In 2024, the Spectrum Next team released a working Sinclair QL core for the Spectrum Next.

The QL is a rather interesting (and peculiar) machine that followed the ZX Spectrum.

Plenty has been written about the machine itself elsewhere so I'm not going to go over that ground here.

I've been slowly exploring the system delivered by the Next team as it's not a platform I've encountered before, and aside from the slight familiarity of being in a BASIC environment with SuperBASIC, it's quite different from anything else I've used.

The software distribution include XChange, which bundles together the four core applications that originaly shipped with the QL - Quill, Easel, Archive, and Abacus.

I wanted to take a look at these to see what the experience would have been like for a user taking a QL out of it's box in 1984.

Unfortunately, some assembly was required. As shipped, the software doesn't quite work, but fortunately fixing it isn't too difficult.

(This applies to the SYSTEM/NEXT 24.11 software distribution - these issues may have been fixed in later releases.)

As this particular software was originally shipped on floppy disk, the boot program needs altered to tell it to use a location in the virtual hard disk image on the Next.

DATA_USE win1_xchange

Take a backup for safety:

COPY boot to boot_bak LOAD boot

Replace flp1_ with win1_xchange_ on each of these lines:

EDIT 160

EDIT 265

EDIT 270

SAVE boot

You can now start XChange with RUN.

Due to the QL's odd mutlitasking environment, you'll still be in BASIC even after XChange has started. Press CTRL (GRAPH on the Next Keyboard) and C to switch focus to XChange.

If you move the cursor keys you'll see you're in a menu, but the screen layout is slightly broken. There's a patched version that fixes this, and other bugs.

To get out of XChange, press F3, then Q and return.

Head to Dilwyn's QL Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel page and download the "Xchange 3.90M Update"

Don't unzip the file - just copy it to the root directory of your SD card. I found when I unzipped it first and transferred the contents, it didn't work on the QL. Later I learned that this is because QDOS executable files have some external metadata which can be stored in zip files but gets discarded if you unzip them on other platforms. Thanks to Janko for explaining that to me).

With the SD card back in the Next and booted:

DATA_USE win1_xchange

COPY xchange to xchange_bak

EW SCOPY;"xch390m.zip xch390m_zip"

PROG_USE win1_commander

EW UNZIP;xch390m

When prompted, confirm the overwrite of win1_xchange_xchange

Then LRUN boot to get back into XChange, and again press CTRL-C to switch focus.

You should now have a better looking screen with a menu letting you chose which programme you want to start a new task in.