QL 34th Anniversary new hardware.

[Dave]

Currently I'm stuck somewhat, GoldCard compatibility improved by a million times but general reliability is still not good enough for me. But not sure if it's a software or hardware thing, tests are weird and non-conclusive so far.

Maybe a combination of your timing changes and our signal conditioning will just get it over the edge.

The system you see there is not mine, I borrowed it from work It's pretty old, but even used still in the 4-digits price range. And at 125Mhz with 32-channels it's still a fine device. People here prefer the Salea systems these days, I prefer this one.

I just bought the DreamSourceLab DSLogic Pro (16 channel 100MHz) - mostly because it has 16 stage triggers with 2 logic units per trigger. Nasta wants me to do fancy triggering that my current generic system can't do. Since I was buying something from them anyway, I added their oscilloscope, to supplement my Rigol. It mostly gives me an easier path to send Nasta traces. Currently, I have to save screenshots on a USB stick and port them over. If Nasta just installs this same software package I can send him the actual waveforms and he can investigate them at his leisure. Not just what's on the screen.

In future, I'll just assemble and express courier him a prototype so he has the hardware in front of him!

[Dave]

Just a few questions:

Does the card make the additional interrupt levels available?

No.

Are FC0/FC1 still driving VPA to assert autovectoring, or do you leave that to the logic on the QL motherboard?

We've maintained the status quo. /FC0, /FC1 and /VPA are directly connected to the QL bus. /FC2 isn't.

Are there any restrictions on ROM addressing on either side of the interface (e.g. expansion side and ql side) - mainly thinking about qubide placement in the memory map.

It's a straight through connection, 1:1 but with the following changes: FC2 (19b) is now A20, E (14b) is now A21.

In a way this interface is like a trump card in that it fills the address space of the processor with RAM, so I am interested to know which areas of memory are still usable by an interface, and if a legacy interface card that maps to c0000 for instance, was plugged in, where would it find itself mapped?

I'll punt to Nasta on that one, as he did the logic. I do know his intent was to just have the longest continuous block of RAM possible with no holes in it. Expansions at the bottom of memory would be ideal.

[Peter]

Congratulations Dave! The biggest plus of this memory expansion is the small size, allowing to add a second card. Which does not even stick out, if it is also small.

Since the original speed 68008 allows a high degree of compatibility for games: Are you sure it is a good idea to abandon QDOS altogether? Wouldn't it be better to add sort of a "memory limiter" option?

Do you think SMSQ/E Gold would run on the new expansion?

No it would not. As discussed earlier, someone would need to port SMSQ/E to the QL. Hardware specific portions need changes, also microdrive and network timings could get tricky.

If you request it, I'll supply Minerva 1.89, 1.97 or 1.98 with the latest TKII on a carrier or if you have QL-SD Alain Haoui's 3.10 QL-SD driver.

A QL-SD driver from Alain Haoui? Interesting news to me. Any pointers to that?

[Dave]

Congratulations Dave! The biggest plus of this memory expansion is the small size, allowing to add a second card. Which does not even stick out, if it is also small.

An original QubIDE sticks out just enough so the IDE port can accept a CF adapter facing straight up.

Since the original speed 68008 allows a high degree of compatibility for games: Are you sure it is a good idea to abandon QDOS altogether? Wouldn't it be better to add sort of a "memory limiter" option?

It requires Minerva to support the 4MB. There is a JS 4MB ROM, but we haven't tested it. If it works, that will be an option also.

A QL-SD driver from Alain Haoui? Interesting news to me. Any pointers to that?

My apologies. Verbal typo. I meant QubIDE. The 3.10 QubIDE driver by Alain Haoui.

[Pr0f]

Sorry Dave - one more question...

Is it possible to disable the 4Mb RAM using DSMCL? You mentioned Gold card compatibility, so I was assuming the Bus would be grabbed by the Gold card, but the memory would still be accessible unless blocked?

[Dave]

Is it possible to disable the 4Mb RAM using DSMCL? You mentioned Gold card compatibility, so I was assuming the Bus would be grabbed by the Gold card, but the memory would still be accessible unless blocked?

The memory will not work with an (S)GC. It does have /DSMC from the thru-connector. However, I can't imagine a use case for anything to disable the 4MB that wouldn't also disable the CPU - which would make the card a cool heat generator and spacer card

[Dave]

A QL-SD driver from Alain Haoui? Interesting news to me. Any pointers to that?

My apologies. Verbal typo. I meant QubIDE. The 3.10 QubIDE driver by Alain Haoui.

My mind was jumbled. Wolfgang Lenerz released an updated QL-SD driver to use standard qxl.win drives with QL-SD. I'm not sure if that is instead of or as well as

I think I mixed up the two, as I'd just burned an Alain Haoui 3.10 ROM for my QubIDE. Now I've thought about it I know the mental typo I made

Also, just killed my Issue 7 QL. I would say it spontaneously died, but, well, I was probing the 4MB RAM card and I sneezed and ran the probe across the board and released the magic smoke. Of course I closed my eyes when I sneezed so I just saw (and smelled) the smoke after the fact. I'm confident I can revive her, but at the same time....

I really need to pull my finger out on Issue 8.

[Pr0f]

As part of my DIY project I had thought about a 68SEC000 card with the ability to run either 16 bit (gold card mode) or 8 bit. In 8 bit mode, it seems sensible to have the add on card insert the memory of the into the memory map - this is possible because you can control when the original memory of the QL or in the case of your plugin card the QL+4Mb extension is accessed, so that rather than be overwritten, it can be further extended...

[Dave]

Yes, you could do that, but you'd be much better served by having 16 bit RAM instead of 8 bit.

The 68SEC000 also has some very nice clock potential...

Once we get the details finalized, we'd be happy to share the equations with you (they'll be open sourced) and you could trivially adapt them for 16 bit use.

[Pr0f]

The clock speed options are an attractive bonus with that chip.

I had in mind to build as much compatibility in the add on card as possible so it could be used with :

Original QL
Expanded QL - my diy project - but it would seem equally adaptable to your 4MB card too
Aurora