minerva.rom — Minerva 1.98a1 (English), the QL operating system and SuperBASIC ROM
=================================================================================

minerva.rom is the file ROM/1.98a1.bin from the Minerva repository maintained by Marcel Kilgus,
unmodified:

  https://github.com/MarcelKilgus/Minerva  (commit 29e5365f6c0333d47410160a75f66fda3532ff1c,
  "Added 1.98a1 ROMs")
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MarcelKilgus/Minerva/29e5365f6c0333d47410160a75f66fda3532ff1c/ROM/1.98a1.bin

  48,828 bytes, CRC32 5dd7a40d,
  SHA-256 a5eb232d276f71545ec1cb4933dc0a03430493c289ce8798d5589f8a48372049

Minerva was written by Laurence Reeves (TF Services) as a replacement for the Sinclair QL's
QDOS and SuperBASIC ROM. Laurence Reeves released the Minerva 1.98 sources under the GNU General
Public License; the repository above carries GPL version 2 (COPYING, beside this file). Its
corresponding source code is the assembler source in that repository at the commit above (the
same tree the ROM image was built from; ROM/1.98a1.map is the linker map). Dilwyn Jones's QL
ROM page (https://www.sinclairql.net/djw/qlrom/index.html) says "The Minerva ROMs are OK to use
with emulators etc worldwide" and also hosts the 1.98 sources and copyright notice.

The emulator, the IPC and hardware emulation, the assembler and the examples on this page are
this site's own code (MIT); none of Minerva's code is linked into them — the ROM runs inside the
emulated 68008 like a ROM chip.

Why not the original Sinclair ROMs (JM, JS, MG…)?
-------------------------------------------------
Amstrad's 1999 permission to distribute its Sinclair ROMs with emulators (Cliff Lawson,
comp.sys.sinclair; see https://github.com/maziac/DeZog/blob/main/documentation/amstrad-rom-permissions.txt)
names the ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum ROMs. Asked about the QL, he said Amstrad "may have had the
rights to the QL stuff but then sold it on to someone else". Dilwyn Jones's QL ROM page says the
Sinclair ROMs AH, JM, JS, MG and TB "have been released for use in Europe, although rights to
these are held by Paul Holmgren and Frank Davis for North America". That is not a clear,
worldwide permission to redistribute, so they are not shipped here; the page lets you load a ROM
you own (it stays in your browser).