The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi Vyper68 :-) You have a few options and the final approach would be determined by a few factors, namely: a) Whether or not your Issue5 board has IC17 still fitted (later builds - I forget which build-standard - settled on ROMs and dispensed with IC17 - originally a quad 2 i/p NAND) b) How much you...

Hi Bytesguy!

OK, so I'm stumped, but still thinking...

That your vDrive formats indicates that the digital signalling from the 8302 is all-good.

Back to you once I've pondered some more...

Wahoo! Welcome to the world of reliable QL Networking, afx!

Glad to see the driver being put to good use on Peter and Derek's beautiful piece of kit

Hiya should I replicate the resistors and flying wire mod after replacing the 8302? What I do on my QLs is to take the opportunity to re-solder the resistors _under_ the board, taking care to insulate the flying leads from any pokey-bits, so as to ease switching-out the 8302 whenever I need to. YMMV...

Hi Buytesguy That latest observation regarding the key-repeats might be unrelated, BUT, as the 8302 is also responsible for interfacing with the i8049 co-processor which in turn deals with the keyboard, we might well be seeing some degenerating issues with the 8302... Did you order one from Rich? (I...

Hi Bytesguy Yes, those look about right and match the standard mods on my Iss5 board. Whilst you're in touch with Rich, I'd very much recommend purchasing a spare 8302 - they are not expensive and it could well address the issue in one swell-foop :-) And if not, having the spare IC will come in hand...

OK, so those apparently missing resistors behind the MDVs are probably actually fitted _underneath_ - its one of the more peculiar mods that were made to the earlier Iss5 boards. This particular mod was to re-route a powerline away from the MDVs and the resistors are moved and re-attached to the rel...

Hi again!

OK, just saw your latest post - you have a JM ROM set - should be fine with that.

The pair of 33k resistors look attached OK, but worth wiggling them to check.

I'll check the 'missing resistors' idea against the Service Manual and update again.

M.

Hi again Bytesguy! I was able to swap around the internal drives, but still have the same issue. I tried each one individually in position 1, no dice. What rotten luck! Until you get at least one drive formatting at least one cartridge OK, it's tricky to find the root cause... I checked some voltage...

You're very welcome! When you come to try to isolate the internal units, bear in mind that simply removing a unit will block access to any further units down the chain - including any external Spectrum drives, due to the way that the COMMS OUT to COMMS IN chaining works. Simply switching MDV#1 with ...