Am 13.06.2010 um 13:59 schrieb Norman Dunbar:
On 12/06/10 19:49, Malcolm Cadman wrote:
Design and make a new 21st Century successor to the QL ... :-)
Not wishing to be the bear in the ointment here, but that suggestion -
while a grand one - will no longer work.
In my opinion, back in the 80s fine, there were lots and lots of
computer companies all vying to be the best. These days, since IBM
created the "PC" then the PC is really all that there is.
Even the notebooks/netbooks are mini-PCs with nothing more than a
different processor.
The days of creating a new fabulous and different computer are long
gone
- similar to the Betamax Video recorder - you could create a much
better
one nowadays, but nobody would buy it because things have moved on
- for
better or worse.
We are basically stuck with the PC. All we can do is to continue to
help
Marcel keep QPC on the market, selling well and frequently enough to
keep him updating it.
Cheers,
Norman.
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I agree with you. Even Apple with all its resources and money sells
Macs with Intel-CPUs and (more or less) standard-hardware.
What we as user can do is to buy soft- and hardware from the
remaining resellers, give feedback to the software-authors (even its
only a short "I use and like your software!") and simply use the QL/Q-
Dos in one or other form. I think as long someone uses the QL (no
matter if its the original black box, a Q40/60 or with QPCII) the QL
isn´t dead.
I just ordered software from Jochen and bought various items from
Rich in the last months (for example my Q40, which I like a lot). I
wrote a large QL-article for the "Amiga Future" print-magazine and
will do it again for a German/Austrian Retro-magazine (Lotek64) in
August. I also started to coding on the QL again and will do some
software for the QL/Qxx in the future (at least I hope so;-))
My personal wish is, that new QL-hardware will be produced. Urs
suggested hardware would be nice for transferring software between
the QL and PCs/Macs.
I also still hope, that the Q60 will be produced again (although I
know its difficult), at least a last production-run.
On the longer run a replacement for the Q60 would be fine. I don´t
know if a redesign of the Q60 with more modern parts is possible
(with the remaining resources).
More possibilities (please not, that I am aware, that this is wishful
thinking): A "original" QL with some addons (and maybe with
additional Sinclair spectrum-compatibility) in a FPGA (like the
Minimig in the Amiga-scene) for the Retro-Fans or a Coldfire-based
board (there are ready to use evaluation-boards) with SMSQE or QDOS
as solution for "power"-users. I know that the Coldfire-CPU isn´t
100% compatible with the 68k, so we would need some adaptation on the
software-side.
Anton
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