The Sinclair QL Forum

I suppose we *could* do a Gold Card ROM disassembly and see what the hell it's doing on system boot; i.e. which addresses it's copying where and which patches it's applying to them.
It's still 68k machine code... is it worth the trouble, though?

If anyone's even following the thread, news flash.
So... like I said, I got my el-cheapo soldering iron and braid, and replaced the old TI 74LS257 with a nice... socket. Then I got one of the NOS Signetics 257s that I got here and here's the result:
74LS257 in socket.jpg

So, after the foreplay ...

Funny you should ask; all this time, while waiting for some chips and sockets to arrive, I wrote a test programme and checked my assumptions. You see, my previous conclusions were drawn thinking in "PC" mode, not in "QL" mode. So I hadn't taken into account how the pixels are stored in the QL's ...

First order of business: believe it or not, there are square hole drill bits. Check this out:
rjckF0-VeGI

But for us who don't have access to industrial gear, a dremmel, a plain drill and some files are all that's needed. Oh, yeah, and a triangle and a pencil and lots of patience.

About the HxC ...

He is already selling a SuperGold Card.
If I understand correctly, there are two fully working and one sort-of working in total.
First one, £245.

I guess you'd have to compare the ROMs of the Gold or SuperGold cards as well as the ROMs of the QLs. For the QLs I mean, binary comparison. I don't know if it's known to have happened, ROMs with the same version but slightly different code?
Also I know, the JM ROMs weren't exactly new, but maybe ...

Expanding on this (thanks Mark) I was wondering if there's any definitive list of board mods that can or should be done as general practice. For example, look at the last paragraph of this link here :
Try the 'bombproofing' mods listed in QL World in Nov 89 - but I
think this is a bit of an ...

Mark, I've got a service manual right here. Printed, that is. Unfortunately, no scanner, but I doubt it'd be of much use as the schematic pages are bigger than A3.
Anyway, I know what the Reset button connects to and I've got a momentary switch hooked, I just don't like the idea of a dangling switch ...

1024MAK wrote:...I did not think that it was easily removable/replaceable.

The only thing I can safely say it is, is easily breakable...

If you want to be just an end user, then decide if the price of something is what you can afford and buy it or not.. If it's over priced then don't buy it and watch out for another on the market at a lower price.. It is rare I ever buy anything on ebay...
If any one comes at a lower price, I'm ...