The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi,

I have been trying to find out about a board in my collection. It is marked CCL C2389.001A. The 001A seems to indicate an early prototype as does the twisted wire to remove it from the QL! It appears to be a 4 slot ROM expansion with just a simple circuit to provide stable 5V to the board fed from the expansion slot. It has three ROMs installed marked:

QL Demo 2 798G, 6448 (which I wonder is the chip type - I don't want to disturb the sticker to check underneath but it does feel like an EPROM "window" in the centre).

QL Demo 1 282B, 6448

QL Demo 0 C288, 6448

The fourth slot is empty.

I am not brave enough to plug it in!

Picture is attached.

Thanks for looking,

Greg

Urs has the same, he may explain the content.

Ralf R. wrote:Urs has the same, he may explain the content.

Yes, I own such an unit too. Here's a picture of my unit:
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=C250D874 ... 86&o=OneUp

Mine has exactly the same writing on the EPROMs. Most likely both units hold exactly the same software.

My unit can be seen in action in this movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzYgkeX ... v0q43iEDQP

I've saved the software from the EPROMs. I've also managed to configure QemuLator to run it. All this can be found in the BONUS MATERIAL section of THE DISTRIBUTION which can be downloaded on the sinclairql.net website (follow link in message footer).

QL forever!
Urs

Thanks for the info. So was the card built for the demo software or the demo software utilise the existing card? It just seems a very strange add-on for the QL!

Greg

gregtaylor wrote:So was the card built for the demo software or the demo software utilise the existing card?

My card came from an ex THORN EMI DATATECH employee who saved this and other gems from trash. This company built QLs for Sinclair, those which had BT sockets for SER and CTL ports were built on their Feltham plant.

I remember some reports in computer magazines of around autumn 1985 that Sinclair re-launched the QL with some fresh marketing and demo material, including an EPROM based automatic interactive demo software which allowed dealers to display the QL in action.

In the 48K binary dump of the three 16K EPROMs one can read: “QL Demonstration 1.00 Sinclair Research Ltd. bi Si Hardware by Jon Eproms by Eric”.

From all that it is very likely that the board had been developed Sinclair internally and was intended or mainly used for this automatic interactive demo software.

gregtaylor wrote:It just seems a very strange add-on for the QL!Greg

Not strange but rare.

QL forever!

gregtaylor wrote:Picture is attached.

BTW: The orange cable looks like it's there to pull out the card from the QL.

Greg, does you card also have a hand-fitted wiring on the soldering side?

Yes. I assumed it was an unresolved link when laying out the board. I can get the same issue on very small boards with address and data buses as it is quite a lot of tracks. The wire is very thin though, I use a link used on breadboards as you can make them to shape so they lie nicely along the board. This one would be easy to pull off.

Thanks for the information.

Greg

For those who ever wanted an original Sinclair QL EPROM expansion card with their "QL Demonstration 1.00", there's currently a set on ebay (ending 2024-04-24):
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235525644258

BTW: I'm not the seller nor related to him.