Updated: 06.10.06
As I understand the situation, Psion have given permission for these programs to be freely copied for QL users, but have retained copyright on the software. So it is permissible to give away copies as long as you don not profit from it. For example, someone with a damaged master cartridge could freely be given a replacement, or someone who buys a second user QL without its software could be given copies. So in the hope that someone will find them useful, I'll make them available for download here. Most of the zipped files below are about 55K long. The first batch are the British versions of Abacus, Archive, Easel and Quill.
Quill V2.30 for floppy disks
(54K) [7/4/03]
Quill V2.35 for floppy disks (51K) [7/4/03]
Quill V2.30 for microdrive (54K) [7/4/03]
Quill V2.35 for microdrive (51K) [7/4/03]
Archive V2.30 for floppy disks
(56K) [7/4/03]
Archive V2.30 for microdrive (56K) [7/4/03]
Abacus V2.30 for floppy disks
(55K) [7/4/03]
Abacus V2.30 for microdrive (55K) [7/4/03]
Easel V2.30 for floppy disks
(60K) [7/4/03]
Easel V2.30 for microdrive (60K) [7/4/03]
Separate versions were available for Germany. Click on the links below to download the v2.25 German versions of Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel. Thanks to John Gregory for copies of these versions.
Quill v2.25 for floppy disks
(47K) [7/4/03]
Archive v2.25 for floppy disks (52K) [7/4/03]
Abacus v2.25 for floppy disks (48K) [7/4/03]
Easel v2.25 for floppy disks (59K) [7/4/03]
Quill v2.25 for microdrive
(47K) [7/4/03]
Archive v2.25 for microdrive (52K) [7/4/03]
Abacus v2.25 for microdrive (48K) [7/4/03]
Easel v2.25 for microdrive (59K) [7/4/03]
Separate versions were available for North America. Click on the links below to download the v2.1 versions of the Psion programs for North American QL users. Thanks to Howard Clase for copies of these versions.
WP (Quill) v2.1 for floppy disks
(54K) [7/4/03]
DB (Archive) v2.1 for floppy disks (55K)
[7/4/03]
SS (Abacus) v2.1 for floppy disks (54K)
[7/4/03]
BG (Easel) v2.1 for floppy disks (57K) [7/4/03]
WP (Quill) v2.1 for microdrive
(54K) [7/4/03]
DB (Archive) v2.1 for microdrive (55K) [7/4/03]
SS (Abacus) v2.1 for microdrive (54K) [7/4/03]
BG (Easel) v2.1 for microdrive (57K) [7/4/03]
For collectors, here are copies of the original version 1 of the Psion software supplied with very early QLs. They are not really intended for serious use, more for download by collectors, as they are after all very early versions.
Abacus v1 (55K) [7/4/03]
Archive v1 (57K) [7/4/03]
Easel v1 (55K) [7/4/03]
Quill v1 (55K) [7/4/03]
There is no specific version of these programs for use with hard disk without resorting to Xchange (see below) and it is not a straightforward task to convert them to run from directories. Two methods are generally used to enable them to be run from a sub-directory.
Method 1 Follow the guidelines in the Miracle Systems Ltd disk interfaces manuals.
Method 2 Use the DEV
device as follows. Those with the SUB extensions can make
equivalent use of the SUB device drivers.
When CST brought out the Thor computer, an integrated version of Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel was produced in collaboration with Danish software house Dansoft, called Xchange. Helmut Stuven of Dansoft was later to permit the free distribution of this version of Xchange and some other Dansoft Thor utility software. Erling Jacobsen and others (including Gunther Strube and Simon N. Goodwin) updated Xchange for QLs over the years. Erling Jacobsen maintains an Xchange web page which you can visit for latest information.
By clicking on the links below, you can download two zip files, the first containing the QL version of Xchange itself, and the second containing the documentation files (as Quill docs). Although Xchange specific, the information in these documents may also prove useful to QLers using the 'standard' versions of these programs.
Download Xchange V3.90L
(310KB) [7/4/03]
Download Xchange documentation (264KB) [7/4/03]
Xchange 3.90L GD2 Patch
People who use Xchange on high colour systems may have noticed the tendency to draw the white borders around the commands area in the wrong place. It seems to cause no harm, but is an untidy and mildly irritating problem. Marcel Kilgus has written a small patch program for the above version 3.90L. Simply EXEC the Xchange_Patch_Obj program and apply it to the main Xchange program (filename is Xchange) to apply the patch, which should ensure version 3.90L runs correctly in all colour modes. This program patches the original 3.90L version, it is not needed if you are downloading the 3.90M update below.
Download Xchange 3.90L patch program (3KB) [16/01/06]
Xchange 3.90M Update
An update to the Xchange suite, based on an update by Marcel Kilgus and sent to me by Ralf Reköndt which provides the following amendments, including the 3.90L patch above. This only includes the main Xchange file and a short doc file describing the changes, so you need to download the main Xchange 3.90L above if you do not already have this version of Xchange, then download 3.90M update and once unzipped overwrite the file called Xchange in the 3.90L version with the file of the same name in the 3.90M version. You do not need the 3.90L patch above if doing this. If this update proves viable over time, we may see a full 3.90M release at some point, for now there is only this update. (Note: the updates doc file in the zip file can only be read into Xchange Quill, the filename will have to be shortened to 8.3 length to be readable by standard Quill)
Download xch390m.zip update (125KB) [21/01/06]
Xchange 3.90N
Marcel Kilgus has produced a significant update to Xchange for systems having high resolution screens (minimum vertical resolution of 512 pixels). It includes all changes in V3.90M, but both versions will remain available as v3.90M can be used on QL or VGA resolution displays. The main changes in V3.90N are listed ina README_DOC file in the zip file. The zipfile contains the manin Xchange executable only, so use this to replace the file of the same name in Xchange v3.90L above. The main change is the extended screen workspace provided by the high resolution patch, filenames can now use a DOS style '.' extension separator in place of the QL '_' extension separator if required (it can load either README_DOC or README.DOC), the Archive formfeed bug is fixed and the white line drawing routines are fixed to draw in correct colour and location (apart from the Easel pie chart routines which still don't work as they should in high colour mode).
Download xchange390n.zip (125KB) [23/02/06]
Xchange HTML Generation
I needed to convert some Xchange Quill and Abacus files to HTML and it occurred to me that one way to achieve this was to create a printer driver which rather than printing to a printer would print to a file, adding the bare bones HTML tags to create a page of PRE-formatted text. Using this driver you can create simple HTML pages directly from within Xchange without having to use export files or other intermediate files. Using this driver, for example, Abacus spreadsheets can be printed to an HTML file keeping their column text layout.
htmldat.zip (4KB) [23/02/06]
This is a collection of 5 special printer_dat files for Quill, and some information on the printer_dat printer driver file format. The printer drivers include:
Download prtdats.zip (40K) (D. Jones)
A package which lets you edit the _hob help files in Xchange. Using the supplied superbasic programs you can convert the _hob files into a format where you can edit them in a plain text editor then reassemble them for use with Xchange. Another program in the package lets the _hob files be converted into source files for the GST Macro Assembler. Some sample _hob files are included.
Download hobutils.zip (46K) (Erling Jacobsen)
This is a compiled version of the INSTALL_BAS printer driver installer
for QL Quill, Abacus and Archive. Includes two versions, one with and one
without the QLiberator compiler runtime extensions. Being compiled, you
can EXEC or EXEC_W the program instead of LRUNning it as you would with
the uncompiled version. On traditional QL systems, the compiled version
will usually start much quicker than the uncompiled original.
Download install.zip - compiled install_bas
program (25K)