Oh hey, instead of sleeping I spent all night working on a program to convert a #SinclairQL Quill document into simple HTML

https://codeberg.org/popeyeotaku/PopQuill

El mítico juego de Costa Panayi ahora disponible para #SinclairQL gracias a spkr/smfx, que son los que nos tienen acostumbrados a las últimas demos de QL.

Enlace a la fuente original: Game release: Android 2 for QL https://theqlforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=5457

The #SinclairQL sound system is really pretty bonkers. Documentation is vague and even the explainers I've found are missing stuff while some others are trying to guess. At least in an emulator one can create quite odd results by giving values which don't follow the guidelines.

What was fun was that one command created sound akin to a tune by #Ø, while adding another parameter resulted in a #noise tune by #PanSonic. Awesome!

#retrocomputing

Too bad it's only 1 channel...

These are parts of code in Brataccas that may have been written originally targeting the 68008 processor of the Sinclair QL before they were ported to the Atari ST

After some cursory scanning of the Brataccas code, some patterns emerged:

Case 1: Bit-reversal lookup table

This seems unusual and suggests graphics conversion between platforms with different pixel bit-ordering. The QL stored pixels in a different bit order than the ST - this table appears to be useful to convert graphics assets that were originally in Sinclair QL format.

Case 2 Excessive byte operations

Throughout the code, there's an unusual preference for byte operations:

On the 68000 (ST/Amiga/Mac), word operations are typically preferred for performance. But the QL's 68008 CPU had an 8-bit external bus - byte vs word operations had similar performance. This coding style hints at optimisation for the 68008, not the 68000.

The disassembly available at the Brataccas website seems to have been produced from a QL to Atari ST port, not the Amiga as I originally thought.
https://www.brataccas.com/Page28.php

The first part of the code (first 1000-1500 lines or so) is a music tracker, and it's clearly a separate module from the rest, clearly designed to be reusable. There are hints that the I/O ports are Atari-specific and that the engine allows for developers to perform hot-editing of music notes via the MIDI port, which was something incredibly sophisticated for 1985. Some other parts of the code deal with vibrato, legato, and effects during realtime play.

After that block there's what seems to be a sprite blitting engine, but that's as far as I got.

To be continued...

#brataccas #retrocomputing #retrogaming #m68k #SinclairQL #QL #asm #assembler #m68008

Another #specnext blog post, this time about using the Sinclair QL core that was released last year.

https://www.elite.uk.com/mike/posts/2025-08_QL_Next_Xchange/ #sinclairql #retrocomputing

Neuer QL-Leckerbissen: „Batman“ (1986) wurde 2025 von Joan Gayón auf den Sinclair QL portiert – 68k-Assembler, Multicolor (256×256, 8 Farben), ~150 Räume, Bat-Signals als Checkpoints und 3 Sound-Modi. Läuft ab 640 KB RAM, SGC empfohlen; sQLux/QemuLator/MiSTer kompatibel. Mein Eindruck + Downloads:
https://www.jungsi.de/batman-sinclair-ql/

#SinclairQL #Batman #RetroGaming #Homebrew

https://www.jungsi.de/batman-sinclair-ql/