Mystery printer adapter

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prime
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Mystery printer adapter

Post by prime »

Hi all,

I have this mystery printer adapter, can't remember where it came from :)

On the bottom of the board it has written :

"QL printer interface V1.00 1990" "(C) William James & Phill Batts"

The rom announces itself as "Parallel printer interface (C) HDB."

Anyone know what it is.

I've traced the circuit and dumped the ROM and GAL incase anyone is interested.

Cheers.

Phill.
Attachments
Printer adapter
Printer adapter


RWAP
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Re: Mystery printer adapter

Post by RWAP »

Never seen anything like that before !! :)

Need to add this to the QL Wiki - please send Dilwyn a dump of the ROMs (I guess Dilwyn is keeping these?)


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Dave
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Re: Mystery printer adapter

Post by Dave »

Is the ROM code position independent?


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dilwyn
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Re: Mystery printer adapter

Post by dilwyn »

RWAP wrote:Never seen anything like that before !! :)

Need to add this to the QL Wiki - please send Dilwyn a dump of the ROMs (I guess Dilwyn is keeping these?)
I suspect William James might be the same William James who wrote one of the ZX Spectrum emulators for the QL. On my website, it says he collaborated with Dave Barker, Simon N Goodwin, Mark J Swift & Dave Walker, so any of them might know how to contact William James to check.


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dilwyn
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Re: Mystery printer adapter

Post by dilwyn »

prime wrote:Hi all,

I have this mystery printer adapter, can't remember where it came from :)
On the bottom of the board it has written :
"QL printer interface V1.00 1990" "(C) William James & Phill Batts"
The rom announces itself as "Parallel printer interface (C) HDB."
Anyone know what it is.
I've traced the circuit and dumped the ROM and GAL incase anyone is interested.
Cheers.
Phill.
HDB sounds like the late Dennis Briggs of Adman Services, possibly. I'm sure his initials were HDB.


prime
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Re: Mystery printer adapter

Post by prime »

Ok,

Here's a zip file with the contents of the ROM and the GAL.
Also included are the Eagle 6.x design files for the traced circuit.

Cheers.

Phill.
par_printer.zip
(34.9 KiB) Downloaded 174 times


RWAP
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Re: Mystery printer adapter

Post by RWAP »

dilwyn wrote:
RWAP wrote:Never seen anything like that before !! :)

Need to add this to the QL Wiki - please send Dilwyn a dump of the ROMs (I guess Dilwyn is keeping these?)
I suspect William James might be the same William James who wrote one of the ZX Spectrum emulators for the QL. On my website, it says he collaborated with Dave Barker, Simon N Goodwin, Mark J Swift & Dave Walker, so any of them might know how to contact William James to check.
Having spoken with Simon Goodwin, he has clarified:
William James was the author of Speculator, Dennis Briggs introduced him to [Simon] and they worked for several years together as Silicon Studio Ltd making an Amiga 34000-based Digital Audio workstation in the 1990s. [Simon is] still in touch with his former flatmate and collaborator
Simon Jenkins, who now lives in Bristol, but not William.... William lived in Colchester and was a student at Essex. The interface used address lines for output, naturally. [Simon doubts] if more than a handful was ever made. [Simon] never had or used one.


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