QL rubber keypad sticking

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towmater
ROM Dongle
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Joined: Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:13 am

Re: QL rubber keypad sticking

Post by towmater »

With the RWAP "mylar" installed (That was fast considering it shipped to California) and the rubber cleaned without any of the dramatic alternatives that I originally imagined, everything is A-OK. I assume the error from the tape drive is just because the tape itself has gone bad. I hadn't expected the Psion tapes would still be viable, but the "Business Graphics" tape did load correctly. Since this is quite a rarity in the US, I imagine most software is written for a PAL machine and it will be interesting to see if I can get any games downloaded from the web to run.

Many thanks for all of your help. Now I'm inspired to gather more Sinclair machines.
2018-03-06 21.35.57.jpg


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Dave
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Re: QL rubber keypad sticking

Post by Dave »

Wooo!

That’s a nice crisp display. How are you getting it from the QL to the display?


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vanpeebles
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Re: QL rubber keypad sticking

Post by vanpeebles »

Looks like one of those black metal box, RGB Scart to HDMI boxes :)


RWAP
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Re: QL rubber keypad sticking

Post by RWAP »

towmater wrote: I assume the error from the tape drive is just because the tape itself has gone bad. I hadn't expected the Psion tapes would still be viable, but the "Business Graphics" tape did load correctly. Since this is quite a rarity in the US, I imagine most software is written for a PAL machine and it will be interesting to see if I can get any games downloaded from the web to run.

Many thanks for all of your help. Now I'm inspired to gather more Sinclair machines.
The problem with the microdrive cartridge could be down to damage to the data on the tape, but is probably down to two or three things:
a) The small felt pad between the body of the cartridge and the tape has disintegrated with age. New felt pads are generally available through SellMyRetro.com - actually the latest material David Marling is using for these is providing much better results in my opinion.
b) The tape heads need cleaning (alcohol and a cotton bud)
c) The small rubber roller on the left hand side of the microdrive slot has worn or moved. You can sometimes get away with turning this upside down. Also check there is a gap at the bottom of the roller (between the roller and the plastic collar) - but the gap should not exceed 0.5mm !!

I can supply the US versions of the Psion software on refelted cartridges should you need it :)

99% of all software written for the QL will work happily on the US version of the QL and thankfully there is plenty of public domain and freeware software on Dilwyn's Sinclair QL Homepage. The only problem with software on US QLs is where they use iser defined fonts (because, from memory, the UK QL only recognised the first 7 bits of a character, whereas the US recognised all 8) - D-Day MKII and War In the East MKII are both supplied with two versions of the user defined fonts to allow them to work on both sides of the pond.

Original software on microdrive cartridge tends to be expensive, hard to get a hold of and rarely has been re-felted, so may not even work. It can therefore be worth considering getting a disk drive + interface, a vDriveQL or one of the various QubIDE type interfaces. You can also get software onto the QL via the serial port (albeit slowly).

I still supply a limited range of commercial software (mainly games) for the QL on disk or refelted microdrive cartridge, as I have the rights to some of the software; although there is still quite a lot which remains unavailable except through the second hand market - either because it has not been preserved, or the copyright holders have not provided their consent to make it available (although most do tend to give their consent if approached).

I also still have several 100 microdrive cartridges containing original software from my own ill-fated preservation project.


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