ( addition 2024-02-29) and papers from the Sinclair Archives (Put online in June 2018)
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| Name/Cover/Title | Type | By | Description | Documents | Pictures | Download |
 Who's who at Sinclair company directory 1982 |
Internal | SRL | 1982 directory of all employees of Sinclair Research Ltd. |  |
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 Who's who at Sinclair company directory 1983 |
Internal | SRL | 1983 directory of all employees of Sinclair Research Ltd. | |
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 Domesdos documentation 1983 |
Internal Technical |
SRL | Domesdos was the working title of the operation system for the Sinclair ZX83 which eventually became QDOS for the Sinclair QL. In a CONFIDENTIONAL (at that time) document dated 26 October 1983 (hey, that's today 30 years ago), Tony Tebby wrote: "The changes from Version 0.05 are mostly in the internal organisation. These reflect the change in emphasis from a small machine to a 128Kbyte minimum configuration, a high probability that a 512Kbyte expansion will be available at launch, a hard disk will be available soon after, and the machine is a flagship of a new line." Decades later, back in 2009, Tebby wrote in a series of articles called "25 years" in the QL Today magazine (all issues included in THE DISTRIBUTION!): "ln a fit of hubris over this "design for reliability" approach, lhe new operating system was called Domesdos {a home {domestic) DOS, even though it was designed for business use and il was a ROM operating system and not a disk operating syslem) after the slogan for a brand of bleach "Domestos" which "kills 99% of all known germs (bugs)"." Even 30 years later no single operating system has proved to be bug free. Time to dig out Domes*os... ;-) |
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 Sinclair QL Launch Press Kit 1984-01-12 |
Marketing | SRL | The glossy launch press kit which was handed out at the launch press conference on January 12th 1984. | |
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 Sinclair QL User Guide Launch Day Edition 1984-01-12 |
Marketing | SRL | This edition of the User Guide was handed out at the launch press conference on January 12th 1984. | |
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 Sinclair QL Launch Brochure 1984 |
Marketing | SRL | The glossy brochure which was handed out at the launch and was added to many UK computer magazines in January and February 1984. | |
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 Sinclair QL First magazine advertisement 1984 |
Marketing | SRL | The two pages landscape advertisement was placed in many UK computer magazines in February, March and April 1984. | |
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 Sinclair QL ROM software version PM |
ROM software | SRL | The binary file in this ZIP archive is a 1:1 copy of the content of physical EPROMs which are in an original Sinclair QL Professional Computer with serial number D03-001123 (2 EPROMs QLPM 0000 and QLPM 4000) and an original Sinclair QL ROM port dongle (1 EPROM $8000). While the content of the ROM port dongle was preserved way back in 2010, the content of the two EPROMs in the QL was preserved on Sunday June 24th 2018 at the home of former Mechanical Affinity QL trader Paul Holmgren while I was on my once-in-a-lifetime US road trip. The QL and some other QL bits and pieces from Paul went on the journey and back home with me. The PM version of the QL ROM software contains QDOS version 1.02 and SuperBASIC version PM. |
  Sinclair QL ROM software version PM preservation 2018-06-24, 1 minute, YouTube |
 Sinclair QL ROM software version PM, 33 KB |
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 THORN (EMI) DATATECH EPROMS |
ROM software | SRL | The binary files in this ZIP archive are all 1:1 copies of the content of physical EPROMs which came from a former employee of THORN (EMI) DATATECH Ltd. This company did production engineering and mass production for Sinclair Research Ltd. |  |
THORN (EMI) DATATECH EPROMS, 108 KB |
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 Sinclair QL IPC firmware version 1.2 |
Firmware | SRL | The binary file "Sinclair_QL_IC24_8049_IPC1-2.ROM" in this ZIP archive is a 1:1 copy of the ROM code of an original 2nd edition Sinclair QL IPC (Intelligent Peripheral Controller) IC commissioned to NEC (Nippon Electric Company) by SRL (Sinclair Research Ltd.). The IC is lettered "NEC JAPAN 8503XD 511 IPC1-2(c)83SRL". The IPC firmware version is 1.2 ($07F0: DB 01, 02). This IC and some other QL bits and pieces were acquired from former Mechanical Affinity QL trader Paul Holmgren while I was on my once-in-a-lifetime US road trip in summer 2018. The ROM code was read in summer 2022 by Marcel Kilgus using his "Arduino Mega 2560 clone micro USB" and "MCS-48 (8748 / 8749 / 8741 / 8742 / 8048 / 8049 / 8050 / 8755) Programmer / Reader". Marcel even spent some valuable time disassembling, aligning and comparing the firmware with the original version 0.7 that most QLs came with. Apart from the version number, the only relevant change is the sequence in which the keyboard is debounced (for details, see the report "Sinclair_QL_IC24_8049_IPC_firmware_1-2_differences_to_0-7.pdf"). |
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 Sinclair QL IPC 8049 firmware read out with MCS-48!, 9 seconds, YouTube |
Sinclair QL IPC firmware version 1.2, 2 KB |
 Sinclair QL Software Developer's Guide 1984 |
Technical | SRL | Sinclair Research Ltd QL software developer’s guide by Tony Tebby and David Karlin edited by Michèle Wright. Published in 1984 as A4 pages, typesetting and re-published in 1985 as the QL Technical Guide in an A5 ring binder. | |
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 Sinclair QL Benutzer Handbuch 1985 |
User Guide | SRL | Sinclair QL User Guide, 2nd edition, German edition 1985. Sinclair QL Benutzer Handbuch, 2. Ausgabe, deutschsprachige Ausgabe 1985. |
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 Sinclair QL NEWS No 1 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | Sinclair Research Ltd QL NEWS No 1 advertisement feature published in various computer magazines at around February/March 1985. | |
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 Sinclair QL NEWS No 2 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | Sinclair Research Ltd QL NEWS No 2 advertisement feature published in various computer magazines at around March/April 1985. | |
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 Sinclair QL Sales Guide 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | Sinclair QL Sales Guide. This was a sales support folder for Retail stores. | |
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 Research on Sinclair QL TV ad 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | SINCLAIR RESEARCH LTD QUALITATIVE RESEARCH FINDINGS ON POST-TEST OF QL TELEVISION ADVERTISING by Boase Massimi Pollitt. This comes from the Sinclair Archives. | |
Sinclair QL TV advertisement 1985, 23 seconds, YouTube |
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 Results of Sinclair QL TV ad 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | Sinclair Research Ltd QL TELEVISION CAMPAIGN QUANTITATIVE RESULTS by Boase Massimi Pollitt. This comes from the Sinclair Archives. | |
Sinclair QL TV advertisement 1985, 23 seconds, YouTube |
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 Sinclair QL Service Manual 1985 |
Technical | SRL | The Sinclair QL Service Manual was first released in January 1985(!), 1 year after the launch of the machine. This is the HTMLed edition of the last known version (Issue 3, October 1985) which covers build standards D06 to D16 and issue 5 and 6 PCBs. Although the original Engineering Specifications are lost, the original Service Manual holds most of the Engineering Specification. |
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 The Rodney Papers 1970 to 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | 150 pages with unique original papers from the Sinclair Archives. Author Rodney Dale had those papers on a loan from Clive Sinclair when he wrote the book The Sinclair Story. | |
The Sinclair Story (including Rodney's Papers), 42 minutes, YouTube |
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 Bill's Papers 1980 to 1985 |
Marketing | SRL | More than 350 pages with unique original Press Releases and Bulletins from Bill Nichols, former Sinclair Research PR manager. He archived those papers in a folder labelled SRL Press Releases. Among others there this announcement of an agreement that could have changed the computing world: On 7 March 1984 Sinclair Research Ltd announces agreement with SAMSUNG Electronics to assemble and sell Sinclair computers in South Korea. It finally ended up in SAMSUNG manufacturing the ZX Spectrum, QL and ZX Spectrum+ models for domestic market and more importantly as a second and third source for international market, resulting in the QLs for North American and German market being exclusively made by SAMSUNG. |
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The Sinclair Press Releases (Bill's Folder), 6 minutes, YouTube One more thing..., 2 minutes, YouTube |
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 Interview with the QL's Chief Design Engineer 2002/2013 |
Article | CEL | Over the decades many QL stories have been written. One of the most recent and comprehensive ones is the Interview with David Karlin, the QL's Chief Design Engineer, first published in September 2013 in the Final Issue of the QL Today magazine (all issues included in THE DISTRIBUTION!). | |
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 QL Today magazine (1996 to 2013) |
Magazine | JMS | Read every single issue of the QL Today magazine - published 1996 to 2013 (17 volumes, 88 issues) by Jochen Merz Software - as scanned PDF files. Download THE DISTRIBUTION HERE to offline-read all issues as of the QL Today magazine! |
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QL Today Magazin (1996 to 2002) |
Magazin | JMS | Lest jede einzelne Ausgabe der deutschsprachigen Ausgabe des QL Today Magazines - veröffentlicht 1996 bis 2002 (6 Jahrgänge, 35 Ausgaben) durch Jochen-Merz-Software - als gescannte PDF Dateien. Download THE DISTRIBUTION HIER um alle Ausgaben des QL Today Magazines offline zu lesen! |
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 Die ausgefallene Revolution im Computermarkt - Artikel 2013 |
Article | RETURN | For those who can read German there's a nicely illustrated (worth looking at for all) QL story by Jürgen Malberg, published by the RETURN magazine in winter 2013. | |
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 Der Quantensprung, der dann doch keiner war - Artikel 2014 |
Article | RETRO | For those who can read German there's another QL story by Urs König, published by the RETRO magazine in spring 2014. | |
 QL IS 30 2014 - THE DISTRIBUTION |
Distribution | CEL | Lucerne, Apr 29th 2015 – Urs König of COWO Enterprises LLC proudly releases QL IS 30 2014 - THE DISTRIBUTION for public download.
This distribution is the successor to QL Today 2013 The Final DVD which was sent out to subscribers in September 2013 with The Final Issue of the QL Today magazine.
The new version holds everything which was on the DVD, but has been carefully updated and supplemented with new material - Urs has been able to add some real long lost gems and an exclusive new release of a formerly commercial package, QDT the ultimate QL desktop - created or preserved during the last few months.
Altogether there are 4.7 GB of QL related documents, software and pictures on this distribution.
Preconfigured QL emulators for use under Windows, Mac OS and even Linux make it easy to bring the QL (back) to your desk.
QL/E - THE QL ENVIRONMENT offers a modern, compact and ready to run QL environment.
Great ways to (re-) start programming for the QL or using QL programs.
QL IS 30 2014 - THE DISTRIBUTION is free which means it can be downloaded, used and given to friends by anyone at no cost.
QL forever! By default THE DISTRIBUTION is delivered as a ZIP file called THE_DISTRIBUTION.ZIP (ZIP file of most recent version is approx. 2.89 GB) rather than a DVD (image). It is highly recommended to store the content of the ZIP file on your computer(s) or even on your file server(s). Just unzip THE_DISTRIBUTION.ZIP at your preferred storage location and up you go. Current version: 3.06 (Codename "LLAP", RELOADED edition!), last updated 22.02.2021, ZIP file size 2.89 GB Last updated in 2019 and 2021, the most relevant changes of the RELOADED edition are (details see Introduction (PDF) or history (TXT): Physical disk drive image: SDHC_4GB_QL_THE_DISTRIBUTION.img 3'974'103'040 01.05.2023 10:59 (4 GB image file of a SDHC card, to be written to a SDHC card)Distributions: Tailored Distribution (boots into QL/E v3.22), SD card edition v3.07, core is the above mentioned physical disk drive image. The fast track for QL-SD, MIST & Q68!, 485 MB
The previous version 3.05 (Updated 2019) stays available for the use on the Raspberry Pi. The older version 3.04 (Updated 2016-04-23) - the last full issue of the original QL IS 30 2014 edition - stays available for collectors but is no longer be supported. And there's a cumulative incremental delta update package of version 3.04 stored in a file called THE_DISTRIBUTION-Update.ZIP (248 MB ZIP file) for those who have already downloaded (and installed) v3.01 (GA, 11.04.2015), v3.01A (29.04.2015), v3.02 (09.05.2015) or v3.03 (02.11.2015). Just unzip this ZIP file at your storage location of the unzipped distribution and confirm to overwrite existing files. Important notes Even v3.04 and previous versions are outdated and no longer supported, those are still useful for most "things" because most content of THE DISTRIBUTION is pretty static, only QL/E - THE QL ENVIRONMENT! sees frequent updates. THE DISTRIBUTION can very easily be equipped with the latest version of QL/E; keep in mind that the version of QL/E supplied with THE DISTRIBUTION v3.04 is slightly outdated (v3.13). Even the latest (2021) version 3.06 of THE DISTRIBUTION comes with the outdated version 3.20 (2020 edition) of QL/E. Hence it is advisable to download the latest version of QL/E - THE QL ENVIRONMENT! ( release 2023-12-29, version 3.23) separately.
Integration of latest QL/E into THE DISTRIBUTION is very easy. Just replace the folder qle in the THE_DISTRIBUTION folder with the folder qle of the stand-alone QL/E distribution and you're done!
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Introduction, 1 MB  History, 15 KB Introduction for Raspberry Pis, 1 KB Introduction for QL-SD, MIST & Q68, 2 KB File list of SDHC card content for QL-SD, MIST & Q68, 5 KB |
Presentation in English, 33 min., YouTube Presentation in German, 18 min., YouTube Photo of physical DVD, 461 KB  HTML menu of version 3.04, 200 KB |
Complete Distribution, RELOADED edition v3.06, 2.89 GB Image of Raspbian Buster with complete Distribution, RELOADED edition v3.05 (2019), for Raspberry Pi, 8.48 GB Image of SDHC card with Distribution, RELOADED edition v3.07, for QL-SD, MIST & Q68, 485 MB Complete Distribution, Edition 1604 v3.04, 3.25 GB (outdated) Update package (brings old Distributions to v3.04), 248 MB |
 QL/E - THE QL ENVIRONMENT! |
Distribution | CEL | For those who just need a modern and compact ready to run QL environment (applications, demos, desktops, games, tools, utilities), go ahead, download and run QL/E. QL/E comes loaded and pre-configured with a good selection of QL programs including a nicely setup desktop built using QTop, QPAC, Cueshell, Qascade, ProWesS, QDT and Launchpad. QL/E includes the latest versions of the virtual QL machines (aka emulators) QPC2 (Windows) and SMSQmulator (Java) with the latest version of the operating system SMSQ/E (the well maintained successor of QDOS and Minerva) plus uQLx (Linux for Intel and ARM including the Raspberry Pi) and sQLux, both running QDOS and Minerva (latest version 1.98a1 included) as operating system. QL/E also supports other SMSQ/E platforms such the MC68040 powered QXL PC ISA card (DOS), QPC1 (DOS) and Q68 (FPGA) plus QDOS/Minerva platforms such as the original Sinclair QL with QL-SD or with TDI, the MIST FPGA based multi platform computer, Q-emuLator (Windows, Mac OS), uQLx (Linux for Intel and ARM including the Raspberry Pi) and sQLux. The following topics are covered by this vast software distribution: Version information: QL/E version: 3.23 (Edition 2023, Codename "Midnight Sun", last updated 29.12.2023)
Virtual disk drive containers: File system (Device name WIN1, 2906 files, see file list): QLE.WIN 83'886'080 29.12.2023 17:02 (QLWA)
Physical disk drive image: CF_1GB_QL_TDI_QubATA_LQ1W_p1_6_80_p2_6_32-D-QLE322.img 1'024'966'656 28.04.2023 17:19 (QLW1, 1 GB image file of a CF card, to be written to a CF card for usage with QubATA compatible systems such as the TDI)Distributions: QL/E stand-alone edition v3.23 (RTM) for PC and to manually equip your QL systems, 225 MB. In case you are using a system with JS ROM, it is advised to download and apply the hotfix 01 (replacements of boot program files, 36KB) to the stand-alone edition of QL/E v3.23.
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Introduction & What you get, 8 KB Manual, 33 KB News, 227 bytes History, 9 KB Changelog, 41 KB File list of QL/E's WIN1 disk, 192 KB File list of QL_BDI.bin (QL/E v3.15), 95 KB Introduction for QubATA systems, 1 KB |
 Screenshot of v3.10, 436 KB  Screenshot of v3.11, 757 KB  Screenshot of v3.13, 456 KB  Screenshot of v3.13, 647 KB  Screenshot of v3.15, 668 KB  Screenshot of v3.16, 606 KB  Screenshot of v3.17, 531 KB Screenshot of v3.19, 349 KB  Screenshot of v3.20, 462 KB  Screenshot of v3.21 running THE REAL MATRIX, 656 KB  Screenshots of QL/E in various use cases on various platforms, hosted on the QL Picture Gallery (SQPG) on OneDrive Running QL/E v3.13 on a fast i5-4430 Gamer PC under Windows 7 (QTop-Index scores 1202.968), 7 min., YouTube QL/E (started with uQLx 2017 under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) had its 30 seconds of fame at this year’s EuroShop in Düsseldorf, the World’s No. 1 Retail Trade Fair., 30 sec., YouTube QL/E v3.19 on various platforms, 6 minutes 46 seconds, YouTube |
Stand-alone edition 2023 v3.23, 225 MB Hotfix 01 (replacements of boot program files) for QLs with JS ROM, 36 KB Stripped-down edition v3.22 for QubATA compatible systems such as the TDI, 70 MB Bad Apple video for QMovie player, 14 MB Bad Apple (180p, 3fps, m16) video for QMovie player, 9 MB |
QL forever!
Urs König
(replace -at- with @)
Site produced (p) and copyright (c): 2013-2024, Urs König
Created: January 10th 2014 | Published: January 12th 2014 | Last Updated: June 11th 2024
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