QL workshop and Quanta AGM 2012 |
24th-25th March 2012. While this workshop was not exactly the best attended ever, it was nonetheless quite an enjoyable weekend for those who attended.
George
Gwilt started the weekend with a talk on the subject of Big Numbers.
Not the price of fuel or bankers' bonuses, this talk sought to build on
the articles he is writing for QL Today
and to show how some heavy duty theory and assembler coding can be made
relevant to us all. He demonstrated how integer representations can be
used to calculate decimal numbers to given numbers of decimal places,
for example, and how putting a few simple SuperBASIC procedure wrappers
around the assembler code can make such a difference to ease of use -
once more we see how powerful the QL BASIC can be when well used.
As
a prime example, George demonstrated how his combined assembler and
BASIC routines could calculate values such as 'e' to a given number of
decimal places. He even challenged the audience to state how many
decimal places and of course his routines calculated any reply almost
instantly.
Meanwhile, the second presentation got cancelled in
embarrassing circumstances - yours truly had left it at home. It would
have been about a new program dock system, called Q-Dock.
The
quote of the weekend for me came from Rich Mellor. Having brought a
monitor to sell on his stand, I heard Rich call out "Who plugged a QL
into my monitor?" - as if he wasn't expecting to see a QL at a QL
workshop!
The next quotation comes from Quanta Editor Lee
Privett, who revealed that earlier in his working life he used to
desolder chips by applying a blowtorch to the underside of a circuit
board and then whack the board against a table to dislodge
the chips while the solder was still molten. Remind me not to let him
repair my QL should the need arise! Perhaps I'm being a bit unkind, as
he still had his arm in a sling following a recent operation (not from
all the translating of a Spanish adventure game he was doing during the
weekend) and had been driven to the workshop by his daughter all the
way from Essex!
Meanwhile, two Dutch visitors (Bob Spelten jr
and Leo Moll) revealed they had been shopping at the large Trafford
Centre and left without spending anything at all! Obviously, nothing
QL-related there, then!
It was nice also to see one or two new
faces at the workshop. We have already found out in the last year or so
that the QL Forum, for example, has been able to draw in some new QL
users in recent times, including some returning to the QL scene after
an absence and some who start using a QL for the first time due to an
interest in retro computing. We are also finding that there is a
renewed interest in systems which can help with learning to program
again, rather like we used to in the 1980s. The QL is a reasonably open
design and has good availability of documentation so is an ideal little
hobby computer in this respect.
We had hoped to have Adrian Ives
of Memory Lane Computing come along for the weekend to talk about his
SerUSB, Q-Bus and QL SD Card interface. Sadly, travelling all the way
from Cornwall by car he was unable to arrive in time on the Saturday,
but joined us for the Quanta Dinner in the Pond Quay restaurant later,
where no less than 21 people sat down to a delicious Chinese banquet. A
good enough excuse to continue talking about all things QL.
On
Sunday morning, Adrian Ives joined us and set up his hardware expansion
units for the QL, including the new QL-SD card interface for the QL,
which may come in two guises, one where it takes the place of
microdrive number 2, allowing the MDV2_ slot to be used for inserting
an SD card, and another where the SD card interface plugs into the ROM
slot behind the QL, for those who would rather not remove MDV2_ from
their QL. Adrian was working on some issues with noise pickup (probably
from the video modulator) when the interface is mounted in the MDV2_
slot but confident he can in time overcome those. He later gave a
presentation on his work, where the interest was so great the room was
packed full of avid listeners and after the talk, Adrian's table was
surrounded by those interested in the QL-SD card interface.
Adrian was also able to take advantage of borrowing some Gold Cards and
Super Gold Cards etc to test that the QL-SD system was compatible with
them.
Not
so good was the news that the life of the SerUsb interface may be all
but over for two reasons. First, the USB-whiz device used in the device
is discontinued and also the new QL-SD card interface will be able to
read and write to the SD card much faster than the one on the SerUsb
(which is limited by the speed of the QL serial port). During the talk
Adrian also discussed his new driver system (EDDE and all that - see
Adrian's article in QL Today from March 2012). I didn't quite
understand the theory well enough to go into it here, suffice to say it
is an expandable and adaptable system making it easier for designers to write driver
code which will be easier to integrate as part of a wider system.
Not
to be outdone, David Buckley brought along a robot. Or robots to be
precise. Varying from small wooden bipeds right up to an educational
and friendly large white plastic wheeled robot (pictures below), at
times David seemed like a shepherd counting his lost sheep as the
robots walked off all over the place, including sometimes out of the
door! David has a long standing interest in robotics and last year
demonstrated a turtle-style robot called Zero-2 programmed via a serial
cable from a QL. David explained how well children react to and
interact with these robots, a bit like interacting with a pet in some
cases, and of course some of the robots were programmed to interact
with you in a limited fashion. For example, the ultrasonic transducers
are mounted to look like eyes. The big white robot was an educational
recycling tool which can interact with youngsters to help teach about
recycling, for example. The robot played back recorded messages, danced
its arms to music, had blue LEDs on its face so could easily be made to
look as though it was looking at you and following your movements,
sometimes uncannily so.
Rich Mellor had also brought along his
new QL Games Collection 1 pack, a pack of ten games which are designed
to run on a Windows based PC under Q-emuLator for just £10.00 and
available from SellMyRetro.com. To quote Rich, "We hope this will help distil the comments that the QL was only ever a
business machine and will hopefully help promote the QL itself."
Committee members were filming some of the proceedings and videos will be available on the Quanta website in time.
The
AGM commenced at about 2pm and there was a lot of business to go
through. Dan Abbott has resigned as webmaster and Keith Dunbar has
resigned as Treasurer, although Keith will now take on the webmaster
role. Sarah Gilpin remains as Chairman of Quanta this year and John
Gilpin returns to the committee as the new Membership Secretary and
Treasurer. The new constitution was voted in by a large majority, but
one Special Resolution, to reduce the term of office for an Officer
from 3 years to 2 years, was defeated.
Some hilarity ensued when
it was spotted that some columns of figures in the accounts did not add
up correctly. This was traced to the fact that when the spreadsheet of
accounts was included in the little AGM booklet an error had occurred
in the column ranges, leading to it accidentally adding the year '2011'
to the totals. Luckily, this only applied to the printed version - the
ones presented to the auditor were correct and certified!
After
the AGM a brief committee meeting was held where among other things it
was pointed out that 2014 will be the 30th anniversary of the QL and
Quanta and the whole QL community should plan ahead for an extra
special event during that year and a few suggestions were discussed.
Anyone with ideas and suggestions is welcome to contact the Quanta
Committee. We also need to look at trying to find new venues for Quanta
workshops and would consider applications from individuals as well as
from sub-groups who can offer a suitable venue. The fairly low
attendance this year also means we need to look for ideas on how to try
to encourgae more QL users (not just members) to attend.
Here are some of the pictures I took at the meeting. Remember that non-members are always welcome to attend the Quanta workshops!
QL-SD Card interface, ROM port version |
Adrian Ives at his stand |
Prototype internal interface board |
Prototype ROM and expansion slot |
Picture of the very first Ser-Usb device, serial number 001! |
Alsion Southern and family deeply engrossed, while Chris Grogan looks on. |
George Gwilt, Lee Privett and Rich Mellor |
Contrary to rumours circulating, this is NOT a picture of the 2012 Quanta Committee |
David Buckley introduces Bob Spelten to a robot (or is that the other way around?) | Quanta Editor Lee Privett meets the robot (the Editor is the one on the right in case you thought...) |
Some pictures taken at the Quanta Workshop and AGM in Manchester, March 2012 |