The Sinclair QL Forum

I finally did a video on my Q68...should have done it sooner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IrtdUJ5t10

I think a couple of facts aren't precise but I erred on the side of caution (plus time constraints mean I don't have that much available to spend on video editing which can be a bit of a pain). It looks like Q68 is about 24 times faster than QL, not 28 and though it's likely the fastest piece of QL hardware currently available (excluding emulation) I didn't realize the Q40/Q60 boards are much faster (but I presume you can only get them 2nd hand). Maybe we'll get a few new Q68 orders out of it :-/

BTW, as a funny coincidence, looking for a 60% keyboard I found this YouTube video on one called the Q68. Doesn't quite have the right look as the base is white, but pretty close. Would be ironic if the 60% keyboard I used for my case design idea were also called Q68.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8KJfnReoY

bwinkel67 wrote:I finally did a video on my Q68...should have done it sooner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IrtdUJ5t10

I think a couple of facts aren't precise but I erred on the side of caution (plus time constraints mean I don't have that much available to spend on video editing which can be a bit of a pain). It looks like Q68 is about 24 times faster than QL, not 28 and though it's likely the fastest piece of QL hardware currently available :-/

Hi,

I added the following comment on You Tube and corrected the spelling mistakes!:

nice video as usual

I am the the manufacturer of the Q68 in the UK, the Q68 is designed by Peter Graf.

Some points from the video:

I have had no new case design submitted to me for use with new Q68 boards.

The Q68 in comparison to the Spectrum Next, is not a good one, as the Spectrum Next used a Kickstarter project to fund the manufacture, and distribution, the Q68 is self funded.
The Q68 was in production before the Spectrum Next, I will buy a Spectrum Next.

Spectrum software can be run on the Q68 or any other QL, by the use of an ZX Spectrum emulator, at much higher speeds than the ZX Spectrum hardware.

Not sure what the meaning of "Directory structure not perfected" means?

QUILL is a word processor written by PSION, not an editor and the version of QUILL on the Q68 is the same as the QL version, as is all the software on the Q68 distribution.

Can ZXSIM handle Q68 higher resolutions?

Raspberry PI requires an QL emulator running the Linux operating system to run, the Q68 uses "bare metal" FPGA coding to implement a QL compatible operating system.

The software supplied with the Q68 is an example of all the software available for the QL, which is free to copy.

The Black Box USB PS/2 Converter does actaully work with the Q68 and a Bekin PS/2 Splitter, but a Q68 FPGA update is required to use the Blackbox converter. I have had all USB keybaord, mice, USB WFI dongle keyboard/mouse combo working.

The Blackbox converter is end of life with BlackBox, and is very expensive to buy new, I would be interested in details of the Triplite converter.

bwinkel67 wrote:I didn't realize the Q40/Q60 boards are much faster (but I presume you can only get them 2nd hand). Maybe we'll get a few new Q68 orders out of it :-/

I have 4 boards that need a little work, due to end user interference, usually the heat sink has been removed and not replaced correctly and the CPU may have some heat related damage. I am still investigating this.

I was going to make some more Q60 boards, but I am a little pressed for time these days. The Q60 used to take 2-3 days manual soldering the through hole components, which does make one go blind a little.

Didn't mean to call Quill and editor and I did demo it as a word processor...I don't do retakes :-/ I run QLWP, the US version of Quill. They are all mostly the same though in monitor mode QLWP does a nice job fitting into the somewhat limited US NTSC TV area so nothing gets cut off (which is not true for most software)

Sometimes I get distracted and the Mac mouse was just not cooperating but I was trying to say that though you can run faster on emulators on a device like the Raspberry Pi, if you like hardware, like I do, then the Q68 is a better avenue.

My Spectrum Next comparison was only regarding that both boards are FPGA based systems not in how they were created. I think it's amazing that with the user base difference that we in the QL community get to have an FPGA board at all. I just saw a video regarding the Commander X16 and it looks like they have enough interest in a Kickstarter (it's another Commodore 64 derivative). One cool thing is that there is a custom keyboard manufacturer that they are using that will create a specific PS/2 keyboard for them. I'm curious how much it would cost to get a sample made and how small a run they would do (i.e. is it like PCBWay where they do tiny runs -- likely not). But my case design idea would be perfected with a custom-made PS/2 QL keyboard since the rest would be easy to reproduce in a self-made mold (it's the keyboard that is difficult). I'm going to reach out to Chris Simpson (aka Retro Recipes) to get some info. Otherwise a nice all-black 60% USB keyboard will have to do...something like this that wold fit nicely into the QL Next's housing:

Hi,

I forgot to mention, the Black Phoenix distribution on the Q68 SD Card, requires the ProWesS font size setup correctly, as it is too small in the Paragrapgh Word Processor.

I forgot to alter the Font size to suit the Q68 Screen mode. The ProWesS fonts do not adapt the screen resolution, the fontbsize is set up in a configuration file, it is setup for a QPC2 setup.

I correct this in future SD Cards.

Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,

I forgot to mention, the Black Phoenix distribution on the Q68 SD Card, requires the ProWesS font size setup correctly, as it is too small in the Paragrapgh Word Processor.

I forgot to alter the Font size to suit the Q68 Screen mode. The ProWesS fonts do not adapt the screen resolution, the fontbsize is set up in a configuration file, it is setup for a QPC2 setup.

I correct this in future SD Cards.

Oh good, thanks for the info...I love the Black Phoenix distribution...looks great.

Nice video! I didn't follow the forum too well lately, so I missed that you actually found a better USB to PS/2 converter. Good! By the way, if games are unplayable, you can use the SLUG command to slow the Q68 down in hardware. And I think you don't have to put hardware in quotation marks for the Q68 implementation. The machine has flash-based logic which is instantly active on power-on. No emulation is involved, not even loading a hardware configuration from a PROM like many FPGA.

One correction: Q68 ethernet has software support now! There are two driver projects, see

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3578 by Martin

and

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3603 by Wolfgang

Even file transfer over the internet between two Q68, or Q68 and PC works nicely with Wolfgangs TFTP tools.