The Sinclair QL Forum

There seem to be a lot of QLs being sold on EBay every week, many not working properly and a lot of people bidding on them. Is it you lot pushing up the prices? I might have bought one for spares for £20 but not at those prices when you can get 3 year old Notebooks with a million times more power.

Most people here already have their lifetime supply on QLs

I guess the ones being bought currently are bought by people that never owned a QL before.

Tobias

Ruptor wrote:There seem to be a lot of QLs being sold on EBay every week, many not working properly and a lot of people bidding on them. Is it you lot pushing up the prices? I might have bought one for spares for £20 but not at those prices when you can get 3 year old Notebooks with a million times more power.

I think they mostly tend to sort of work. The most common problems being the keyboard membrane, dodgy cartridges (so it appears that the mdv's don't work, when they usually do) and often getting a picture out of them is tricky with just the RF lead and a modern TV. I think people that bid on them know that they very often do actually 'work', or that they are at least worth taking a chance on. I've bid on a few every so often, but usually get out bid and of course postage to Germany is a factor. I only tend to bid on really nice ones though, or ones that come with other stuff that I don't have.

Ruptor wrote:I might have bought one for spares for £20 but not at those prices when you can get 3 year old Notebooks with a million times more power.

The ULA chip alone is currently traded for something like £20 as they become increasingly rare. Same with power supplies, they alone go sometimes for 40€.

I've got 5 QLs, but they are all very late German Samsung builds. I'd like to get some older model for testing (currently I have a loaner, thanks to Tofro), but I, too, haven't seen any good offers as of late. Should have bought some 10 years ago... as a lesson I did buy a spare SGC because that supply will dry up eventually, too.

Marcel

I was a big dummy...someone was selling a working QL board for $60 US dollars with $40 shipping and I should have just grabbed it but asked about shipping options...never realized that even with the high shipping it was likely a good deal (and I already have a top and bottom case for it I bought for future mold making). Same person was selling the QL power supply for almost as much though it was UK so I'm not sure if I could convert it in the states.

One questions, I know for the Commodore 64, folks have created a new power supply by putting a small 5 volt wall unit along with a bigger 12 volt unit (I think the 2nd voltage was 12 though maybe DC not AC). Anyone try to create such a beast for the QL by just combining off-the-shelf ones and sticking both into a small utility case you can get and building a cable (the one down side is those 3 pronged plus are impossible to find).