The Sinclair QL Forum

I've seen similar dongles in the PC arena usually selling for $50-70 mass produced, but the parts cost does not justify that. I think £39 is a fair price, considering I include a couple of extras. The preconfigured firmware is what makes it extra useful.

You can use the AT commands to save the SSID and password of your access point in the dongle. It will then automatically connect to your wifi if you configure it to do so.

One of the biggest advantages is it will be accessible to the 80s and 90s software designed for AT Hayes modems - it "dials" an IP just like a phone number - you can even specify the port.

I think it would be possible to run a QBBS instance on the internet through one, without using any kind of gateway.

Mostly, I am looking forward to clever and inventive multiplayer games!

AWESOME Dave!

I'll save my pennies ready for Valentine's Day and divert some funds from the traditional wife's pressy (don't tell her!)

I also wonder what it would take to convince SMSQ/E to talk at 430k...

Dave,

It sounds stunning! Good luck and I wish you many sales.


Cheers,
Norm.

Dave wrote:Funny thing. After calling them, and being told "the diesel gelled in the tanks, we can't drive" I went out to my diesel Passat and it started right up. It said 15F on the dash (-9.5C to you metric folks out there!) so it is cold, but it started. And now it has updated that it was scanned into the back of a truck for delivery at 8:12am

Incredibly badly prepared for a delivery company! Its an entirely preventable problem. You probably had "winterized" diesel in your tank, while a company that's raison d'être is delivering stuff, didnt. Perhaps you should go elsewhere..
Condolences, by the way, on your 50th

There's not many places I even trust to get a package from China to me in rural Texas in three days, "guaranteed!" But hey, 4 days is close enough!

Anyway, it's just the beta boards. I'm getting 10, so 8 will be available, then I'll order 20 or 30 of the next batch with modifications and requests... I just get the PCBs from China - the quality is unbeatable, and they're 1/4 the wait and 1/10th the cost of the local fab house.

Dave wrote:So, I'll tell y'all about it now, and post a pic of an assembled unit this evening or tomorrow.

This is a serial WiFi dongle that works with Q68, Q40 or Q60.
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Sounds awesome! Well done, and good luck with that! Now we need some software to take advantage of it!

My intent is to develop a fast serial card, so this can be brought to the BBQL also in due course. If anyone has a working serial port design capable of 115k+ that integrates with the OS that they would be willing to let me make, I could have it ready quite quickly.

(Super)Hermes?

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that SMSQ/E on the ST could do 230kbps, so I dont think the limitation is in SMSQ/E per se.

Any software on the QL that uses serial and AT commands.... can use it

Interesting device !

For the Q68, wouldn't communication through the I2C port be faster than using the serial port ?

François

Yes. If someone is willing to write software to make that a channel *BASIC understands, I'll happily provide it. As we all know, there's the catch. The CP220 on the Q68 is well known and has been there since the start, but getting it usefully functional quickly is a tough step.

I chose the serial port because it targets more machines right now. With one small change, it should even work with a QL, though slowly. My motivation was to hit a lot of platforms that had existing serial drivers and a common way to access the device. The development and testing overhead was lower.

I'd ideally like to see a new eth1_ device added to SMSQ/E that can use a UART to efficiently pipe data in and out of the ESP32, and which can then be quickly produced for all the platforms.

But it's a start

The boards came. Assembling now.