Announcing the new "Gold Card" - QIMSI Gold

[Peter]

Wow! Well done, the Spec looks great, what could be a better for the QL’s 40th Anniversary.

Many thanks!

Question: Be interesting to plug into one of my QL’s. Will you be able to include a case and when wired up for Sound can the Output be driven by both S/SuperBASIC BEEP and QSound commands.

There is a case design from Detlef already:

I attach the STL file below. I will also bring a printed example to the international QL meeting (in black of course).

And yes, the sound outlut can be driven from both BEEP and the SMSQ/E sampled sound system of the accellerated CPU. There is also the possibility to still drive it from the 68008.

[QLvsJAGUAR]

Great to have another extension of the QL available for those who need it. Looks a bit like a 68000 (FPGA) based Raspberry Pi Zero accelerator from the ZX Spectrum next, degrading the QL electronics to a servant, sort of, right? QIMSI Gold, the new master of the QL?

Well done Peter and all involved.

[Peter]

Looks a bit like a 68000 (FPGA) based Raspberry Pi Zero accelerator from the ZX Spectrum next, degrading the QL electronics to a servant, sort of, right?

Indeed the QL electronics would usually become servant to the accelerated CPU.
For the most part, that was already true for the Miracle Gold Card, so it is not that new.
QIMSI Gold can also work as standard QIMSI, so it is a free choice to degrade the QL or not.

[Tesla]

Hi Peter.
Peter you make me crazy. I 'm still enjoying the QIMSI base board and you already are peparing an astonishing new super upgrade.
Well done. Keep me in mind for a future list of buyers. Interested for sure.
Thank you.
Marco

[FrancoisLanciault]

Dumb question, but would the QIMSI Gold works if the two ROM sockets inside the QL are empty ? I guess yes, but you know bettter.

Good question. The idea behind QIMSI Gold is not to have to open the case. So I does not work without QL ROMs at the moment, for the following reasons:

a) QIMSI Gold can still work as a standard QIMSI if someone wants to, and that requires an OS in the QL.
b) The support ROM which handles QL matrix keyboard and joystick (maybe more in the future) comes as a normal QL ROM at $C000 and needs an OS to be found and initialized.
c) At power-up, the QIMSI Gold loader does some "housekeeping", e.g. it prepares ROM emulation from SD card at $C000 for the QL. This takes a little time and depends on the fact that the QL OS is booting slow enough. Which obviously requires a QL OS for the 68008 in ROM somewhere.

QIMSI and QIMSI Gold both do not aim to be a replacement for the various QL EPROM solutions.

Ok I understand better how everything works. Not the answer I would have hope but I will find another QL to use with my QIMSI Gold when it arrives eventually. I was hoping the support code to drive the keyboard and such was provided at address 0, so the 68008 would boot using the special code.

Further questions: what video modes are supported ? I know about standard QL and 1024x768 at 65536 colors, but are there any other ? Same as Q68 maybe ?

Finally, does the processor speed slows down when displaying high color mode like in the Q68 ?

François

[Peter]

Ok I understand better how everything works. Not the answer I would have hope but I will find another QL to use with my QIMSI Gold when it arrives eventually. I was hoping the support code to drive the keyboard and such was provided at address 0, so the 68008 would boot using the special code.

Technically, I could implement this - but I don't understand your reason. Do you not own your QL ROMs anymore?

Further questions: what video modes are supported ?

They have been listed in the manual.

Finally, does the processor speed slows down when displaying high color mode like in the Q68 ?

The highcolor modes specified in the manual (512x256 and 512x384 at 65536 colours) do not slow down QIMSI Gold operation.
Except - of course - the screen memory operations themselves, which move much more data than in the QL modes.
Also the 1024x768 resolution modes are fine - but in lower colour.
If you go beyond the modes listed in the manual, you get the "slow" Q68 modes.

Please keep in mind that QIMSI Gold is a low cost, very small form factor interface. It can outperform GoldCard and SuperGoldCard, but not play in the 68060 league.

Technically, Qzero has more hardware ressources and will probably be my "workhorse" toward higher speed.

[Peter]

Peter you make me crazy. I 'm still enjoying the QIMSI base board and you already are peparing an astonishing new super upgrade.
Well done. Keep me in mind for a future list of buyers. Interested for sure.

Hi Marco, many thanks!
I'm glad you are not angry with me, bringing the next interface only half a year later. At launch of the standard QIMSI, I had no idea if I can ever finish QIMSI Gold, or how long it would take. So I decided not to wait anymore, and release what I already had. I think there will still be demand for QL SD card, mouse and keyboard interfaces. So standard QIMSI could probably be sold second hand, should you no longer have a use for it.

[lliont]

Fantastic work Peter and the team
I see you use simple resistors to do the 3.3V to 5V interfacing, that saves lot of space and makes the design much less complicated.
Do you have also added the clamp diode option to all the pins ?
In my board I used 6 small ics for the same thing but at least now I have the space.
I guess there 'll be no problem using resistors for the reliability in the long run because they are quite big and the longer rise time doesn't affect the speed, for the speed to the QL bus is not high anyway.

[javier2112]

Great job Peter and team, I can't wait to get one and use it on my QL.

I have a question: could some way be implemented to get the video output of the QL through the video port of the QIMSI Gold?

[ones' complement]

Surely only by having a job running on BBQL to periodically copy 32K screen dump through FIFOs to QIMSI Gold