The Sinclair QL Forum

I am reading the paper from Tony Tebby in Vol#4 issue#1 of QL Today, and comparing with the hardware that I own :

I bought my first QL in December 1984, from an officious importer, because the official importer of Sinclair products in france - DIRECO - did not offer the QWERTY keyboard models already available in England, saying they waited for the AZERTY keyboard models (actually - maybe - still having Spectrums to sell on 1984 Xmas). Here, a scan of the bill :
The case of this QL has # D12-042387 and its ROM VER$ is JM.

Few years later, as the QLs were dumped, I bought a second one from a shop in Brussels and payed it 1190FF instead of 5700FF. This was a real bargain !

The case of this second QL has # D05-002850 and its ROM VER$ is JS.

In his paper Tony Tebby tells :

... although JM was ready for ROM well before the first QL was shipped, all QLs before build D07 {seventh Dundee build}, and a fair number after were shipped with pre-test and test versions of the firmware, mostly on three 16k byte EPROMS

When machines with dongles were returned for a"firmware upgrade', these"pre-production'machines up to D05) were not upgraded, they were scrapped and replaced by 'full production' QLs with a hardware build D06 or later and AH (test) or JM {release} versions of the firmware ...

Thus, my second QL apparently has a very old case but a newer ROM ?

So, I opened it for the second time (first time was when I changed the keyboard) :
I could see nothing revealing printed on the circuit board but it seemed clean (not pre-production like), and the two ROMs are indeed JS !
Can someone comment on this mystery ?



Bye, Paul

The second QL is definitely a fairly late issue QL motherboard (issue 7 maybe?).

Cases do seem to get swapped - remember that Sinclair had a general recall on the early DONGLE QLs, and owners received a new QL in exchange (it was quite rare for them to receive their earlier QL back it would appear).

So that would leave Sinclair with a lot of old spares to use up!

Yes thank you Rich, that's what I thought.

Is there a serial or model number somewhere to be found on the circuit boards proper ?

Bye, Paul

Yes, near the "SINCLAIR" word printed on pcb there's the issue number usually written as "ISS N" where N is the issue number: in my two QLs there are written ISS 5 and ISS 7
Bye

On which side of the PCB is it ? On the side you see when just removing the keyboard (component side) I saw nothing printed, is it on the other side ? Or else, where exactly should I look ?

Bye, Paul

hmmm very strange... normally the version is printed on component side (between roms and joystick sockets) : see image in attached file, in theory area is in red box
Bye

OK, now I see it : J4 ISS6 1984
What does it mean ? stable version ? in relation with the serial number on the case ?

I find thus that Sinclair had a very relaxed view of serials ! If there is no unique serial # on the PCB (only a version/release sign) and the serial # on the case has no fixed relation for dating it, what kind of business is this ?

BYE Paul

P.S. Actually, I saw ISS6 but I believed that it was a "component placement" marking (and J4 indeed is ! only this)

Issue 6 meant a Sinclair had a newly laid-out pcb made with the HAL chip but without a couple of logic chips.

From reading the QL Service Manual, your QL pcb is up to date because R102/R103 resistors are soldered on top of IC23.

i.e. You've got a stable version.

According to Twellys's sentence, I say to you this: I've an iss5 with mentioned resistors mounted upper Ula chip, my other ql has iss7 that I suppose the last version for uk market (buyed on RWAP site); j4 is the name of j(umper)4 same as j3=J(umper)3 they mean a link between component side and solder side
p.s. all my qls are stable version