Announcement - new QL Interface

[pjw]

Re Graphics cards: There is at least one graphics card in existence for "QL" systems, namely QVME. Ok, it was designed for the Atari QL emulator, but the drivers are written by Tony Tebby. It was/is and excellent piece of kit; well-built and flexible. Is there anything there that could be copied or emulated, or somehow be of some use towards a hardware "QL" graphics card? Just my penny's worth..
Per

[Outsoft]

Re Graphics cards: There is at least one graphics card in existence for "QL" systems, namely QVME. Ok, it was designed for the Atari QL emulator, but the drivers are written by Tony Tebby. It was/is and excellent piece of kit; well-built and flexible. Is there anything there that could be copied or emulated, or somehow be of some use towards a hardware "QL" graphics card? Just my penny's worth..
Per

Wow!!!

[georgeo]

Has anyone seen memory-clash problems with the default QUBIDE memory configuration and older software? I am unable to run Computer One FORTH with the QUBIDE card installed. C1 FORTH isn't re-locatable and the main code has to be loaded at address 196,608, which seems to clash with some memory being utilized by QUBIDE, indicated by RESPR generating an Out of Memory error.

[Peter]

Re Graphics cards: There is at least one graphics card in existence for "QL" systems, namely QVME. Ok, it was designed for the Atari QL emulator, but the drivers are written by Tony Tebby. It was/is and excellent piece of kit; well-built and flexible. Is there anything there that could be copied or emulated, or somehow be of some use towards a hardware "QL" graphics card? Just my penny's worth..
Per

It uses the Atari VME bus and is probably limited to mode 4. So when it comes to re-using existing hardware, Aurora graphics seems a better starting point.

[tofro]

Yep. QVME supports 4 colours only, but up to a resolution of 1280x900

Tobias

[pjw]

Re Graphics cards: There is at least one graphics card in existence for "QL" systems, namely QVME. Ok, it was designed for the Atari QL emulator, but the drivers are written by Tony Tebby. It was/is and excellent piece of kit; well-built and flexible. Is there anything there that could be copied or emulated, or somehow be of some use towards a hardware "QL" graphics card? Just my penny's worth..
Per

It uses the Atari VME bus and is probably limited to mode 4. So when it comes to re-using existing hardware, Aurora graphics seems a better starting point.

Its sooo long ago now, but I think the mode 4 limitation was because there was no GD2 at the time. The hardware was capable though, as Tony's Atari drivers could display the full Atari colours at high resolution. Another name for Atari's VME bus was Euro Expansion connector IIRC, so it wasnt some propriety bus. Anyway, you know best I only mentioned it because it is such a rare beast that many people may have been unaware of its existence:

QVME

[Ralf R.]

I have one in my MegaST 4 via the MegaBus and an adaptor, which I have got from Edwin. Plus a WireWrap DIN socket, which stuck in the adaptor. Very clumsy but it works.

[georgeo]

Has anyone seen memory-clash problems with the default QUBIDE memory configuration and older software? I am unable to run Computer One FORTH with the QUBIDE card installed. C1 FORTH isn't re-locatable and the main code has to be loaded at address 196,608, which seems to clash with some memory being utilized by QUBIDE, indicated by RESPR generating an Out of Memory error.

As I continue to investigate this, I'm trying to work out the memory map for the QL with the QUBIDE interface fitted. Here is what I've guessed:
- Toolkit 2 ROM resides in the expansion ROM area from 0C000h to 10000h.
- The QUBIDE drivers and additional commands sit somewhere in the I/O space between 10000h and 20000h
- The 768k expansion ROM resides from 40000h up to the top of RAM at 100000h, filling the expansion RAM space and all 16 peripheral ROM slots.

After a reset, RESPR(0) reports Ramtop as 1,034,240, which is pretty close to the highest location addressable on the 68008. However, why does RESPR() throw an Out of Memory error, when trying to allocate space at 40000h, as happens when I try to run the COMPUTER ONE FORTH boot loader?

Thanks in advance for any corrections/ enhancements to the above,
George.

[Ralf R.]

A word to QVME

BTW: As far as Jochen concerned (after a discussion with Edwin Holtmann a long time ago): There is no way to make QVME able to display more than four colours, because "the logic chips are not able to handle the amount of data from GD2".

Whatever this means, it means, that noone there has ever thought to bring more colours to it or leave a way open to enhance it. But I know from an old TT whitepaper for SMS, that he had more colours in his design for future upgrades, which he releases, albeit a few years later. And this design was printed long before QVME appeared.

Originally, it was planned to use the STE/TT native colour scheme to run SMSQ(/E) without any display card (in fact QVME is not an Emulator, it is a display card), but that path was abandonned, as we all know.

So they should have known better.

[Cristian]

There is no way to make QVME able to display more than four colours, because "the logic chips are not able to handle the amount of data from GD2".

In any case, with a 1280x900 resolution you can make many stipples variants!