The Sinclair QL Forum

tofro wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:10 pmI found an interesting advert on a Miracle Systems card I never knew existed:

Page 9 of the March/April 1996 has a full-page Miracle Systems advert for a "QXL Gold" card that apparently allowed you to adapt a Miracle Gold or SuperGold card to a 16-bit ISA PC bus and use it in a PC/AT, just like the QXL, but as an "upgrade path". It was promised to be available starting from November 1995.

Has anyone ever heard of that beast existing, or even has one?

I preordered one from Stuart at the time but it never was produced. IIRC it was an idea to get around the very high price of DRAM chips around then*.

Edit: * Oh I see it was all parts increased in price (and new EMC rules) - page 39 Vol5/3 Sept/Oct 1995.

Interesting to read that the "Masterpiece" graphics card was apparently pretty much finished before the "Aurora", including the PCB. Too bad nothing came of it. But plans or printed circuit boards must exist somewhere. Tony Tebby certainly had a hand in that too, as Marcel explains in his Blog of the BOOTing system of GC and SGC. Seems, that patches for the "Masterpiece" were already done.

https://www.theqlforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=27618#p27618

Mine of useful info on here

dilwyn wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:49 pm I think that all remaining issues of IQLR are now on my website as PDF files. The last issue I have is Volume 5 Issue 6 (March/April 1996).

Anyone know if there were any later issues?

Dilwyn, I think V4 I6 (March/April 95) is missing.

Thank you for uploading those scans. I'm having a great time revisiting history of QL by reading them. I have already read all QL User/QL World issues and once I finish with IQLR, I will start with QL Today.

You guys (Dilwyn, Bob, Rich, Simon, Stuart, Jochen, et al) did a great job keeping the QL alive, and I am so grateful to you for that.

Not sure how I missed that one. I haven't even scanned it, let alone added it to the page.

I do have a copy of that issue, will scan it tomorrow if I get time.

Started scanning the missing issue, but now I remember why I skipped this one. My copy has torn pages (it was damaged in the mail all those years ago), so the results may not be too good. I'll do my best with it today while I wait for a tradesman to arrive (optimist!) to repair bad weather damage. Watch this space.

napsternds: nice that my work is appreciated, thank you very much.

P.S. If anyone has a good copy, it would be good to get a better scan if this one looks poor when I finish it.

Vol 4 Issue 6 of IQLR should be there now. That was an experience and a half - some page numbers were among the missing bits, so I've had to take an educated guess about the order of some pages. Maybe if someone has a "good" issue they can check if I've done it right. Only took me about 5 hours to do that issue!

I've tried to erase paper rip marks where I've spotted them, and where the odd start of sentence is torn I've taken an educated guess to copy and paste words from elsewhere to fix it. Of all things, I used M$ Paint to do the corrections and it did the job quite well. There will still be some rough parts in there I guess, but it's readable which is what we needed.

My eyes and brain are totally gone after that session, so off to lie down in a dark room now.

Thanks very much, Dilwyn, and enjoy that nap! (Pssst. Don't wake him...)

tofro wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:21 pm Thanks very much, Dilwyn, and enjoy that nap! (Pssst. Don't wake him...)

CF1 pressed... Zzz...

In addition to the IQLR magazine scans, I've added all 8 issues of the QL Technical Review magazines from CGH Services I have here. I don't know how many issues were published in all - maybe Richard Alexander can tell us?