The Sinclair QL Forum

I have a customer who has a QL ROM I've never come across before (Dilwyn's site doesn't mention it at all). PRINT VER$ gives MGB and the language is Swedish.

I'm guessing it's a variant of the MGS ROM but has quite a few differences (from a code diff - I haven't invetsigated further).

Does anyone here know something about this ROM?

It is a Swedish Beckman version of the ROM. I have one myself. The keyboard of the QL has real printed keys for the Swedish keyboard.

I don't suppose one of you could supply a copy of the ROM for preserving?

I've not come across this one before. Don't even know its copyright status (assuming it was privately produced).

There was this related topic a few months ago:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3473

An MGS v1.13 is shared there.

I have (thanks to thomasraden) v1.15 and v2.00 of MGS... attached. I think Beckman were the main Sinclair agents in Sweden so perhaps MGB is an altered version of MGS, assuming MGS was the official Swedish QL ROM in the first place.

dilwyn wrote:I don't suppose one of you could supply a copy of the ROM for preserving?

I've not come across this one before. Don't even know its copyright status (assuming it was privately produced).

Hi Dilwyn,

I have a copy (attached) but I'm having trouble getting it to run on Qemulator (the MGS rom works fine). Am I missing a trick or two in adapting roms for Qemulator or do they just run without any changes?

UPDATE: The previous file was not extracted correctly. The correct rom contents are now attached. The QDOS version is 1Y13 and the ROM ID is MGB.

Charlie

I am trying to get it out. Chr$ has helped me and at the moment the ROM is on a DOM connected to my QUBIDE but the cheap Chinese DOM to USB converter I bought does not want to cooperate with my computer so have some problem with the reading part. The DOM does not show up in device manager.

I am close to send a Microdrive tape to chr$ with the ROM on it since I got a bit to much at work right now.

olpo01 wrote:It is a Swedish Beckman version of the ROM. I have one myself. The keyboard of the QL has real printed keys for the Swedish keyboard.

What's that official ROM on the left in your pic? It appears to start with an 'F' and the other part is hidden under the black wire.

For MGx QLs that I've seen they all normally have an 'MG' on the left and then the language specific right hand one from $8000. eg MGG/MGF etc. I've never seen anything other than MG on the left.

Send me an mdv and I'll post the content here, to compare with Charlie's version.

Thanks guys. I've zipped up the three Swedish ROM versions and preserved them on my site. If anyone has any notes or documentation to add, I'll gladly put that in the zip file as well.

Looking at the content of the ROM images shows the following version details:

All three have VER$ = "MGS", and the QDOS version is 1S13 , 1S15 and 2S00 respectively for version 1.13, 1.15 and 2.00

QemuLator's manual doesn't give much of a clue as to whether individual ROM versions like this might work, just that the ROM image must be exatly 49,152 bytes (48K) long, and that the usual SBYTES name,0,49152 command might not work to save a ROM image from a Gold or Super Gold Card. There is some advice on saving a QL ROM image on a Super Gold Card system:

To create a ROM image on your QL, use the “SBYTES FLP1_QL_ROM,0,49152" command.
Note: This command doesn’t work on Gold Card and Super Gold Card systems, as you get a
modified ROM image instead of the original one. Therefore, if you have a (Super) Gold Card, you
must disconnect it before using the SBYTES SuperBASIC command and copy the ROM to a
microdrive, then from there to a floppy after reconnecting the card.

On a Super Gold Card system (but not on a Gold Card), you may also be able to get the unmodified
ROM image with the command “SBYTES FLP1_QL_ROM,hex('400000'),49152”, without
having to disconnect the card.

Anyone interested in the QL ROM versions can find them preserved at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/qlrom/index.html or on the backup site at http://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/qlrom/index.html

Picture where you can read the official ROM.

Hi,

Is the Rom copyrighted to Beckman ?

Can you do a tom image of the other rom chip?

I was gonna run the rom images through Disa to get a rom diassembley. But I maybe breaking copyright if I do this...