The Sinclair QL Forum

Yes - sorry - that is the location.

I think there were some utilities or a utility disk - also on Dilwyn's site - I think there was a tool in there to help manage these boot parameters in the i2c RAM on the RTC chip - The idea would be to set the max amount of RAM in the system to 4MB - then Minerva should not try and test beyond that set limit.

I've also remembered something else about that setup - it had SuperHermes installed - that too can handle boot parameters - so it's possible it also may be trying to 'help' with the boot process. It's so long ago since I set that up - but I think I did use mostly the Minerva to handle boot up details - which included having to tell the system about Hermes Keyboard language and setup - as there has been a change of both hard disk and flopppy - not sure if the original boot files are still around - they would have been on an ED disk that I used as a 'rescue' disk if I had hard disk issues - it had all the boot settings - like keyboard and such in there. I have no idea if I may have stored a copy of that onto my PC at home - I can have a look over the weekend and see - but like I say - it's been nearly 20 years since I saw that machine last...

XorA wrote:I am assuming its in the badly described D1 at boot section which seems to be stored in i2c ram?

Yes. It should be the table indicated in the manual on page 34. Upper bits code the limit and bit 2 enforces said limit, no matter what.

XorA wrote: For me its because my brain translate mk to Markus (I have no idea why, maybe in another community there was one).

You were probably thinking of Markus in Switzerland (sorry, can't remember if spells his name with a c or k).

Yes, Markus Dettwiler from Switzerland, who has an Atari Falcon.

Its taken me a while, but I have now replaced the battery, replaced the dead floppy drive with a gotek.

Loaded the minerva utils disk into the gotek with SH drivers.

Set the D1 to 4M limit, and the date/time.

Now all is working nicely.

Next i guess is to update smsq/e to the latest edition.

Will need to work out if I can sneak the SH drivers in there in the rom port.

Looks good, XorA.

For what it's worth, on my Aurora/SGC machine, I was able to have the ipcexts in an EPROM (until I used the slot for a ROMdisq I salvaged from an old QL.)

dilwyn wrote:Looks good, XorA.

For what it's worth, on my Aurora/SGC machine, I was able to have the ipcexts in an EPROM (until I used the slot for a ROMdisq I salvaged from an old QL.)

The issue is with the backplane there isnt physically room for a normal romport PCB and the i2c header to exist at the same time!

I wonder if the Aurora can be used to provide the ROM port?