QPC II ALPHA release 2
----------------------
(I decided not to call it a "BETA" because the development isn't that far yet. This
may change soon.)

Theoretical requirements:
  486SX
  8MB ram
  VGA
  Windows 95, 98 or NT4 SP3
  DirectX 3 or later

Recommended:
  Pentium 75
  32MB ram
  SVGA
  Windows 95, 98 or NT4 SP3
  DirectX 3 or later


Installation
------------
Run it from anywhere you want, just make sure the latest SMSQE.BIN is in the same
directory. It runs without any problem out of an existing QPC directory. It uses
exactly the same SMSQE.BIN file as QPC1.
This release is more or less aimed at users that already have QPC. For all others
I recommend to download Peta Jaegers QPC1 demo which includes a sample hard disc
container file.
If you've problems don't hesitate to ask me.


Configuration
-------------
Just like the old QPC QPCII in this version gets its configuration out of the
SMSQE.BIN file. Use my CONFIG.EXE utility to change the options.


Some remarks to this ALPHA-Version
----------------------------------
* Like QPC1 you can close QPC by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+Roll or by using the
  QPC_EXIT SBasic command.
* This release does not use the new (and propably faster) emulation kernel I've
  written. There's a bug somewhere which I couldn't figure out so far.
  Instead it uses a 32-bit version of the good old QPC kernel, so it should be at 
  least very bug free.
* Sound, SER and PAR are not implemented yet
* Mode 8 is not implemented yet
* 512x256 is not implemented yet! Don't use it.
* FLP only works under Win9x and is relatively slow (all time's consumed inside
  Windows, it's not QPC's fault). I hope to find a faster solution, but well, it's
  Windoze...
  NT needs a completely different driver (and that's called "compatible"). I
  didn't have the time to write it yet (well, it's partly written but it doesn't
  work properly so far and I wasn't able to debug it for some time because my NT 
  machine was the only remote debugger).
* WIN and FLP are read only (of course, it's a free version...)
* CD-audio is mostly implemented (no, I don't really need it anymore, but it was
  interesting to write ;-)
* The '<' key on german keyboards doesn't work (bug in DirectX, maybe there
  are other keys on other layouts that also don't work. Please tell me!).
  I didn't find a work around nor did I get any response from Microsoft yet.
* The Win9x timer is very inaccurate, so the QL poll frequency lies not exactly at
  50Hz in this release (52Hz most of the time). On some rare occasions I even got
  76Hz (QPC generates the 50Hz out of 250Hz, so the W95 timer was 130Hz wrong!).
  If you want to know your poll frequency exactly just run my little dirty poll.bas 
  included in the zip file. After using it it's saver to reboot SMSQ/E.
  NT works perfectly in this respect.
* On some Laptops the QL screen seems not to be restores when you switch to
  windows and back to QPC. Please tell me if that's also the case on your PC.


Finally
-------
The only thing I want from YOU is feedback! Don't hesitate to write me at
mkilgus@gmx.de! I'm also reading the maus.computer.ql.de, maus.computer.ql.intl
and comp.sys.sinclair groups. For comp.sys.sinclair make sure to mention "QPC"
or "QL" in your posting so it gets through my filter. But I think you'd have done 
that anyway ;-)

I'd like to hear if it works or not (especially the task switching using ALT+TAB) 
and in both cases on which hardware/software (OS, DirectX version, graphics card, 
driver versions).
If you've a really fast machine (like PII 400 or something similar) please use some
popular benchmarks and tell me the results!

Have fun,

Marcel

--
mkilgus@gmx.de
http://www.deuschle.de/qpc/