What is SMSQ/E?

SMSQ/E will work on any system which has a minimum of 1MB RAM: all ATARI ST/STE/TT (with or without QL emulator), GoldCard and SuperGoldCard and QXL - it is inbuilt into QPC. SMSQ/E is not a modified QL-ROM-based system, it is completely re-written. This results in better performance and very many new features. SMSQ/E can be divided into various parts:

1. the Operating System
2. new, fastSBASIC
3. flexible Device Driver V3
4. faster and improved Console (Screen) Driver
5. highly improved serial and parallel ports
6. new/improved "virtual" drivers

All three parts give advantages in all systems, and they will have a unique interface. Here an extract of the list of features:

• The behavior of the operating system can be defined: if you want it to behave like QDOS (bad reaction under heavy load), then programs run faster. It can be set to be as fast as QDOS, but with a better reaction under load. For the ATARIs, 5 levels of memory protection can be defined (useful to get some badly written or errorneous programs to run). The operating system calls are, in general and on all systems, faster than QDOS. You can independently select the keyboard you're using, various translation tables (English, French, German, IBM and GEM), and the language for messages! The input line editing is extended to give you better editing control.

• SBASIC: You can now start as many interpreted BASICs as you want, all running independently. And you can add "private" extensions to these SBASICs, which go away when the job goes away. _BAS programs can now be EXecute, so you don't have to compile (filters) anymore. BASICs can be positioned everywhere on the screen (by call). SBASIC runs interpreted usually a bit faster than compiled (QLiberated) BASIC, i.e. MUCH faster than SuperBASIC! And, of course, a large number of improvements have been made, e.g.: you can directly enter hexadecimal and binary numbers / fast integer FOR and SELect / improved error messages / BPUT, BGET now allow string to be parameters / END FOR, END REPeat, REPeat, NEXT etc. don't need a name anymore / LOAD, MERGE also accepts QSAVEd files / SAVE does not need a filename, it saves the file under the same name it has been loaded / extended PEEK and POKE, PEEK$, POKE$ / LBYTES, SBYTES etc. accept channel numbers instead of filename / improved slicing / machine-detection functions exist / ... and more! Default channel commands (ED defaults to #2, DIR to #1, BPUT to #3) now use channel #0 instead if they find that their default channel is not open - and if #0 is not open, it is opened implicitly!

• Device Driver Level 3 - gives you flexible formats. You can access a DOS or TOS-disk in the same way in which you access a QDOS disk, the system detects the format automatically. If you insert a DOS disk and type DIR flp1_, then you get a directory. You can use all the normal file commands in every program (not special extensions like ATR or ATARI-DOS) to access files to copy, delete, load etc. This allows you to boot from one disk, even if it is a TOS/DOS disk!
  • The WIN features are greatly enhanced on the ATARI version: you can now access ANY QDOS or TOS partition on any drive, even Extended Gem and Big Gem. You can now have more than one QDOS partition on one drive. You defined WIN2_ to be TOS-Partition C or D or ..., win3_ to be partition 7 etc., all this is VERY useful to transfer documents, graphics etc. between various systems. And, you can software-write-protect one or more harddisk partitions. Full harddisk control via WIN_Control Thing! In addition, HD (1.4MB) disks are now supported on the ATARIs too! Full floppy disk control via FLP_Control Thing!

• The screen driver is much faster than the original QL screen driver. You do not need any of the old "screen accelerator extensions anymore. In addition, if your hardware permits, screen resolution can be changed while the system is running without the need to reset:
  • The SER and PAR drivers of all systems have been put to the high standards of the ATARI drivers: more parameters, you can define in the device name whether this channel uses TRA or not (instead of toggling the global TRA all the time), dynamic buffers are added. Full control of the port parameters with the SER_PAR_PRT Thing!
  • The QXL version supports 512x256, 640x480 and 800x600 pixels.
  • The QPC version supports the above plus higher resolution, depending on your graphics card.

• Other virtual drivers have been added or improved: named pipes (first in, first out, of course), History (last in, first out, new!! Even shared Histories are allowed!) and DEV, the virtual directory device which allows search chains to be built.

Development has taken longer than estimated, but far more facilities than originally planed were implemented. You can execute SBASIC programs even out of the QPAC2 Files menu. You also get an SBASIC/QD F10 Thing interface inuilt for free, so that you can use QD for writing, editing and starting (uncompiled) SBASIC programs! SMSQ/E now exists for 3 years, and is still improved in its first "stage".

As you can see, you get a system you were always dreaming off. We decided to offer it in steps, with the main part (as described above) being ready now! This means you can now benefit from what exist now - at the same price in steps that the final version would cost in total. Later on, a new Screen driver will come which will allow that printing will always continue, even to a window which is completely or partially overlapped by other windows. Visible areas of overlapped windows will be updated to the screen!!! Then we will have (everyone's wanting this for years) "background" floppy/harddisk operation, i.e. when files are read or written, the whole machine does not stop anymore completely. The third improvement stage will we a pointer-integrated SBASIC development environment.

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