QL Summer Holidays

[vanpeebles]

Very quiet lately with the fine weather.

How is everyone's QL summer holiday going? I'm spending mine tinkering with my cars and hopefully might get a bit done on the C5 too.

[tofro]

Yes. exceptionally quiet it is, indeed.

Must admit I didn't touch any of my QL stuff recently, except the UQLX/Raspberry Pi combined with my Motorola Actix Lapdock was quite comfortably used in the garden a bit.

How about converting the C5 into an open-roofed roadster, slicing the windshield down? The weather would quite justify that

Enjoy the summer,
Tobias

[vanpeebles]

Hehehehe I could fit some solar panels too

[Paul]

I am also mainly tinkering with my "new" C5 trying to build a replacement ULA
following these instructions from a german guy and cleaning and greasing all bearings as it was never used and the grease inside is stuck.

[Mr_Navigator]

The weather certainly does affect QL activity for me, I have been able to set some time to write a couple of articles for the QUANTA magazine which are needed on a regular basis. I am about halfway through a sort of hardware QL project as well as juggling 3 software ones + the PiQL thing which is on the simmer pot at the moment plus one other hardware project for the future that sadly doesn't involve any new hardware.

The hot weather detracted me for a change from my other sparkly thing that recently attracted my attention and I now have 11 broken 12" Daleks I am attempting to source spares that will eventually end up as interactive garden gnomes (No I am not joking). Not sure if I can get a QL related thing involved in there yet, still thinking on that one.

Does anyone know of a simple i/o port I can add to the BBQL with basic i/o commands?

Surely the C5 is perfect for this weather cut down or not, I take every opportunity to ride my three wheeled device when the sun shines. I seem to remember that when the C5 came out there were rumours of a four-wheeled C10 or C20. Sadly that never happened, and nothing on the Sinclair X-1 either

[vanpeebles]

The dalek gnomes sound most amusing! I wonder if any QL'lers have set their QLs up in the garden?

[dilwyn]

Hehehehe I could fit some solar panels too

He he, then we'll see you turn up at a Quanta workshop in a turbo-solar-powered C5 - it might actually get you there without a recharge or carrying half a dozen fully charged batteries with you

[dilwyn]

Yes. exceptionally quiet it is, indeed.
How about converting the C5 into an open-roofed roadster, slicing the windshield down? The weather would quite justify that
Tobias

Health and safety! You might get a fly in your eye!

[tofro]

How do you recognize friendly C5-riders?


Flies between their teeth!

[dilwyn]

The hot weather detracted me for a change from my other sparkly thing that recently attracted my attention and I now have 11 broken 12" Daleks I am attempting to source spares that will eventually end up as interactive garden gnomes (No I am not joking). Not sure if I can get a QL related thing involved in there yet, still thinking on that one.

Does anyone know of a simple i/o port I can add to the BBQL with basic i/o commands?

Surely the C5 is perfect for this weather cut down or not, I take every opportunity to ride my three wheeled device when the sun shines. I seem to remember that when the C5 came out there were rumours of a four-wheeled C10 or C20. Sadly that never happened, and nothing on the Sinclair X-1 either

To make your dalek gnomes a ql-related interactive, put a speech chip in there so they say "execute, execute" instead of "exterminate, exterminate".

I/o port - there used to be a board called the Q-Control 2. It was a project from Colin Opie in early QL World or QL User, can't remember which. It was available years ago from the late Ed Bruley's company, Care Electronics - you might be able to get some info from it from their ads in older QL magazines. Obviously, out ofproduction for many years now, but you may come across it second hand somewhere. I used to have one 20 years ago and built a few basic projects like sound to light units and such like back in those days. I eventually gave it away to someone IIRC, partly because I lost interest, partly I had no time plus I think it was a dead-end device in that it had no through port, so couldn't be used with disc interfaces, memory cards etc at the time unless you were rich enough to own a multi-way expander like a CST Q+4. A little info about Q-Control or Qontrol (not sure of the right name) on the QL Wiki at http://www.rwapadventures.com/ql_wiki/i ... rd&lang=en

Also, consider something like the Di-Ren MPC (Micro Process Controller). It connects to a QL via a serial port (actually, it had a parallel port but most people drove it through a ser-to-par converter), provides some relay outputs which are controlled at the simplest level simply by opening a channel to the serial port and sending byte values to the port.

Various QL magazines have published QL circuitry, indeed one of the earlier issues of Quanta had a circuit diagram from Quanta founder Leon Heller for a simple 8-bit input only port (it worked through the EPROM expansion slot which is read-only unless you resort to drastic programming measures like Miracle Systems did with some of their hardware.

A super gold card has a bi-directional parallel port so it's probably feasible to build some form of I/O devices onto that with suitable software.

I think some general electronic magazines published QL-related projects in the mid 1980s. These will obviously be hard to locate now, but luckily some of these types of projects have been scanned and can be tracked down on the internet, places such as http://sinclairql.speccy.org/archivo/docs/docs.htm

Nearly forgot about the Minerva Mkii I2C interfaces.

Good luck!