The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi everyone Using the Arduino (haven't looked at the Duinomite myself - yet), is in fact the second phase of the Scalextric project I'm still working on :-) At the moment, I'm just using some HERMES ports as inputs (rigged-up to some reed-switches set in to the tracking - fed through a simple 555 ci...

Nasta - thank you for such a full explanation! So, in summary, HC family can sink the current needed and fast enough from DS to disable the 8301's DSMC - the transistor approach wasn't necessarily just because the decoding through a couple of ICs wasn't fast enough... To this day, I still remember r...

I (was about to) agree about the need for DTACK(l) to be tri-state too, otherwise some chip or other is likely to source or drain more current that they can handle! Didn't realise that HC has open-drain :-) Coming back to the DSMC(l) point - I see now (that you pointed it out) that the tri-state par...

Aha! Yes - I hadn't spotted how you did that - thank you! So, this is expected behaviour - in summary, the std print routines will _always_ attempt to print an extra (10th or 0th, depending how you count it) blank pixel-line _above_ the row currently being printed regardless of the CHAR_INC settings...

Hi guys I am in the midst of designing my own 512K expansion using the very same 4Mbit SRAM so interesting to see this working example! I have a question regarding the driving of the DSMC(l) line - haven't we always been told that a 'fast switching transistor' should be used to drive this line, rath...

Hi again everyone and thank-you for such a wealth of good ideas! As it stands, my testing so far has only been on QPC and it is here that the CHAR_INC 8,9 method correctly aligns the 8x9 standard font patterns on screen, but unless OVER -1 (xor) is also set, still appears to overwrite/blank the last...

Hi everyone - thanks for all your ideas! Given that keeping the print routine simple and efficient is my main aim - ultimately to run on a BBQL - I'm thinking that the OVER -1 approach to overcome the unwanted blank pixel-line when printed, remains the most efficient. I'll just need to over-write th...

Hi Tobias - thanks for the idea. As it happens that approach wouldn't help much in this case as each new character row (or 9 pixels) exhibits the same behaviour and each of the Seems odd to me that this extra row of pixels is ever printed at all, with CHAR_INC set to 9 tall - makes me wonder if its ...

Hi everyone As part of my Scalextric lap-counter/timer project, I've designed some simple font/fount characters for the 7-segment digit display. To get the larger sizes for the digits that I wanted, each segment is composed of several 'UDG' characters that need to be lined up adjacent to one-another...

And I will be completing the Lap Timer/Counter for my son's Scalextric - attached to Hermes spare ports and some simple electronics - almost done :-) And then... to start in earnest on a Serial to QNET adapter and the associated TKII/FSERVE software adaptations to allow non-QL hardware (e.g. QPC on ...