Gary Evans investigates the latest exciting development from the enigmatic Clive Sinclair.

The Sinclair QL takes Sir Clive's company out of the purely home computer market place as this latest computer is designed to appeal to business users in addition to the traditional educational and home users. Twin processors and 32-bit architecture make the QL stand out from the run of the mill 8-bit micros that dominate today's micro scene.

It must be pointed out that, despite initial promises from Sinclair, to date no QLs have been made available for the press to review. The delay in getting the QL onto the market has been caused by a series of problems associated with squeezing the computer's firmware into the ROM space allocated in the QL hardware. However, Sinclair have made the manual available and it is on the details contained in this that this brief review is based.

The outward appearance of the QL belies the wealth of technological innovation that lies beneath the surface. The machine is a stark black in colour and measures 138 x 46 x 472mm. The keyboard is of professional quality with 65 full travel keys. As the photograph shows the QL features a full length space bar together with five function keys along the left hand edge.

As already mentioned the computer is based on an MPU with a 32-bit internal architecture. The processor is in fact the Motorola 68008, the baby of the company's 68000 series. It is the most humble of the 68000 family of processors by virtue of the fact that, although it is capable of both 16 and 32 bit operations internally, it has only an 8-bit wide external data bus. This means that with a typical mix of instructions the 68008 will operate at only 70% of the speed of a true 16-bit processor running at the same clockspeed, still far faster than an 8-bit MPU though.

The second processor featured in the QL is an Intel 8049 and this is responsible for various housekeeping functions such as handling the I/O and the scanning of the keyboard.

The computer has 128K of RAM fitted internally and this is externally expandable to 640K (the processor itself is capable of addressing over 1 Mbyte of memory).

A major feature of the QL is the inclusion of two micro drives within the basic machine. The drives are a modified version of those designed for the Spectrum and offer a minimum capacity of 100Kbytes storage with an average access time of around 3.5 seconds.

Sound Principles

The 8049 second processor is responsible for the generation of the QL sound output. The sound output is invoked by the BEEP command which has a number of parameters associated with it. In turn these are duration, a parameter that specifies the duration of the sound in units of 20mS. Setting duration to 0 will result in a continuous sound output. Pitch is a straightforward variable to set the frequency of the output while pitch-2 will set an upper pitch level between which the sound will bounce. Grad-x and grad-y are two parameters associated with the 'bounce' effect and set the rate at which the sound varies between the two specified frequencies. The wrap facility forces the output to wrap around a specified number of times — if this is set to less than 15 the sound will wrap around continuously. The final command associated with the sound facility is fuzzy. This adds a random number to the pitch on every cycle of the sound and results in what Sinclair describe as a 'really fuzy sound'.

From the above it can be seen that the QL possesses a fairly impressive sound generator and one that should be worthy of experimentation in order that its full capabilities can be explored.

Screen Display

The QLs character display is 85 x 25 with a choice of character sets available. 32K of RAM is dedicated to the display which also supports two graphics modes. These are Hi-res, a four colour 512x256 mode and Lo-res, this producing a 256x256 eight colour display.

Ins And Outs

The QL has a wide range of I/O ports although strangely there is no Centronics printer port. An RS232 printer port is present though, along with a local area network that will allow up to 64 QLs or Spectrums to be linked together in a 100K band network.

The QL also has an output designed to drive a Red, Green, Blue monitor.

Operating System

The QL comes complete with its own multi-tasking single user operating system. Details of this are sketchy but the provision of such an operating system in a £400 micro is certainly something to be applauded.

The BASIC of the QL is an upgraded version of Spectrum BASIC and is described as a version of the standard language that adopts the structures and strategies of higher level languages such as BCPL and C.

The QL is supplied with four software packages. These include a word processor and data base, packages that emphasise the QLs role as a business machine.

In conclusion then, at £400 the QL is likely to give the BBC micro a run for its money. The fact that it features a 16-bit micro gives it a distinct advantage in terms of speed, and the inclusion of two micro drives as standard equipment must be seen as a major advantage.

Initial production problems mean that the machine is not likely to be available in quantity for some time, but by the end of this year the QL will be the machine that is likely to be the first choice for many business and home users that want a 'serious' computer at a budget price.