jnweiger / sqlux

sQLux (or QL Sux according to DaveP)

sQLux is a Sinclair QL emulator. It runs on Linux (including Rapsberry Pi), Mac and MS Windows. It is based on uQlx but with SDL2 used as its OS layer.

sQLux adds several features over the uQlx base code. See the Documentation for more details.

sQLux is in active development, with new functionality added regularly. However, the latest releases and packages are suitable for normal use.

Building

Dependencies

Debian/Ubuntu

apt install build-essential cmake git libsdl2-dev

Fedora

dnf install cmake gcc gcc-c++ git SDL2-devel

All Platforms

sQLux uses git submodules, so either clone with the --recursive argument.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/SinclairQL/sQLux/

or after cloning

git submodule init
git submodule update

Building Linux

sQLux has switched to using cmake as its build system

Basic instructions

mkdir linux
cd linux
cmake ..
make

Building MinGW on Linux

Instructions based on debian/ubuntu distro, for other distros you will have to modify as appropriate

Download the SDL2 mingw SDK and adapt the following to your environment/version. The SDL2 development libraries can be found here:

tar xvf SDL2-devel-2.0.18-mingw.tar.gz
cd SDL2-2.0.18/
sed -i "s|/opt/local/|/usr/local/|" x86_64-w64-mingw32/lib/cmake/SDL2/sdl2-config.cmake
sed -i "s|/opt/local/|/usr/local/|" i686-w64-mingw32/lib/cmake/SDL2/sdl2-config.cmake
sudo mkdir /usr/local/i686-w64-mingw32
sudo mkdir /usr/local/x86_64-w64-mingw32
sudo make cross

Now the mingw version of SDL2 is available and we can build sQLux for Win64

mkdir mingw
cd mingw
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../mingw-w64-x86_64.cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local/x86_64-w64-mingw32 ..
make

Building MinGW on Windows

Install MSYS2 from here https://www.msys2.org/

Run the mingw64 environment

Install the toolchain and SDL2

pacman -Sy mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain
pacman -Sy mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake
pacman -Sy mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2

Create the build directory and compile

mkdir mingw
cd mingw
cmake.exe -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
mingw32-make

This will generate sqlux.exe. Dependencies are statically linked, so sqlux.exe will run without the need for additional dlls.

MinGW pthreads/win32 threads

The 64bit build using mingw requires the winpthread library for the high definition timer support.

The 32bit build can be built using win32 threads for XP compatibility and therefore does not include the high resolution timer support.

uqlxrc

The emulator currently reads an existing uqlxrc file, so it will re-use any uQlx setup already existing.

NOTE: ROMIM has changed to now only accept 1 rom name

NOTE: RAMTOP is where in memory the top of the ram is, not the amount of ram. As ram on QL starts at 128k in memory map then to created a 128k QL you need to set RAMTOP = 256

sQLux supports additional parameters over those used for uqlxrc. See the Documentation for more details.

Shader support

sQLux has support for GPU shaders, to emulate the effects seen when using a CRT display. See the Shader documentation for more details on how to build and run sQLux with GPU shaders.