The Sinclair QL Forum

Usually I take the top lid off then remove the leds and strip out all the keys and push fittings from underneath. Next the whole lot goes into a tub of soapy water with washing up liquid for a day or so then it all gets the toothbrush treatment and a rinse.

ooh a long job, I might try that at weekend, no chemicals?

Nope jut warm water and a bit of squeezy!

8 years later and I'm ready to take a look at these! Will I see any benefit from removing the modulator? I never use them!

I've had some luck with the issue 6 board. It had two miss matched roms, one of which had some legs missing, one of the expansion card pins was bent in, and the chip with the wire mod on the top, wasnt fully seated! I've fitted a tetroid rom switcher and regulator, and also fitted a standard hermes chip. When it first powers on, there are coloured bars or rows of small squares on screen. After a reset, it works fine! Anything to be worried about?? It does the same with a TDI card, or the Leandro Qubide.

vanpeebles wrote:I've had some luck with the issue 6 board. It had two miss matched roms, one of which had some legs missing, one of the expansion card pins was bent in, and the chip with the wire mod on the top, wasnt fully seated! I've fitted a tetroid rom switcher and regulator, and also fitted a standard hermes chip. When it first powers on, there are coloured bars or rows of small squares on screen. After a reset, it works fine! Anything to be worried about?? It does the same with a TDI card, or the Leandro Qubide.

One of my QLs has always been like this - doesn't start up properly, but wait a few minutes for it to warm up, reset, and it works fine. I've been through the usual rounds of cleaning, reseating chips, using different interfaces etc with no real improvement. I have no idea if there are long term implications, although that QL of mine has been like this for years with neither deterioration nor improvements. It probably doesn't help that emulators are my "QL" of choice these days, the QLs go long periods without being used.

Always worth replacing individual bits to try - different interfaces or none, to see if there's a combination that works without problem. Often boils down to poor connections, marginal power supplies, or dodgy memory chips (a Minerva would of course help to check that). Despite the age of the QL Service Manual, it's often worth browsing through that for ideas about sources of problems you may not have thought of.

BTW, what's that time/date setting utility? Nice clean, bold yet simple display layout on it, with good use of colour.

dilwyn wrote:BTW, what's that time/date setting utility? Nice clean, bold yet simple display layout on it, with good use of colour.

No idea! It was on the card from HAOUI! Looks great!

Yes it does! Reminds me of the attractive screen layouts and use of colour in the QBits software packages.

dilwyn wrote:BTW, what's that time/date setting utility? Nice clean, bold yet simple display layout on it, with good use of colour.

As I can remember, the time/date utility comes from a QDOS Classic utilities package.
Choosen for TDI because it could be started easily on freshly rebooted QL with no need for any extension or runtime. It's turbo compiled task, uses only arrows keyrows and runs enough quickly to pass from 1960 to 2020 within seconds.
I haven't seen any source.
Alain