SMSQ/E is an operating system developed in France by Tony Tebby, creator of the original QDOS for the Sinclair QL personal computer. Starting as SMSQ, a QDOS-compatible system for the Miracle Systems QXL emulator, it evolved into SMSQ/E with a rewritten SuperBASIC interpreter and extended device drivers for the Atari ST. It includes key add-ons like Toolkit II, the Pointer Environment (the QL’s mouse and windowing system), and Hotkey System 2. SMSQ/E runs on advanced QL-compatible hardware, including Miracle Systems' CPUs and the Q60 motherboard, but not on unmodified Sinclair QL machines.
History
In late 1995 a German author, Marcel Kilgus, acquired the SMSQ/E sources for adaptation to his QL emulator QPC, which from then on did not emulate any specific QL hardware anymore but employed specially adapted device drivers to achieve a tighter integration and faster emulation.
In 2000, version 2.94 was the first QL operating system that broke free of the bounds of the QL 8 colour screen, introducing GD2 (Graphic Device Interface Version 2), a QL compatible 16-bit high colour graphics sub-system.
Up to version 2.99 the system was exclusively developed by Tony Tebby and Marcel Kilgus. In 2002, Tebby released all of his source code (which doesn't include most QPC specific parts), albeit under a license which is not open source under the Open Source Definition. With this step Tony Tebby finally left the QL scene, but development by volunteers continues to this day.
In early 2013 the current source code was re-released under the BSD license.
Currently[when?] SMSQ/E consists of approximately 2000 68k assembler source files containing about 222,000 lines of code.
External links
- A Brief History of SMSQ/E
- The official SMSQ/E site Source Code, binaries and documentation
- QPC: a software emulator for DOS/Windows that employs SMSQ/E
- Q40/Q60: a 68040/68060 based motherboard for SMSQ/E
- SMSQmulator - Java based virtual QL machine running SMSQ/E
- QL/E The QL runtime Environment with SMSQ/E
- The Distribution, 4.7 GB of QL related documents, software (incl. all SMSQ/E editions) and pictures